Climate Conversations: A learning Journey worth scaling!
11th June 2024
SAI Platform’s highly successful Climate Conversations webinar series has come to a fitting conclusion, capturing the attention and enthusiasm of the entire Crops Working Group community. The final three sessions maintained the momentum and deepened the engagement from participants, resulting in valuable discussions between experts and community members on how to overcome challenges and propel climate strategies forward.
The 2024 series kicked off with a vital session on the financial and incentive mechanisms essential for scaling climate smart and regenerative agriculture. Understanding the context specific costs and solutions required for farmers to transition to regenerative practices is critical for businesses. A recent FoodDrinkEurope study estimates that the transition in Europe may cost €28-35 billion in the first year alone. However, the study also concludes that the cost will be closer to €50 billion if no action is taken. Effective financing mechanisms to support the transition include cost-sharing programmes, public funding, government grants, payment for environmental practices, as well as addressing both short-term working capital needs and long-term investments across supply chains.
The second instalment of the popular series provided a critical analysis of ‘carbon tunnel vision,’ offering a deep dive into why it is imperative to broaden climate action strategies beyond carbon metrics. Achieving a regenerative food system requires a focus far beyond climate mitigation and must incorporate climate resilience and livelihoods. Solutions must factor in the realities and needs of all farmers, small and large scale. To support this, new data-driven tools are emerging to analyse climate risks across global supply chains down to the local level. PepsiCo and CIAT have partnered to deliver an open access climate resilience tool that can quantify impacts, identify priority resilience practices, and inform collaborative strategies between companies and farmers.
Furthermore, a recent Mars, IDH, and Forum for the Future study highlighted the need for truly integrated programmes that holistically address the interconnected challenges of climate, livelihoods, and environmental sustainability across business functions, along with a more systemic change in how organisations are structured and incentivised to enable the change.
The final session offered a comprehensive exploration of data integration along the full value chain and how to engage suppliers and customers effectively. Aggregating consistent farm-level sustainability data from numerous suppliers and meeting the diverse asks of customers poses significant challenges for value chain actors. Aligning on customer asks through standardised frameworks and methodologies, transparency, scalable technology platforms, and strong supplier capability-building programmes, such as Supplier LOCT, are critical enablers.
“Moving from concepts to actions in the transformation towards regenerative agriculture requires innovation, fast learning, and collaboration and these key ingredients were at the centre of Climate Conversations. Participating in the series has helped us to look at the challenges from different perspectives, and to identify the alignment and collaboration opportunities to make this essential transition a reality.”
Alejandra Sarmiento Soler, Regenerative Agriculture Manager, ofi.
The 2024 sessions offered a vast array of knowledge, collaborative and forward-thinking solutions, leaving the community inspired and ready to drive further change. More detailed summaries and the recordings of the sessions can be accessed by members via My SAI Platform.
The Climate Conversations series, which resulted in ~15 hours of high value content featuring contributions from over 30 global experts and attracting 1200 attendees, has undoubtedly sparked a renewed passion and collective commitment to innovation and collaboration when developing climate smart strategies.
SAI Platform is excited to draw on what has been learnt from delivering the Climate Conversations webinar series, to bring a new and wider reaching learning journey to the community. This will centre on supporting members in their transition to regenerative agriculture, focusing on how to overcome common challenges related to adoption and scalability. Stay tuned for further details!
