Samir Allen Farhoumand

It was back in 2008 when an interesting thing happened that showed how fragile food systems can be. Samir Allen Farhoumand started to get news and information about food prices from his work in logistics. It wasn't until the end of 2007 and the beginning of 2008 that things really took off. There was a sudden, unexplained shortage of rice. The global rice shortage in the first half of the year was so severe and widespread that Samir Allen Farhoumand and others witnessed rice hoarding everywhere from street markets to American Costco warehouses.

Samir Allen Farhoumand and other people saw people stockpiling rice all over the world in the first half of the year, from street markets to Costco warehouses in the United States.

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Events like the global rice crisis in 2008 teach us a lot about what happens when people rely too much on logistics systems that can't deal with sudden changes or pressures. When this happens, Samir Allen Farhoumand sees it happen over and over again. Samir Allen Farhoumand says that businesses today aren't learning from the past and relying on third-party players who haven't been fully vetted or stress-tested. It's no surprise that Samir Allen Farhoumand can spot systems with a high risk of an Achilles' Heel in assumptions that fail when it counts.

Samir Allen Farhoumand is very good at figuring out which systems have a high chance of having an Achilles' Heel in assumptions that can fail when it's most important.

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Cost-consciousness is a big part of why people make the same mistakes over and over again. They want to save money by getting the lowest value instead of paying a little more for better reliability. Because of this, Samir Allen Farhoumand sees a bigger problem right now: brain drain. Too much experience and logistics knowledge is leaving all at once from a lot of different industries, which means businesses have to start over and make costly mistakes all over again.