Our CEO, Patrick Holden, and Executive Director, Adele Jones, reflect on their time at New York Climate Week, sharing some of the impactful conversations they had, what’s now needed to scale truly regenerative farming systems and why the SFT is uniquely placed to ‘speak truth to power’ in spaces like this.

Patrick

For the second time, I’m in New York for Climate Week, an annual event bringing together people from corporate, environmental and political worlds. It offers a unique opportunity to meet many in a short period, all in one place.

I’ve been to New York several times, the first being in December 1970 when I stayed with my cousin Joey, then a student at Barnard College. I remember eating BLT sandwiches for the first time and climbing the Empire State Building, then the tallest in the world. Walking through the city today still brings back memories of that trip, fresh even after 54 years.

A key reason for my visit is my involvement in the Sustainable Markets Initiative (SMI), set up by King Charles III (then Prince of Wales) in 2020. The SMI aims to unite CEOs across a wide number of sectors to address climate change, nature loss and food insecurity.

Now four years on, the SMI has over 20 CEO-led Task Forces tackling diverse challenges. I lead the task force on measuring land use sustainability, predominantly using the Global Farm Metric, a harmonised framework for measuring the climate, nature and social impacts of farming systems.

Through the SMI, I’ve connected with a wide range of leaders from industries such as food, banking, energy and asset management. Five years ago, I couldn’t have imagined working alongside such influential figures, but thanks to the initiative, I have, and it’s remarkable.

What has struck me is the shared humanity of these CEOs. Like all of us, they face personal struggles – existential fears, the risk of losing their jobs, and uncertainty about how to solve the issues we’re all grappling with. They genuinely want to do good, but they are caught between shareholder demands for profit and the need for pre-competitive collaboration on sustainability.

“We’re in a unique position to speak truth to power – honestly, but with respect and understanding of the challenges businesses face in sourcing more sustainable products without losing market share.”

As Ken Wilson of The Christensen Fund once said, “It’s hard to keep the frogs in the wheelbarrow.” It’s incredibly difficult for companies – especially those built on competition – to act in a pre-competitive spirit that requires trust, love and openness. But progress is being made, driven by the realisation that we face existential threats.

At a panel I attended at Goals House during Climate Week, the moderator – a sustainability head at CNN – surprised the audience by mentioning that the fertility of the Great Plains was built by bison and could be restored by grazing cattle using holistic methods. He then asked representatives from Cargill and Nestlé what they thought.

It seemed that neither company had seriously considered reintegrating livestock into their farming rotations. During the discussion, I suggested they need to rethink this, not least because continuous commodity cropping won’t sequester enough carbon to meet their Scope 3 emission targets.

This is just one example of the type of intervention we, at the Sustainable Food Trust, can make at events like Climate Week. We bring deep practical knowledge to discussions about sustainable food systems, especially when many attendees, including those from NGOs, are disconnected from the realities of agriculture. We’re in a unique position to speak truth to power – honestly, but with respect and understanding of the challenges businesses face in sourcing more sustainable products without losing market share.

I am excited to see the potential of the SFT’s contribution when it comes to influencing others and creating the conditions for scaling truly regenerative farming systems. And I think being in New York for these few days does make a difference. I look forward to seeing what further opportunities arise during my time in this extraordinary city.

Adele

As I head home at the end of another New York Climate Week, I find myself reflecting on the value of weeks like this. Is it worth the time and carbon involved in traveling across the globe to discuss the same challenges and initiatives with many of the same people, year on year? The question often runs through my mind. Yet, despite those doubts, I know that I am very fortunate, and spending time in person with the people and organisations we’re working with on major projects, as well as providing the opportunity to learn from new initiatives, continues to be absolutely vital.

Although as an organisation our work is global in scope, we don’t have offices all over the world, instead choosing to work with ‘fellow travellers’ and likeminded partner organisations who can provide the important local knowledge and context. Moments like this, therefore, allow us to connect with those friends and partners, and ensures that everything we do is relevant, both to the broader global conversations and to the specific local contexts where we’re having an influence. At the moment our work is focused in the UK, the US and Australia, as well as regions where we’re testing the harmonised metrics framework through Regen10, which includes countries in Africa, South America and Asia.

“Climate Week, the COPs and other such events provide incredibly valuable moments in time to reassess what we’re contributing to the wider conversation on accelerating the transition to sustainable, regenerative food and farming.”

Perhaps the biggest theme this past week has been ‘financing the regenerative agricultural transition’. It’s been encouraging to see so many different perspectives contributing to this conversation, as solving it will require an entirely new way of thinking about what we perceive as the ‘value to society’ that farming for nature, climate and health can bring. At the moment, we’re working closely with the Sustainable Markets Initiative (SMI) which is focusing a lot on bringing together a range of food companies, retailers and members of the finance community to co-evolve solutions to this challenge. However, I’ve learnt a lot this week about what’s happening within the ‘innovative’ impact investment world, which is extremely encouraging. Financial practices are emerging based on new models which can help drive the transition to regenerative farming in places like the US, Brazil and India. One of my follow-ups from Climate Week is to work on aligning new approaches to investment with corporate supply chains, ensuring they couple together for maximum impact.

This has reminded me that while it’s exciting and necessary to focus on future innovations and the next big project, we must ensure that the foundational work we’ve done is solid, authentic and rigorous. To take an example, the conversation around harmonised, holistic metrics has gained significant traction over recent years, with many people now assuming that the metrics are now agreed and being rolled out. While on the one hand this could be seen as a success, the reality is that we still have a fair way to go in getting final agreement on the high-level architecture of the metrics, and even more importantly, embedding this framework within the tools that all farmers, food companies and governments are using on a daily basis. With limited real-world application at this stage, our priority within the Global Farm Metric over the coming months, will be to turn this around.

My final thought is that we need to become better at storytelling. At times, it can feel like we’re engaging in lofty ‘50,000ft’ discussions which never really land on the ground. If we’re working with farmers on projects, they should be ones standing on these panels telling us how it’s impacted them and what more they need next. This is definitely missing from Climate Week – I hope that the SFT could play a role next year in supporting some of our farmer partners to ensure their expertise is heard on the global stage.

Climate Week, the COPs and other such events provide incredibly valuable moments in time to reassess what we’re contributing to the wider conversation on accelerating the transition to sustainable, regenerative food and farming. Delivering on revolutionary big ideas is not always straightforward and requires us as a team to walk the fine line between sticking to our guns and adapting to the ever-fluid global conversation. But I’m pleased to report, we’re very much in thick of it and look forward to continued work with our close allies to keep the conversation and activity moving forwards.

 

Featured image courtesy of Climate Group multimedia hub.