Can governments help guide the world food system to a future of sustainable abundance?

Innovations combined with traditional production methods may help society fend off food challenges and bring on a more sustainable future

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Today’s guests:

Randy Jagt, senior strategy partner in Deloitte Netherlands' Consumer industry

PJ Rivera, Strategy & Growth leader for Deloitte Consulting LLP’s Government & Public Services

Erika Thiem, chief supply chain officer, Feeding America

Danielle Nierenberg, president, and co-founder of Food Tank

The global agriculture industry is vast, producing four million metric tons of food each year and accounting for about 40 % of jobs throughout the world.1 It is also susceptible to disruption and shocks, from climate change and soil depletion to supply chain snags and spoilage. Future-proofing this global food system is a daunting task, but a necessary one.

In Turning point: Feeding the world sustainably, Deloitte Global examined the costs and opportunities of long-term food system transformation. They found that sticking with business as usual puts the world at risk of increasing food insecurity.

Randy Jagt, senior strategy partner in Deloitte Netherlands, Deloitte Future of Food leader and co-author of the report, shares the stakes: “If we want to feed 10 billion people in the future, which will be probably in about 2050 or 2070, we need to expand our food system with about 40% more calories.2 So it's a gigantic challenge to overcome.”

In this episode, we discuss how to meet that mark with Jagt, along with PJ Rivera, Strategy & Growth leader for Deloitte Consulting LLP; Erika Thiem, chief supply chain officer of Feeding America; and Danielle Nierenberg, president and co-founder of the research and advocacy organization Food Tank. We examine the impacts of climate change on the agricultural industry, as well as the impacts of that industry on climate change. We talk about new technology that is helping to curb food waste, and old farming techniques that are restoring soil viability. Finally, we consider the collaborations necessary to bring the global food system into a stable future.

“This will require all of our attention, all of our dedication,” Jagt said. “Lots of collaboration and coalition forming will be required to make this happen. So, it's definitely not an easy transformation to say the least, but I’m still optimistic that we can get this done.”

Tanya Ott: We’re at a crossroads when we look to the future of food—the cultivation, the production, the distribution, and what we’ll actually eat in the future.

One possible future is one of sustainable abundance: plenty for everyone, the end of hunger—and we have the technology to achieve this goal.

The other is hunger and the proliferation of food deserts and areas of deprivation, bereft of access to healthy food.

The desired pathway is clear, but that goal may only be reached if the governments, the agricultural industries, NGOs, and communities work together.

The challenges are stark: climate change, rising global population, growing food waste. These are the some of the biggest obstacles the planet faces.

I’m Tanya Ott, and in today’s Government Future Frontiers [episode], we’re talking about ways to combat food challenges. How do we ensure that the innovation and skills that we possess can be applied to ensure that we end up going in the right direction when planning the future of our food supply?

My guests today are Randy Jagt, senior strategy partner in Deloitte Netherlands’ Consumer industry; PJ Rivera, Strategy & Growth leader for Deloitte Consulting LLP’s Government & Public Services; Erika Thiem, chief supply chain officer, Feeding America; and Danielle Nierenberg from Food Tank, a research and advocacy organization that tells stories of hope and success in food and agriculture systems across the globe.

But before we explore the challenges we face in more detail, where are we today?

The global agriculture industry is vast, producing four million metric tons of food each year.

It’s projected to be worth US$4.59 trillion in 2024. This is expected to grow to US$5.52 trillion by 2029.3 And there’s more.

Here’s Randy Jagt.

Randy Jagt: The food system is a massive employer in the world. [It is] employing about 40% of all global jobs. It’s responsible for about 12% of global GDP.4 It’s also taking about 50% of all habitable land.5 So, in a way, it’s a very pivotal system in our global society, and [for] governments and countries.

Ott: And it is a system that’s under threat.

Jagt: What happens if we stay on the path [the world is] currently are on? We just released a report on how to feed the world sustainably, where we exactly model this.

