Future Problems……or Markets

 

Note: I read interesting article on National geographic website. The thoughts mentioned below are influenced by the article. Article talks about growing population, I thought of linking it to business.

Everyone talks about growing population of human race. Growing at astonishing pace the population of world will reach around 10.5 billion by 2050 (National Geographic study). We are already pushing available resources to its limit and this increase in population will strain the earth further. Oil, Metals, Food you name it and the prices are rising. Is it time to worry? of course it is but that does not mean you should not look for opportunities. 

Every problem presents an opportunity so which businesses will help in solving the problem but also profit from the situation. I think of three main businesses, Water, Food (Agriculture and Fishing), Environment. 

Now let me explain about that in little detail. Water, no question about it, we are already depleting ground water levels and using far more water than available. Also we are polluting large percentage of water available for use. So Water purification, water desalination, water conservation and technology to reduce water usage will be big potential. If you calculate amount of water needed to support growing population the number is mind boggling.  Changing environment, I don’t like to call it global warming, is bringing more droughts which means ever decreasing supply of fresh water. The challenge is huge and there is no clear solution in picture. Companies that come up with innovative solution in this field will succeed big way.

Food; after water, food is the second highest priority. Droughts are adding pressure on global supply of food grains. Also productivity of soil is going down every year due to excessive farming and use of huge amount of fertilizers. So companies that make organic fertilizers & new generations of seeds will benefit a lot. The world needs path breaking innovation in this field to feed all the human race. Another big source of food is fisheries. Again there is problem of excessive fishing and pollution. Amount of catch is reducing every year and that will put more pressure on food supply. Companies in the field of developing fast growing breeds of fish, fish with high nutritional values and developing breeds that can resist polluted waters will have big opportunity. Pollution control and mitigation companies will also play a major role.

Third major trend of course the environment. Pollution control, pollution reduction and pollution cleaning these three fields will be critical. Pollution control contains all activities such as waste disposal, recycling, purification and treatment etc. Pollution reduction contains developing new technology for more efficiency, you may consider clean-tech (but clean-tech covers many other industries too). pollution cleaning will also be a big industry. Considering the fact that we have already polluted air, water and other resources we will need to clean them some time.

People may argue there are many industries that will benefit from population growth. I agree but I wanted to highlight industries that can grow fast and also make a huge impact on resolving major issues.

 

Disclaimer : Some facts are taken directly from national geographic study. I am not endorsing any industry, brand, company. The effort is to express my opinion on the future markets. There are many assumption made which are not explicitly mentioned in the post. In case you do not agree, I respect it. You can post comments with your feedback, suggestions.

Signing off

Nikhil Parchure.