Saving the planet means saving ourselves – and the time for it is now

If we want to feed the future, we need to move away from our current linear food production model, said business leader and campaigner, author and former CEO of Unilever Paul Polman. As #AgriVision 2023 keynote speaker, Polman called for a shift in mindset toward a regenerative, purposeful and collaborative production model that can help us future-proof proteins. He urged leaders to take responsibility for their total impact on the planet, operate for the long term, and forge the broader partnerships we need to change the system and create a future where both humans and the planet thrive, sharing insights from his book, Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive By Giving More Than They Take.          

On the verge of tipping points

According to Polman, we’re at a point where the Earth’s capacity to absorb our unsustainable behaviour – particularly carbon emissions and waste – is coming to an end. Despite global efforts to reduce our carbon footprint, emissions are up 10% this decade when they should be down 45%. “The world has been incredibly flexible and increased its capacity to absorb our CO2 emissions, but this capacity has run out. We are very close to negative tipping points,” he warned.

Nearly a decade ago, Polman helped develop the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. Since the onset of COVID-19, there has been a slowdown in progress on these goals, with only 12% on target today and the world experiencing increases in poverty, inequality and climate change. Polman said that while many of us might not realise the seriousness because we’re in a relative comfort zone, there are currently one billion people going to bed hungry and 100 million climate refugees, a number that could swell to one billion by 2030. “We are literally playing with the future of humanity,” he said.

Polman called on delegates to respond with speed and scale to decarbonise our global economies and address these inequalities. “The timeframe we have is very short and the scale of the change we need to make is greater than at any time in history,” said Paul. He said while people often talk about saving the planet, it's actually humans who need to be saved. With about a million species at the point of extinction, he asks, “When is it our turn?”

Our direction is good but more speed is needed

“The good news is things are moving,” said Paul. “People understand the devastating effects of climate change.” He sees governments moving in the right direction, with three times more climate-change related legislation enacted in the last decade than in the previous one. And companies are moving too, with more setting science-based targets and committing to become net zero.

The agriculture industry is also making progress, though he said we’re not moving fast enough. “The notion that food and land use systems are an integral part of the solution is now centre of the discussions on climate change, and rightfully so.”

He said the biggest change we’re seeing is in attitudes among employees, who only want to work for companies that have a higher purpose. “A recent study we did shows that about 50% are ready to quit if the companies don't deliver on what they promised and 30% have already actively done so.”

Bottom line: it's about not direction anymore, it's about speed and scale. He said the danger of these successes is a false sense of complacency. “I would argue that despite this enormous progress, it is actually more urgent to push faster than what we did before.”

Our industry can make a big difference

Polman said collaboration across the farming and food sector can make a meaningful difference in supporting a thriving world. Agriculture contributes about 30% of greenhouse gas emissions in its human-centric efforts to supply food as a basic human right. “The beauty of it is that we can take action to be 30% of the solution and we have a faster way to get there compared to the fossil fuel industry,” noted Polman.

Failure to act will have a rising cost

Polman said that, for companies, being less bad simply isn’t good enough anymore. “The only way to work your business model longer term is to think restorative, reparative, regenerative. And that is what we call net positive. And the cost of not acting has become significantly higher than the cost of acting.”

He pointed to ESG funds outperforming non-ESG funds over the long term. And for the agriculture industry, he estimated that while the investments required to shift toward regenerative models may amount to about $150-200 billion annually, the potential payoff is much larger. He said studies suggest these investments may yield a $4 trillion positive impact. “For every dollar invested, you get a $15 return, if you do it right.”

Polman said the window is quickly closing on the opportunity to curb emissions and keep the earth’s temperature within 1.5C◦ of pre-industrial levels. If we stay on our current trajectory, we will incur costs of around $178 trillion to our global GDP in 2070. But if we are able to slow the pace to 1.5C◦ degrees above preindustrial levels, the economic benefit could total a whopping $43 trillion. 

Changing mindsets: restorative, reparative, regenerative

Polman said that to feed the future, we need to move from trying to make the agriculture value chain more resilient to actually making it regenerative. “The future is a biodiversity economy – a change from an output economy to an impact economy.”

Polman said a net positive company takes responsibility for its total impact in the world. “In the agriculture sector, only 5% of companies make commitments regarding their scope 3 emissions, yet 85% of all emissions are in this category. It’s great to make scope one and two emissions commitments, but frankly it doesn’t mean anything. You cannot outsource your value chain and also outsource your responsibilities.”

Polman said net positive businesses also focus on operating for the long term. And most importantly, they forge broader partnerships so they can work on the systems changes that are needed. “I've always said we should not compete on the future of humanity. In most cases it's actually better to make your whole value chain sustainable – it saves you 9 to 16%.”

Polman talks about how important leadership will be in driving this transformation. “You cannot become a sustainable company if you are not sustainable yourself. You cannot become a purpose-driven company if you are not purposeful yourself.”

