2024-06-17
18 分钟Today’s agrifood industry produces enough calories to feed the global population but it creates negative externalities across the climate, nature and health sectors. Global sustainability goals have changed what crops the agrifood industry grows and how. Such dynamics leave the sector structurally unprepared to deliver on these goals. However, deploying mature, high-impact investable solutions in the short term that strengthen innovation could be a boon to the industry. The UBS Sustainability and Impact Institute report analyses promising solutions and outlines the role of capital markets and investors in facilitating their development and deployment. We discuss this with William Nicolle, ESG analyst in the UBS Sustainability and Impact Institute. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Hello and welcome to the Bulletin with UBS on Monocle Radio.
Each week the sharpest minds and freshest thinkers in finance take you beyond the numbers and hype right to the heart of the big issues of the day.
This week we're delving into a report from the UBS Sustainability and Impact Institute entitled Grow, Move, Eat, Repeat.
Transitioning Agri Food From Sustainability Liability to Asset.
Its author, William Nicole is with us today to unpack the findings.
Today's agri food industry produces enough calories to feed the global population, but it creates in the process substantial negative externalities across climate, nature and health.
Global sustainability goals imply significant changes to what food the agri food industry grows and how its fragmentation and industry specific dynamics leave it structurally unprepared to deliver them smoothly.
A plausible path forward lies in deploying mature and investable solutions in the short term that offer high impact as well as strengthening innovation.
The UBS Sustainability and Impact Institute report analyzes promising solutions and outlines the role of capital markets and investors in facilitating their development and deployment.
It's a great pleasure to welcome William Nicole back to the program once again to discuss this theme.
William, great to have you with us.
Give us the the headlines here.
What was the agenda for you and your colleagues?
Let's go back to the start of the process of putting this report together.
So we wanted to look at the direction of the agri food industry, which for the layman is agriculture and food industry.
And often you can lump them together and look at sort of where it's coming from from a sustainability perspective and where it's going in the future.
And the broad headlines are that in the past we went through this period called the Green Revolution, which was sort of mid 20th century where you saw a massive increase in the productivity of agricultural yields.
And this really broke a longstanding correlation between population growth and the expansion of land.
So the more population we had, the more land we had to cultivate to feed that population.
But as soon as you managed to increase productivity, you can get more food output per hectare or whatever other area of land you're speaking about and you can feed the growing population without expanding land anymore.