For many military personnel attend his lecture in Hall 1 and sit front row to listen to their colleague and Deputy Commander. His clear message: "The readiness of our armed forces depends, among other things, on the quality and security of our support. We continue to build future-proof support."
According to Kersbergen, "We often talk about ammunition and equipment, but in a major conflict, nutrition is an indispensable strategic factor. It is not just about what is on the plate, but also the logistical operation behind it.To show how incredibly proud this speaker is of his company, the audience is first shown a nice video before zooming in on the Dosco structure.
Even non-military people need to find each other
Kersbergen explains: "The world is changing. Conflicts are hybrid, simultaneous and protracted. The armed forces must be ready to respond quickly, to scale up and to persevere. We must be agile: with tanks, aircraft, ships and our people. This is the strength of our armed forces, but strength alone is not enough. The Defense Support Command turns that strength into data. We move people and materiel; provide care, from front line to recovery; build infrastructure where soldiers can train and operate; provide enlistment, training and deployability of personnel; and we organize the logistics chains that keep the armed forces fighting, sustaining and winning. We don't do this alone. Together with reservists, companies, hospitals, logistics partners, infrastructure and knowledge from all over the Netherlands. We give the armed forces an edge in combat.
What is important to get my story straight is that where there is fighting, there is also eating. Where there is fighting to be done, you also have to get there. And where there is fighting, people must also be trained. We cannot do this alone. We are moving towards a time where we have to find each other, including the non-military, in good cooperation in order to keep society safe," he calls to the audience while pitching. Kersbergen immediately takes the opportunity to recruit people on this first day of the fair, because tens of thousands are needed. "So even if you are not military, you could make your contribution. We at Defense are all very ordinary people. Take that with you when you go out like this."
Creative and agile
"We are on a kind of rollercoaster. We are surprised by other developments, just look at Iran or Venezuela. There are a lot of things going on, the situation is more exciting. That means that we as Defense have to think what this means and think about food and food security. Since Ukraine, we are scaling up and getting ready. How do we feed thousands of military and civilian personnel? How long do we have to sustain this? What innovations are going to help us? " In this regard, Kersbergen emphasizes the importance of eRIC. Here he sees many novelties but in the meantime he also looks around so as not to overlook just things that may be of interest to him.
"Anyway, we still have a lot to do as Defense. At the same time, I am convinced of one thing: we are just really good at creativity. Even in the area of nutrition, we are able to improvise and get further than we are now. We are just sometimes now still too much in a process-oriented management. So this is a challenge for an organizational part that has long been used to shrinking and being frugal. So I ask a little bit of understanding for that," he says honestly.
Food security and food safety
Another important role of Dosco is guarding and securing barracks and vital objects. How do we protect the chain from bioterrorism and sabotage from "farm to fork"? "When you talk about water and food supplies in general, there are locations, which are suddenly vulnerable. We make agreements about that. Important here is transport capacity. We are talking about large volumes of food and water. We look at: how does it get to the place? How do we keep it good? What does a soldier use?" As a staff officer who mostly thinks, from behind his little screen in the office he doesn't use that many calories himself, but an infantryman who works very hard physically in the outdoors goes toward 5,000 calories a day - he shares with the room, smiling.
Collaborate
A great example of collaboration with civilian partners on nutrition is with Paresto and Tempo-Team. Together they are training a new batch of cooks. And in the meantime, existing chefs at restaurants are enticed to continue their careers at Defense, part-time or otherwise. In this way, a robust and agile organization is being built that can scale up 24/7 when the situation calls for it. "We are also very actively working with Paresto to think about what young people want to eat. Military people are different than they were 20 years ago." Menno Kersbergen proudly shows his second video: with over 800 employees at 76 defense locations, Paresto provides breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. "Nutrition is crucial to perform and diversity in nutrition is necessary," he says. To add some weight to his words, we hear staggering numbers just over simple slices of cheese....
Besides the challenge of a possible power outage, another challenge, according to the commander, is the shelf life of fresh food. "Because fresh food remains a major motivation for every soldier. So how do you develop food that can withstand extreme cold or extreme heat?" In short, with plenty of food for thought, Kersbergen concludes this inspiring lecture. And each visitor is finally given a "typical" Defense collapsible mug of his, to fill it with coffee anytime - anywhere