Feeding the world without busting the planet: the future of food and beverage

There are many examples of how food and beverage businesses are working to deliver sustainable, resilient and regenerative food systems. At the 2023 UN COP28 meetings in Dubai, 18 additional countries signed the climate action agreement for food to accelerate the agricultural transition. Major food producers including big players such as Nestlé, Danone and Unilever signed onto a declaration committing to integrating food into their climate action plans that includes boosting sustainable production practices and improving soil health.

However, significant barriers remain that hinder meaningful progress. So, what are the challenges, the risks, and the opportunities? The clock is ticking, and effective action towards addressing these issues is needed.

There is ever greater consensus of the need to adopt a farmer-centric approach to agriculture, not least for strategy to scale up regenerative agricultural practices. There is plenty of innovation and potential, but progress remains slow. What’s the key barrier in making this happen? Unsurprisingly, it’s funding.

Max Dougherty, carbon business development at Bayer Crop Science, appeared on the Innovation Forum podcast and shared some potential routes to funding the agricultural transition. He also discussed why a farmer-centric approach is crucial and how to initiate effective multi-stakeholder collaboration whilst implementing regenerative farming into practice. You can listen to the podcast here.

Another financial issue is the discrepancy between food price and value. As the looming deadline of the EU deforestation regulation approaches and rising costs of fertiliser and other inputs, the need for bridging the price-value gap is crucial in future-proofing sectors such as coffee, cocoa and bananas. Fairtrade America’s Amanda Archilla and Fairtrade Foundation’s Anna Mann discussed with Innovation Forum’s Ian Welsh the pricing pressures in food value chains and how to ensure that they don't always impact growers unfairly. Click here to listen to the podcast.

Two new reports from Orbitas, a Climate Advisers initiative, have taken a deep dive into what the future of the soy and cattle sectors in Brazil look like amid climate transitions. Orbitas defines climate transitions as our collective response to climate change and actions to mitigate the impacts of climate change. Niamh McCarthy from Climate Advisers introduces in detail their cattle sector report and share the sector’s risks and opportunities. You can listen to the interview here. There will be a follow up podcast about the soy sector report coming out shortly. 

In addition, Innovation Forum is holding a virtual event in partnership with Orbitas to explore the findings of the two reports in more detail. Hear from Niamh as she introduces what will be discussed in this session. Gain value insights from Orbitas, farmers, Ministry of Agriculture Brazil and many more. Click here to view the full recording.

Advances in data technology is now strongly considered as one tool to help transform how farmers grow and produce food through sustainable and regenerative practices. To address some of the biggest question marks, Cargill and Innovation Forum co-hosted a virtual event. Joined by Joanna Fowler from Nestlé, Allison Kopf from TRACT and Matt Wood from Cargill, key discussion points were how aligning methodologies can facilitate greater transparency and how the digital transformation empower farmers to embrace regenerative agriculture practices. To gain insight on the full discussion, watch the recording here.

Soil health is at the root of many of agriculture’s big challenges. Maximising soil health has numerous benefits not only for carbon sequestration but also for growers to have improved profitability and crop yield. Therefore, identifying practical and impactful farmer-centric solutions should be high on the agenda for businesses to deliver climate-resilient food systems at scale.

Innovation Forum and Bayer Crop Science hosted a webinar to explore best practices for soil regeneration and carbon farming. The hour-long session included contributions from the International “4 per 1,000” initiative, RAGT, a farmer and Bayer Crop Science. You can view the video recording here or listen as a podcast here.

One of the discussion points at the event was the technology and data available to develop and nurture healthy soils. In a separate discussion held in partnership with Agmatix, we discussed the role of better data in mitigating risks in the supply chain, ensuring resilience and sustainability in sourcing. Alongside, Oatly, McCain Foods and Agmatix, we talked about the importance of data in corporate transparency and shared some case studies of the impacts of on-farm technology. Watch the video recording here or listen as a podcast here.

Brands in the food and beverage industry understand that there's no universal solution for implementing regenerative practices and initiate large-scale transformation from farm to fork. Clearly brands and other stakeholders such as NGOs, government and industry leaders will benefit from an exchange of ideas and collectively pulling in efforts in developing resilient food systems.