Ott: That report is called Turning point: Feeding the world sustainably. It uses economic modelling to evaluate various scenarios that will impact the future of food.

Jagt: If [society doesn’t] take action, we will see that food security would be significantly under pressure. And [the world] will not be able to feed this global growing population all the way up to 10 billion. If we want to feed 10 billion people in the future, which will be probably in about 2050 or 2070, we need to expand our food system with about 40% more calories. So, it's a gigantic challenge to overcome.

If [the world does] take significant, action—for example, doubling down on innovation, protecting our natural resources, changing consumer mindset and diet—we would actually improve food security by generating about a thousand trillion more calories to feed about 1.6 billion more people in the world, but also reduce food prices with about 16%.6

We’re seriously at this turning point where we need to start taking action and make the necessary steps to find the optimal balance of food security, environmental impact and managing situations like climate change, which is already putting global shocks to the food system.

Danielle Nierenberg: Every farmer you talk to has seen the impacts of climate change, if not over the last year, over the last 10 years.

Ott: That’s Danielle Nierenberg of Food Tank.

Nierenberg: They don’t know when the rains are coming. They don’t know when to harvest, they don’t know when to add fertilizer because the whole system has been upended, right? The seasons have changed dramatically for them. And so, it's this huge learning curve. Farmers are just really trying to catch up, and they need the investment of both local governments and national governments—they need assistance.

They need to be able to do their jobs better. I heard someone say recently that the climate crisis is no longer a natural disaster. It is an ongoing crisis. So, these floods and droughts and extreme things that happen all the time, those aren't natural disasters. That's just the way we have to live. And we have to help farmers figure out how to live in that new world.

Ott: That’s what the policymakers, NGOs, and governments discussed in Baku, Azerbaijan, at the recent UN COP29 climate talks. But what about the reality for those farming? They’re the ones on the front line.

Lewis Clare farms in the United Kingdom.

Lewis Clare: I am an organic farmer right on the border of Greater Manchester and Cheshire. So, we’re 57 hectares, certified organic, we rear our own pigs, which we butcher in house—quite small scale.

The mild, wet winters are having a massive effect. We [did] about 45,000 pumpkin plants this year. We had to do three applications of slug pellets this year. We’ve never done one before. And that was solely due to such a mild, wet winter. Slugs and snails just proliferated, and there was no kind of hard frost to kill any off or anything like that. And it was just perfect conditions for them. It just rained constantly from October, November last year through to, sort of, May this year. It's just been unreal.

Ott: And Lewis is not alone.

Andrew Court: My name’s Andrew Court. I farm in Staffordshire, so right between Birmingham and Manchester. We grow high-quality regenerative crops including winter wheat, winter barley, oilseed rape, winter beans, and spring oats.

Growing cycles are not consistent. We can’t bank on having the right weather at roughly the right time—if that makes sense. I mean, traditionally, when my grandparents were farming, we would have had a pretty dry September or a nice dry warmish September and going into October and then it would start to get cooler but potentially remain quite dry—just the odd day of rain—and that would last through December. We’d expect sort of snow around mid-December through into the new year, and then gradually it’d warm up and get wetter and wetter, and then suddenly spring would start. It'd dry up a bit more.

You could get the spring sowing done, and then you’d go into a slightly wet May and then a dry June, and then you'd be into harvest again.

And now we don't have seasons. And that's the real problem. And cattle are the same. And sheep and all these animals, they all react to the phases of the moon and all that sort of stuff. But there’s just no consistent picture anymore.

It seems to ping pong between extremes. And we don't necessarily have the natural resilience in our soils anymore to be able to cope with that.

Ott: The global food system is great affected by climate change. But that’s not the whole story. It’s also a huge contributor to climate change. Here’s Deloitte Netherland’s Randy Jagt.

Jagt: At this moment, it's a runner up behind the energy [sector] in terms of carbon emission. It's responsible for about 25% to 35 % of all global carbon emissions.7 But even more, it takes about 45% of methane emissions,8 which are 80 times more impactful than carbon,9 and about 80% of nitrogen emissions,10 which are about 270 times more impactful than carbon.11

So, this is a system that needs to be transformed and needs to be made future-proof, but also much more sustainable than it is today.

