Food Security and Climate Change
1 in 8 people are malnourished. And agriculture represents ¼ of all greenhouse gas emissions.
Food security is intertwined with climate change – and we need to look beyond this harvest, this year, and rethink the food systems, which were engineered for efficiency, but not for equity, environment, or nutrition.
That’s the broad-thinking work Lorin Fries at FutureTable is working to tackle. She shares her impact story as part of our micro-podcast series, originally recorded at The Global Impact Investing Network Investor Forum in Copenhagen.
Podcast Transcript
Jacob: [00:00:00] I’m here with Lauren Fries with FutureTable, and we’d love to hear just a quick introduction about yourself. We’re sitting here at the GIIN investor forum in Copenhagen, and we ran into each other yesterday and would love to hear more about what you do.
Lorin: Thanks for the invitation and the opportunity.
I run a strategy advising firm that focuses on food systems and climate impact. We work with a range of leaders across the social public private sectors to create the impact that they want, and I’m here at the GIIN because I think there is not enough financial capital flowing into the impact space, I would say, especially in food, but also in climate.
Although I’ve been really heartened to see all the discussion about climate here. I consider myself an ecosystem builder, connecting people, connecting capital with where it needs to be, and especially in geographies that are underserved. I focus quite a lot on the continent of Africa, for instance.
Jacob: Give me some tactical examples.
Lorin: I had an opportunity a few years ago to [00:01:00] collaborate with a team to create a platform called Generation Africa. So there’s a youth bulge in the continent of Africa. There’s also a dearth of those who are interested in and inspired by the agri-food sector. At the same time, the continent imports a vast majority of the food that actually could be grown and processed and eaten and nourishing the continent.
So we created a platform that inspires young people to come into the agri-food sector that connects them with the corporations, with the investors, with the technical experts that can help them to realize the small businesses that they’re creating.
We created a major prize that was stewarded alongside the Africa Food Prize, which is a major. A major prize that people pay attention to. And so this was a way of really galvanizing youth across the continent.
We worked with a man named Strive Mathawa who is the, CEO of a major telecoms firm. Who has at the time, he actually had the largest Facebook following of all people [00:02:00] across the entire world. And that was because so many young people followed him and considered him to be a mentor. So his message to young people to say, agri-food is a sexy opportunity, this is a lucrative opportunity, and a place where you can reinvent what food systems could look like was really exciting.
And so I was involved in creating that platform, that narrative, and that space for people to connect.
Jacob: Tell me about your journey to get to here, like why food and climate, like what sort of pivoted you towards that?
Lorin: When I graduated from my undergraduate degree, I just wanted to be of service, and at the time, I think one in eight people in the world were malnourished, and it seemed to me this horrific reality.
And so I decided to go into food security, I decided to go into the humanitarian space. Working with USAID at the time, the Office of Food for Peace, and really taking on the question of how do we [00:03:00] address food security through a development lens from, through a humanitarian lens. And as I worked with USAID and then I, as I worked with Save the Children in Uganda, based in various parts of rural Uganda, I felt that we needed to look at this more systemically.
We needed to bring a systems approach to the question of food security. We need to look at it much more holistically to touch on nutrition, to touch on climate, to touch on issues of equity. We needed to be looking far beyond the next season or the next year. And we needed to look far beyond the sector that we were operating in.
We needed especially to bridge into the private sector and into capital markets. And so I decided to start focusing on public-private collaboration. I went to graduate school for that at the Kennedy School at Harvard Kennedy School and really sought to marry the question of public-private partnerships for wicked problems in the food and climate space, and then took that into the World Economic Forum where, as I [00:04:00] mentioned I ended up leading our, our food systems collaboration work.
And at the time was still so exceptionally excited about food and all that it meant and the urgency of the challenges related to food. And also increasingly as we all have been concerned about climate change and celebrating the links between food and climate and how many solutions at that intersection can solve challenges in both the food and climate space made me passionate about this intersection, and I left the World Economic Forum to start my firm, FutureTable.
Jacob: What are some misnomers or, like, paradigm shifts that you wish people could have around that topic?
Lorin: The impact of animal protein on our climate systems. Especially if you go towards beef the methane emissions of cattle, but in general, just the amount of calories of feed that we need to put into any animal that we then slaughter and transport through a cold chain and then, and then eat.[00:05:00]
I am not a vegetarian myself. I have decided to eat a plant-forward diet. And I think that many people feel that to have a climate. A positive climate impact, we need to all be plant-based or all be vegan or something like this, and there’s this sort of polarized discussion about that. I think, in fact, we can be looking at a range of ways to be selective about what animal proteins we eat.
Ideally, also focusing on how they’re produced. And we can embrace what’s being referred to as the alternative protein space. The global demand for protein will continue to rise exponentially as the population rises by, let’s say, 2050. If we are serving all of that protein need with animal-based livestock, we will indeed continue to crash [00:06:00] climate systems.
