Global food ecosystem: Louis Dreyfus Company names the key trends to watch

Look, we can see climate change and I would put that together with decarbonization, geopolitics, fragmentation of global trade as some of the key trends that we need to watch for. Without a doubt, you know climate change has had an impact over the years, but we do see an escalation of of this weather conditions that are caused by by climate change. We at LDC we are very well positioned to keep this essential supply chain of food and feed within this region flowing and make sure that we continue to solve this supply and demanding balances. But without a doubt, climate change is one of the key trends that we see affecting the industry now and going forward. So Ruben, you know, we were talking about this offline just a few seconds ago, right? A lot of AG production in this part of the world or the parts of the world where where Lou Dreyfus is involved is not by small holders, right? Little small guy, little, little little guy farmers, right. And they’re likely to be much more impacted by things like climate change. Yes. What? How are you helping them look? Without a doubt, I think you that’s a very good point. We have over 400 million smallholder farmers in Asia. That’s a huge number and accounting for close to 80% of food production. So I think it’s a challenge, but also a huge opportunity when you look at food security to engage with smallholder farmers in key developing countries and then help bridging that productivity gap, that quality gap that we that we see today. We have a lot of projects ongoing. I would like to highlight a project that we have in India that we work with close to 5000 farmers on regenerative cotton production. We have another project that is called the Stronger Coffee initiative. We’re working with farmers in India, Indonesia, Vietnam. We have about 20,000 farmers in the network, 40,000 metric tons of certified coffee that we produce and sell in the international markets. So these projects are extremely important not only to increase the income of farmers, but also by bringing new techniques, new sort of methods for them to grow crops in a more efficient and sustainable manner. So here’s sort of a tangential question, but I’m sure you’re thinking about this as well. And this potentially impacts, I think small lot holders, little guy farmers a lot more. That is the issue of government subsidies. A lot of governments are under budgetary pressure, fiscal pressure, right to rollback subsidies which is going to make little bit harder for these small farmers. How do you help, how do you help them help them manage that. It’s at all, look Martin, it has to be a collaborative approach. So we we engage with NGOs, financial institutions to to really see how we can have the biggest impact and that sometimes comes in the form of financing. But as I said, if we focus on improving the the income of those farmers and therefore improving the livelihoods of those farming communities, focus on productivity gains, focus on certifying those crops so they can get a sustainability premium on on top of what they already have. So these are ways that we can actually help, but it it we’re going to see a lot of geopolitical changes and tensions and as an industry we need to, we need to be prepared for that.