Ott: Part of that transformation will come in the way our food is grown. There’s a whole bunch of new tech that farmers can use … but it does come at a cost. That’s an opportunity for government and the financial system to support the transformation of our food system.

Jagt: We need more financing, and we need also more incentives, grants, but also insurance support to provide the coverage for farmers to make this transition happen. So that's one. Two, we need more ecosystem collaboration. We need not only the private but also the governmental sector to work together to accelerate spaces like regenerative agriculture or precision agriculture or food-waste policies to truly make the systemic changes [a] reality.

We need also better transparency at this moment, given it’s such a global system where it’s not one value chain, it’s several value chains. How do we tap into available data like satellite imaging [so] precision data sets are available at a farmer level? How do we unlock them through blockchain?

Ott: Lewis Clare predicts a rethink on some the technology and the big machines farmers traditionally love.

Clare: The tendency in farming over the last sort of 40, 50 years is just to get bigger, bigger, bigger—bigger tractors, bigger plows—do it faster, to plant more land quicker, because that's where the efficiencies are. Whereas I think actually, if you take the driver out of it, you can go smaller, but it can run 24/7.

I think, [the] change [that] will come [will be] potentially in smaller vehicles, so if you can take the driver out of it, it [will become] an unmanned vehicle.

And that I think will be potentially where the change will come. So, you will be able to plow a field in conditions you won't be able to run a large 120-horsepower tractor on, but you could run something the size of a quad bike on, and it will take six, seven times longer to plow the field, but it will just run and do it with the GPS, and then you get charged by how accurate you want it. If you want it to the centimeter, that's going to cost you more than if you want it to the meter.

Ott: Another focus is on regenerative agriculture: regenerative because soil is being depleted worldwide. According to UNESCO, 90% of the world’s soil could be degraded by 2050.12 Here’s farmer Andrew Court.

Court: The soil is our biggest asset, and we need to look after it and develop it. Regenerate something, you get more from it—basically, you improve it, you make it better, you get more from less. And that is a journey, whether you're renovating a town center or regenerating your soils, it's the same idea. So, we have embarked on this journey to improve our soils and reduce our tolerance to artificial inputs and potentially move even very traditional farming away from a prescriptive factory way of doing things.

And we think the key thing is that we’re looking backwards, we’re looking at how our forefathers used to do things. And we are then bringing in modern technology, particularly in order to monitor things.

Ott: In short, regenerative farming restores soil health, enhances biodiversity, and sequesters carbon, [all] while producing food. It focuses on practices like no-till farming, crop rotation, cover cropping, and integrating livestock to mimic natural ecosystems and reduce chemical inputs and improves long-term productivity, mitigates climate change, and supports resilient food systems.

Randy Jagt says this return to traditional farming methods may have substantial economic benefits.

Jagt: It’s a positive business case. It will actually reduce costs in terms of crop input and crop protection elements, which will then provide savings for the farmers and ultimately result in higher yield.

Ott: But those increased yields will still fall short if the world doesn’t grapple with another issue facing the global food system—food waste.  

Rivera: When you look at some of the stats, honestly, it's staggering.

Ott: That’s Deloitte’s PJ Rivera.

One in 10 Americans is food-insecure.13 That said, we waste about 30% to 40% of food across the food supply chain in America.14

Ott: That figure largely holds true across the world.

Rivera: And when we think about this, and the economic implications of food waste, which can total around US$220 billion or so from a US lens,15 you have to look at it to your point from like a supply chain perspective in terms of what happens getting food from farm to table.

Ott: That waste happens all along the spectrum. In the United States, about half of it happens at the consumer level.16 According to Food Tank’s Danielle Nierenberg, that may be because many consumers are far removed from the work of food production.

Danielle Nierenberg: I think people just don’t value food. They don’t value food because they don't really understand a lot of times where it comes from and all the work and labor and love that went into it.