But we don’t need everyone overnight to give up their favorite foods. We don’t need to be inappropriately trying to influence the food choices that people have. I think we need to create delicious and exciting alternatives and a conversation whereby people can be making choices that fit with their values and also their lifestyle.
Jacob: What does an ideal client look like for you?
Lorin: Let me give you a couple of examples. I worked with the United Nations, for instance, which recently held its first-ever Global Food Systems Summit. And they were an ideal client in the sense that they were wanting to crowd in examples of positive small and medium enterprises in the food space from across the world. To act as shining beacons for their own their own governments, their own people, and others in this sector.
So I had the opportunity on behalf of a broader team to run a global competition in the lead-up to the Food Systems [00:07:00] Summit that ultimately selected 50 of these small and medium enterprises. Profiled them, gathered them on a platform, again, by means of lifting up their story and their example, connecting them to others.
And that was so inspiring because it showcased the diversity of food systems solutions. Some of which involved technologies and new and exciting approaches. Some of which were actually very much rooted back in indigenous knowledge, indigenous systems. And so, I think that diversity and the place appropriateness, the context appropriateness of those solutions coming from where they were, were a lot of what made that initiative exciting.
So the United Nations is one example. I’ll take a second example of Refed an NGO that’s based in the U. S. that’s focused on food loss and waste. And I worked with them on collaboration strategies and, you know, how to best build an advisory council, how best to engage with their partners.
No part of any [00:08:00] system is held by any one actor, and it takes a collaboration across sectors. It takes an unusual amount of effort to collaborate and partner and that’s an art in and of itself. And so by working with this very admirable organization that is focused on an issue that many people call the dumbest problem in food because it is Nobody wants it.
Nobody wants food loss and waste, and it’s highly solvable, but it needs quite a bit of collaboration. I was able to help them build out again, a portfolio of partners and to strengthen those partnerships, formalize them, so that several organizations the sum of them could be more, the impact could be more than the sum of their parts.
Jacob: What is the biggest hurdle for you right now?
Lorin: I’m seeing an absence of conversation about the food space as a tremendous impact opportunity. And I’m surprised by that. And I’m worried about that. As someone who sees the tremendous [00:09:00] value, certainly in impact terms, but also in commercial terms, of investing in a future food.
And whether that be in areas of hype, like the alternate protein space or the personalized nutrition space, or areas that have a lot less commercial hype, but have a deep need for patient capital, like the regenerative agriculture space. I am surprised by the relative lack of conversation here about agricultural food systems.
Also because, as I mentioned before, one thing I’m celebrating here is the tremendous conversation around climate. And yet, if you look across climate change, agriculture, and land use change for agricultural purposes, represents about a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions, and quite a substantial amount of the emissions of methane, which is, of course, the most potent of those greenhouse gases.
So I think there’s a hurdle [00:10:00] in between the folks like me and like the folks I support who are pursuing positive changes in food systems that are difficult and costly and complex and the capital to support them.
Jacob: If you had a wish list of partners to bring to the table to join in that conversation and more directly.
Who would be on that list?
Lorin: I think we need all types of capital to come to the table. We need capital on the more catalytic side to be looking at the places where other capital is not interested. We need really small ticket sizes to reach small entrepreneurs in Africa and Asia and Latin America.
But we also need to be recognizing the commercial opportunity of creating, processing and storing and reusing or upcycling or recycling our food differently and those we can reinvent the way our food systems work. The way our food [00:11:00] system works right now was designed to optimize for calories and to optimize for efficiency and to optimize for essentially filling bellies, but it was not optimized for nutrition.
It was not optimized for equity. It was not optimized for preserving nature, and so we need to reinvent those food systems, and in some ways we are. And we need I would say, those who steward capital across all asset classes and in every corner of the sector.
Jacob: What are you most excited about looking to the future?
Lorin: I’m excited about the pace of change in certain sectors, like the energy sector. With respect to certain problems like climate that I think can be a model for us all. If I look at wind and solar and electric vehicles and battery technologies and the pace of change and the pace [00:12:00] of research and development and the continued maturation of those technologies. If I look at the policymaking, I look at the investment in those spaces. Some have had longer arcs than others, but they are all path-breaking now, and they are among the more comforting spaces to look if we’re wondering whether we could ever actually achieve a 1.5-degree future.
I think we need to model the kinds of investment, the kinds of audacious thinking, the kinds of public policy-making that is enabling in the food and agricultural sectors as well. And in other sectors of manufacturing and a whole range of other sectors to take those as some beacons of hope and also recognize that certainly in the climate crisis, we have so much more to do so urgently, and other sectors are being overlooked for their potential contribution or their potential solutions.[00:13:00]
Jacob: If the community wanted to get a hold of you, what’s the best way for them to find you online?
Lorin: You can find me at futuretable.org You can find me on LinkedIn. I would welcome any inquiries and would be delighted to collaborate with anyone interested in these topics.
Jacob: Well, thank you for sharing, and thank you for the good you’re doing in the world, and keep up the good work.
Lorin: Thanks for the opportunity. This is fun.
Jacob: Thank you. Bye.
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