Zero Summit and Vidavo Ventures have partnered to launch the Turningpoint Alliance, a global initiative to decarbonize food systems. Over fifteen co-founding members, including food companies, crop and livestock farmers, tech innovation firms, and corporate buyers of carbon credits, have signed the Alliance’s pledge to build more sustainable food systems and work towards achieving the UN’s goal of net-zero emissions by 2050. This includes Bom Futuro, Coopercitrus, Locks, Minerva Foods, Scheffer, SLC, Open Ag Farm, BASF, and Embrapa.
The Turningpoint Alliance aims to accelerate the transformation required to achieve decarbonization and identify, advance, and increase investment in emerging technology innovations. Regenerative soil management practices, artificial intelligence, precision agriculture, farm electrification, and biological inputs are among the emerging technologies that can transform how we produce food and sequester more than 100 gigatons of CO2 over the next three decades. The Alliance’s CEO, Paula Pinto, expressed her confidence that by working together, the Alliance can reach a planetary turning point in the fight against climate change.
Decarbonizing Food Systems Is Urgent
Deloitte is collaborating with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to develop an AI-based early warning system to predict future deforestation risk using a wide range of geospatial data and satellite imagery. The goal is to promote healthy soil and sequester more carbon from the air, which would help lower emissions from agricultural land and impact climate change. Deloitte and its client have developed a portfolio of food products with a 25% lower footprint compared to the benchmark in the market. They aim to enable vertical integration and collaboration in the supply chain, expecting to see rapidly increasing levels of vertical integration in the food value chain in the next couple of years, driven explicitly by sustainability.
According to Deloitte, many decarbonization opportunities for food producers, processors, and consumers can be considered “low-hanging fruit” and do not necessarily have to drive costs for consumers up or drastically reduce margins for companies. Deloitte has a Future of Food platform with over 1500 participants who are motivated to contribute and support the transition to a more sustainable food system for the future. The company emphasizes that decarbonization is an essential topic on its agenda, and vertical integration could take many different forms, not just about retailers and food brands taking more control of the upstream value chain.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
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