We tend to overbuy food. A lot of food is wasted at home. Portion sizes across the globe have increased. It's this combination of things.

Ott: Education may play a key role in reducing consumer waste.

Jagt: A big part of the waste stream is actually what’s happening at home. And that’s part to also better educate consumers on, well, how do you make better choices yourself? For example, with vegetables and fruits, well, it’s hard to put an exact date on when it’s not consumable. How do educate consumers to make better choices themselves?

What can you still consume or what can you actually reapply and put into different recipes? What can you do with leftovers instead of throwing it away? Let’s repurpose it by providing innovative and tasteful recipes.

Ott: Recipes are where our next guests comes in. Alejandra Schrader is a chef and cookbook author. Climate and communities are at the heart of everything Alejandra does.

Schrader: Probably the most impactful action that you can take at home: Stop throwing your food away. Food waste is responsible for such a vast amount of greenhouse gas generation on our planet, and we don't speak about it enough. Over one-third of all the greenhouse gases generated on our planet come from food consumption or production.17 So, we have to do something about it. I definitely think planning is such a big element of this.

Ott: Before shopping, do you ever take a moment to do a stock take and see what you already have? Maybe you should …

Schrader: Sometimes, we'll get to the market, and we're like, ooh, look, those carrots look good. Ooh, this bread looks amazing. And then, we sort of, like, forget, hey, I may not have enough time in this two-week, three-week period to eat all of this. And that’s when our food might spoil in the fridge.

Now, there’s another aspect there, which is meal prepping, right? If you plan and you buy all of this food, you also have to think about like, okay, so let’s just say these are radishes, like, wait, I can use them when I make this salad, but I can also use them when I make this taco, and I can pickle a few so then they will last me up to six months in my refrigerator, and I can add them to another dish.

Ott: But consumer waste is only half of the problem. The other half comes from multiple sources. And that’s something that Erika Thiem, chief supply chain officer of Feeding America, is all too familiar with.

Erika Thiem: Waste comes from across the food industry, from farmers and producers that might have crops that might not meet the cosmetic requirements for retail sale.

Ott: Food in transit can become damaged. Food stored in poor conditions can be spoilt and end up wasted. Food can be damaged by retailers. That ends up in the waste stream too.

And nobody is doing this on purpose. It is simply a symptom of the scale of the industry. And that scale leads to some unique problems, according to Randy Jagt.

Jagt: Food waste is such a thing. It’s at this moment still in some places cheaper to throw food away than to repurpose it.

A lot of the governmental policies want to be so protective on food safety. We’re not allowing food waste to be redirected. This is where we need to, well, embrace change. We need to get much clearer on, hey, what is still the value of food and how can we best supply it?

Ott: Deloitte’s PJ Rivera says that in the United States, policymakers are taking notice.

Rivera: We can see some innovations and helping reduce wastes through the US National Science Foundation. They play a role through their small business innovation research grants. They recently gave a grant to Ryp Labs, [which] identified a sticker that you can wrap around certain types of fruit that helps them maintain longevity. [It] acts almost like a second skin without actually adding any additives, pesticides, or anything else, but adds durability to skin.

And so, when we think about food safety and reducing waste, looking at it both from that supply chain screening inspection perspective, but also looking at how does government incentivize new players and actors to use 3D printing, new materials, new technology to help drive food preservation up in less orthodox ways is what's going to also help us drive up quality of food and safety of food while also reducing waste.

Lastly, I would also be remiss if I didn't talk a little bit more about the role of the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency]. The EPA spent a lot of time leading overall with [its] waste mitigation framework. And as a part of that, they said a large part of food waste starts at source reduction. How do we really think about localized farming? How do we think about helping consumers become more educated with where they source some of their foods?

With that framework, they start to look at source reduction implications, how to help consumers and help businesses make better decisions. They looked at how do we feed hungry people? How do we look at feed for animals? How do we look at industrial uses? How do we use composting, as well as landfills, the last resort. And through some of these frameworks that they’ve developed and that other agencies are now adopting to help frame out food waste policies, we see a really valuable role in government, being led by the EPA, to drive food [waste] reduction.