Ultimately, he said, two questions that he poses in the book sum up what we should be asking ourselves: “How do you profit from solving the world's problems, not creating the world's problems? And finally, is the world better off because your company is in it?” 

Polman said that the human-centric factor in moving towards a regenerative system will require leadership from the heart. “We need to bring humanity back to business. The biggest tragedy about climate change discussions is that we’ve made it a scientific not a human discussion. That’s why I like food – it brings us back to humans.” He said while we need profits, we should start not with shareholders, but with the people we serve. “If we don’t put people central, we’ll never get there.”

At AgriVision 2023, food futurologist Dr. Morgaine Gaye talked about the future of food, which is inextricably linked to other trends in society, from culture to taste to fashion. She said one word encapsulates where we’ve been in the last couple of years and where we’re going in the future: belongings.

Dr. Gaye said belongings worked on many different levels. “First, we have too many belongings, things we don’t need and that will be increasingly hard to get rid of. Next, we really want to belong – that became apparent during the pandemic, where we started to understand the power of the interconnectedness with friends and family. And we also have a longing, both for this perfect time in the past, but also for a better future, perhaps something that we can now co-create.” And finally, being: “it’s become super important to have time to just be, to spend time with ourselves.” Dr. Gaye talked about how this word will permeate trends over the next seven years.

She said that 2023 is the first opportunity we’ve had to stop and look back at what happened in 2020, and there will be more revelations based on that. “But 2023 will also bring more disruption; 2026 is when we’ll first start to have a bit of calm stability.” She said this means now is not the time to sit back and wait, but to do what we can to create the future we want to live in.

Some of the trends Dr. Gaye predicts will be important in coming years include:

• Insecurity: We’re seeing this, especially in the younger generations, and it is revealed in massive rebellion and public uprising. “We, as a society, have to let go of old paradigms we've been attached to for many generations, about having the same or better than our neighbours, a job, a spouse, a car, a bigger house. We're going to start seeing people making different choices for a happier, perhaps better and more prosperous life and world,” said Dr. Gaye.
• Comfort: This is manifesting in an era of fluffy, comforting softness across brands, from fashion to food and beyond. Think puffy, soft outerwear or the Japanese pancakes Dr. Gaye says, “are like a hug in the mouth. People are yearning for softness, after spending the last few years in very hard environments.”
• Sustainability: “We’re not in a sustainable time. We have to do something radical and different.” She said people have started to create tribes with their food preferences – such as veganism – and are interested in products with purpose.
• Nature: “Since COVID, when going for a walk felt like a luxury, people want to feel that connection with nature all the time.” She sees this in interiors, design and food – bringing nature inside through indoor countertop gardens and dinnerware made with natural, imperfect shapes. Or submersing ourselves in nature by eating alfresco or paying more to glamp on a rooftop than sleep in a hotel room. Dr. Gaye said we will increasingly understand the inherent intelligence within all of nature and develop a much more holistic idea of the world.
• Texture: This is related to the emphasis on nature and is coming through in food and design – for example, using mycelium (mushroom fibres) for building materials and food.
• Water: Water will be one of the biggest commodities going forward. She predicts people will inquire more about what’s in our water and there will be places where we can get perfectly pure water. And the way we drink water will change; what we do with plastic bottles and how to use less water, for example by putting air in our water through specially made faucets.
• Packaging: “We’ll make vegetable inks as stamps or use the bark from wood-making to create packaging, use cactus to make leather, or recycle and reuse everything from coffee to orange peels.”
• Maximalism: This is related to the excess of “stuff” we all have – and we can see it in design and clothing, where lots of different, vibrant, colourful elements are being put together. “Everyone’s got too much stuff; we can’t avoid it, so let’s see it. It’s not about perfection, it’s about reality,” she said.
• Air: The conversation in 2020 was about air and it continues to be important. In the food industry, air retexturises food and enables manufacturers to use fewer products (think cheese puffs). “We can get creative, using technology and 3D printing to create beautiful shapes and play with food.” She said protein can be made anywhere, just from air – and Silicon Valley is investing in this possibility.
• Kindness: “One of the things we’re going to embrace more than anything is the new commodity of kindness.” She said it will be how governments, organisations and people will be judged. “There is a decline in democracy in every single country in the world. And what we will see from that is this rise of community, of people coming together, over competition.”
• Humanity: Dr. Gaye said we’ll have many conversations about what it means to be human, particularly with the rise of technology and AI, and understand the gut microbiome, the power of the human mind and our DNA more than ever. “This will change everything, how we interact and navigate our lives. We’ll want to be more mobile and live more flexibly, have more time to pause and reflect, and understand our purpose on the planet in a very different way.”

Dr. Gaye summed it up by reiterating that the coming years will be all about belonging. “It's about being. It's about a longing for a future, a different future, and also about belongings and what we do with those. Your good old days are still ahead of you. May you have many of them.”