What I brought home from Climate Week NYC

Last month at Climate Week NYC, I had a realization.

First of all, I’m extremely selective about the conferences and events I attend, as I care about my own carbon footprint. And I, like many of my peers, have little patience left for big speeches and self-promoting corporate announcements.

What makes Climate Week valuable is the smaller roundtables and conversations where people can speak honestly about what is difficult, what is working and what we could - and should - do together.

I’ve often thought of Oterra as playing a small, but important part of the food value chain. We’re only one ingredient in the products our customers put on supermarket shelves, making it hard to be noticed by our customers, and harder still to make the case for investing in a more sustainable way of doing things.

But the conversations I had during the New York Climate Week made me see how familiar those challenges are to everyone along the value chain – big or small. Our customers are responding to retailers. Retailers are listening to what consumers want. And our suppliers and growers may feel, just as we sometimes do, that they are too small to move the system.

Working together

We are all waiting for a clear signal from the next link of the value chain. The trouble is, they may be waiting too. And in the meantime, the natural world that underpins this entire system is changing irreversibly.

The people growing our raw materials cannot be expected to carry the cost and risk of change. Nor can we pass it on to consumers already struggling with rising prices, ironically often driven by climate changes. Processors, ingredient suppliers, food brands, and retailers have to share the cost, the risk, the work, and the incredible opportunity of changing how food is produced.

I went in promising myself that I would come home with three tangible actions. Instead, I came home with one: partner, partner, partner.

An invitation for progress

For me, that means finding opportunities with customers and suppliers where we can act together and grow together. If we didn’t meet at Climate Week, or we’re not already in touch, consider this an invitation: tell us where you are trying to make progress, and let’s explore what we can drive together. At Oterra, we have many initiatives already underway and even more tangible ideas. But we cannot take them as far as they need to go in isolation.

Our new partnership with HowGood is one practical piece of this. It will help us provide customers with product carbon footprints and, over time, track whether work in specific supply chains is actually reducing emissions and other impacts. Better data gives us a way to identify opportunities together, invest in them, and claim what changes.

Food and agriculture sit at the heart of the climate challenge. Across the value chain, we have both the responsibility and the incredible opportunity to safeguard the natural resources our businesses depend on. And by working together, we can accelerate progress.