Ott: So, the issue of food waste is clearly on the radar of governments. But in the meantime, is there a way that some of that wasted food can be saved?

This is where Erika Thiem’s Feeding America has a role to play.

Thiem: We work across that end-to-end supply chain at Feeding America. What we're really focusing on is making sure that we are rescuing that food before it becomes food waste. We rescue close to four billion pounds of food annually. And what we really think about is how are we turning that excess into access for people who are food-insecure?

Ott: Similar bodies exist all over the world, all aiming to redistribute some of that surplus food that would end up being trashed, reaching some of those in need.

Here’s Erika to tell us more …

Thiem: Our Feeding America network is 60,000 [strong]—different food shelves, meal programs, [and] community food distribution partners that we work with. We build deep relationships within the food industry. [As an] example, you might have a manufacturer that makes hamburger patties for a restaurant chain. We'll work closely with both of those food industry partners to make sure that if there’s overproduction at the supplier, that the restaurant chain would be okay to donate their product.

We really try to look at all sources of food through donation. One of the big ways we do that is through connecting these sources of excess food to food banks through technology solutions. The one that we're really proud of is called Meal Connect. Meal Connect has been a technology that's been around since 2014 and has allowed us to rescue over six billion pounds of food during that time. It's really pretty simple. It's a technology application that connects donated food with a food bank or a community food distribution partner.

A donor that posts food on Meal Connect. It could be a grocery store in the community where a food shelf will go pick up food in a refrigerated van that they can handle without a forklift. Sometimes, it's a full truckload where we have to arrange a tractor and trailer to go pick up industrial-sized donations. So, donors have access to post loads on the Meal Connect app. Food banks can pick up those offers directly.

Oftentimes, we partner with those community organizations that actually distribute food to people facing food insecurity. Instead of going from the grocery store back to the food bank—which is really a big warehouse—we can just partner with that food shelf to go directly to the grocery store and get that food and get it immediately to the people they're serving.

That cuts down on time that that food shelf life could continue to age or spoil, and it just simplifies the process altogether.

Ott: Feeding America utilizes the available technology to join those dots between excess food and those who are most at need.

Technological breakthroughs can also play a huge role in improving productivity and supply chains in the first place, to prevent so much food being wasted.

According to Deloitte’s PJ Rivera, one key benefit of technology is better traceability.

Rivera: We need to deploy and use blockchain technology to do better data-sharing across the food supply chain, to do better tracking, to do better understanding of where food is. Where is food getting stuck in the supply chain, which might be leading to increased spoilage? Where are these actors that might not be as efficient and let's identify some of those efficiencies.

And so, to me, using blockchain, really looking at data interoperability and data-sharing, using cloud technology, using Internet of Things, and looking at automation to drive that is the way of the future. And that is a significant way in which we can really reduce that 30% to 40% food waste that we see today, and ideally get more food into the hungry mouths of our citizens.

This becomes particularly true during times of natural disaster. I was a first responder in Hurricane Katrina. And when I think about our supply chain response efforts there, and trying to get both medical supplies as well as food into those that needed it, the response efforts of Hurricane Katrina became an incredibly complicated scenario and set of issues to work through. At that point in time, we did not have robust IoT. We did not have robust interoperability and data-sharing, leveraging blockchain or any other technology-type platform. And so, identifying where the greatest need was [and] matching supply to that need became one of the hardest issues in our response efforts.

But if we were to experience another natural disaster of that magnitude, our current supply chain may not be able to meet the needs as we would hope and we wanted to during the time of critical crises.

Looking at using technologies like geospatial and blockchain, also spending some time really thinking about how we look at diversifying and localizing some food options, like using the USDA [US Department of Agriculture] in local food promotion programs and supporting the expansion of CSA [community supported agriculture], those are all going to be important steps we can take now that will provide some of that resiliency and diversity supply chain. That's going to become even more critical as we look at food shortages in the long term.

Ott: Some of this is already happening. Some [of it] is on the cusp of adoption.

Rivera: We see IoT sensors traceability from a blockchain perspective, also using AI predictive analytics [to] identify spoilage ahead of time and our contamination at a time, as well as using mobile apps from a streamline reporting. These are all technologies that were starting to be used by some agencies as well as some commercial actors.

Ott: And agriculture must embrace the change because business-as-usual is not an option. That’s according to Danielle Nierenberg from Food Tank.

Nierenberg: There is no silver bullet to make this happen. It will take a lot of tools from a lot of different toolboxes and probably a combination of what I like to say is high and low technologies. The things that farmers and indigenous people have done for millennia combined with some of the great new technologies are out there, whether it's CRISPR or cell phone technology that helps the farmers get payments better or early warning systems for flood or drought or other weather events ...

Ott: Equally important is the need to collaborate.

Nierenberg: [We need] information sharing between farmers, but also between scientists and researchers from different countries, and as well as academics, because I think there's a lot of reinventing the wheel.

Ott: And it’s not just farmers who need to share information. Everyone listening to this podcast consumes food—but dhow many have anything to do with growing or producing it? 

As more populations shift toward urban centres, the connection with rural areas, where food is traditionally grown is lost. So, maybe we need to reconnect?

Let’s hear from two of the farmers we’ve featured in this episode. Andrew Court and Lewis Clare.

Court: In somewhere like France or Italy, seasonality still exists in the food markets and that makes sustainability much more straightforward. In the United Kingdom, we had quite a sizable British empire and a very sizable navy, which resulted in it becoming very easy to import things over the past 150, 200 years. And we unfortunately lost our seasonality. And I think that that has led to a race to the bottom for cheap food.

If we're using seasonal crops, then it's doing less food miles. And that does have an effect on a carbon footprint, which has an effect on the environment. But really what we as farmers need to be doing and what we need to be encouraging consumers to do is to look for more nutrient-dense food. Research shows that you [should] create a much more nutrient-dense produce, which is actually much more filling.

That's how we tackle world hunger. That's how we tackle climate change. That's how we tackle all sorts of things is by really focusing on the quality of what we grow. And what I encourage everyone to do is think about where they're sourcing food from. I would argue that potentially sourcing from a farm shop ...

Clare: In the mid to late 19th century, 22% of the UK population was employed with agriculture and even the people that weren't employed with an agriculture were rearing chickens. They were growing their own vegetables. There was a huge amount of social knowledge about food production, and in the last 150 years, that has evaporated. The social knowledge collapsed. It's not been replaced by education. And I mean, I had a school trip in two weeks ago where a child asked me where the pig laid its eggs. And that was a seven-year-old.

We're doing 50 to 100 school trips a year and taking on that role of teaching kids because just by the nature of my farm, [I] have an orchard, have contracts [for] grazing sheep, we've got pigs, we have a few chickens that we just keep for ourselves. So, there's that little bit of variety, a little bit of edge growing. You can see all those different aspects. It's, to me, it's trying to tap into that because again, being sort of semi-urban, I have inner city Manchester, I have inner city Liverpool, I have kids coming to me that have never left their estate. You know, and that's to me, that's like, actually, that's what my farm can do that other farms can't. So, let's try and do that.

You tend to find when you have kids come round you can tell usually you've had an impact on some of them. There will be a handful that you can tell you've reached and will gain something out of it and will perhaps, even if they don't do anything more, they'll end up growing a few bits and pieces on a window box. It’s just, without sounding too trite, plants that seed.

Ott: At the beginning of this episode, I talked about two possible futures. In one future, the world’s food system adapts, embraces both new technology and old farming methods, gets a handle on food waste, and can sustainably feed 10 billion people. In the other, the food system sticks to business as usual, spoilage continues, waste continues, soil gets more depleted, and hunger rises.

Change won’t necessarily be easy, according to Randy Jagt.

Jagt: The food system as it stands today is a result for at least 100- to 200-year evolution on how we produce our own food. What we're now trying, what we need to do is transform the food system in the coming 20 to 30 years, which is incredibly fast compared to how long it took to where we are today.

Ott: But we can already see some of those changes in the food system. 

Jagt: I’m already seeing so many initiatives taking place. It’s very encouraging to see the development [of] regenerative agriculture, or new sustainable feed that's reducing methane emissions from the dairy sector or, even alternative protein solutions or plant-based solutions that are kicking in.

More enablers are becoming available, like precision agriculture, digital solutions, blockchain, [and] different data solutions.

Will it be easy, this transformation? No, not at all. This will require all of our attention, all of our dedication. Lots of collaboration and coalition forming will be required to make this happen. So, it's definitely not an easy transformation to say the least, but I'm still optimistic that we can get this done.

Thank you for listening to Government’s Future Frontiers with me, Tanya Ott, brought to you by Deloitte Insights. I want to thank all of our guests today: Randy Jagt, senior strategy partner in Deloitte Netherlands’ Consumer industry; PJ Rivera, Strategy & Growth leader for Deloitte's Government & Public Services; Erika Thiem, chief supply chain officer of Feeding America; and Danielle Nierenberg, CEO of Food Tank. We also heard from chef Alejandra Schrader, and farmers Andrew Court and Lewis Clare.

Next episode, we’ll be looking at future-ready cities. Smart cities could become even smarter with increased application of AI, both in infrastructure development and in analysis of data. New technology promises to enhance safety, sustainability, quality of life, and resident experience—but also opens up risks to privacy and infrastructure security.

If you’ve already subscribed, you’ll get new episodes delivered automatically. If you’re not subscribed … maybe hit that button right now so you don’t miss out.

This podcast is produced by Deloitte. The views and opinions expressed by podcast speakers and guests are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of Deloitte. This podcast provides general information only and is not intended to constitute advice or services of any kind. For additional information about Deloitte, go to Deloitte.com/about.

By

Tanya Ott

United States

Endnotes

  1. Tania Strauss, “How can we protect food systems against global shocks? Here's what business leaders say,” World Economic Forum, May 24, 2022; Lauren Lewis, “Why producing more food doesn’t mean less hunger,” Food Unfolded, updated Oct. 29, 2024.

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  2. Pradeep Philip, Joshua Appleton-Miles, Vanessa Matthijsen, Daniel Terrill, Randy Jagt, and James Cascone, “Turning point: Feeding the world sustainably,” Deloitte, November 2024.

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  3. Statista, “Agriculture—Worldwide,” accessed Dec. 10, 2024.

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  4. Lewis, “Why producing more food doesn’t mean less hunger.”

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  5. Hannah Ritchie, “50% of all land in the world is used to produce food,” World Economic Forum, Dec. 11, 2019.

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  6. Philip, Appleton-Miles, Matthijsen, Terrill, Jagt, and Cascone, “Turning point.”

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  7. Amr Abdel-Aziz, Maria Josefina Figueroa Meza, Klaus Hubacek, Inge G.C. Jonckheere, Yong-Gun Kim, Gregory F. Nemet, Shonali Pachauri, Xianchun C. Tan, and Thomas Wiedmann, “Emissions Trends and Drivers,” Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change—Contribution of Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2022).

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  9. United Nations Environment Programme, “Methane emissions are driving climate change. Here’s how to reduce them,” Aug. 20, 2021.

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  10. Shu-Yuan Pan, Kung-Hui He, Kuan-Ting Lin, Chihhao Fan, and Chang-Tang Chang, “Addressing nitrogenous gases from croplands toward low-emission agriculture,” Nature Partner Journal Series: Climate and Atmospheric Science 5, no. 43 (2022).

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  11. UNEP, “Rise in nitrous oxide emissions endangers pathway to 1.5°C, the ozone layer, and human health,” press release, Nov. 12, 2024.

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Acknowledgments

Cover image by: Sofia Sergi; Adobe Stock