The Climate Change Memo We Fear is Here

A leaked memo from anonymous food industry insiders warns of an imminent collapse in global food systems. We dig into what's behind the alarm—and why it might be agriculture's version of Big Oil’s climate denial. This may be a tipping point we’ve already passed.

Transcript

Good morning, good afternoon or evening, whatever it is where you happen to find yourself today, I hope you’re doing amazing. 

I’m Dave and thank you so much for joining me today on Running My Mouth Off About Climate Change and today, we’re going to switch things up a little bit. 

Last week I said that we were going to look at some technologies that were being considered to combat climate change this week, specifically in the stratosphere, and we’ll get to that hopefully next week. But I ran across something that, honestly, I think it’s kind of a big deal, and currently it’s not getting a lot of press and it has to do with tipping points. 

We talked about tipping points for the last few weeks and today, we’re going to talk about one of these tipping points that we may have just hit. 

Starting off though, keep in mind that, once we recognize a tipping point, once we see it starting to rear its ugly head, it’s already too late to do something about. It’s not a thing that has a course that we can change in ten or twenty years. It’s here, and it’s going to get worse.

And honestly, this is one that I’m kind of having a hard time accepting. My fear is that, as a human race, we may have just officially entered a whole new reality. 

Here it is. 

An anonymous memo was sent to the UK financial markets from a group of food agricultural industry insiders calling themselves "Inside Track x Food."

Inside Track x Food is an anonymous group, which sounds a little cloak and dagger, but their claim is that the group is made up of a bunch of senior executives for major food producers, manufacturers, and retailers in the UK, and, at this point, they’re basically sounding an alarm that few seem to be taking seriously enough. And I thought this was worth unpacking today because it affects us all - from the food that we eat to where we might want to put our investment dollars.

Inside Track x Food, again, is anonymous, we don’t know exactly who these people are. And on the surface, in my mind at least, it brings up a question of credibility, but thinking about it…if you decide to become a whistleblower, and you decide to be public about it, your career is done, it’s basically  over. Imagine interviewing  for a job after that, “Ya, I handed out inside info from my last company and they lost billions because of it, but hey, I’m an amazing worker, trust me!” Ya, suffice to say, I can understand the whole anonymous thing. 

Anyway, this group of industry insiders though, is warning about what they're calling an "interconnected set of crises" that threatens food security like nothing we've ever seen before. And they're not just talking about far-off problems, things that will happen in the future; they're saying this is an "imminent" threat.

They're seeing, very serious issues with things like agricultural yields, quality of produce, and supply chains in key growing regions around the world. And we're not just talking about exotic specialty items - these are regions that supply staple foods to the UK and pretty much all of the developed world. Most people don't understand, we don’t realize exactly how globally interconnected our food system has become, and how vulnerable that makes us when food security starts to become an issue.

This memo though, and why we should pay attention to it, beyond the obvious reasons,  is because again it's coming from inside the industry itself. It’s not coming from scientists or environmental groups that can easily dismissed as alarmists. These are people who see the day-to-day realities of what's happening to our food systems.

They go on to give some concrete examples that really bring this home. I believe that it was last year, two years ago rather in 2023, when the UK had shortages of, we’ll just say salad items, things like tomatoes, and broccoli. That was directly connected to a drought that happened in Spain. And again, we’ve seen similar disruptions with things like cocoa in Ghana, (hint: chocolate) coffee in Brazil, and sunflower oil in places like Russia and Argentina. 

The memo points the finger at these things specifically though: degrading soil health, water availability issues, and extreme weather events as interconnected problems that are already having impacts on us commercially.

Now, when talking about soil health, we need to look at the use of fertilizers. 

There’s a phrase that I heard from a guy named Cornelius, who makes compost for a living, and it goes like this: “you feed the soil, not the plant.” 

Synthetic fertilizers are great for making things grow really fast but, long term, the constant turning of the soil, and the  reliance on these synthetic fertilizers, take a huge toll on the soil’s ability to do its job — to feed the plant. What we’re seeing now is that some of these soils are starting to become sterile, they are completely losing their ability to feed plants, and that’s a huge problem, for a lot of reasons. 

Here's where it gets really interesting though. The insiders claim that food companies know about these risks but aren't fully accepting how severe these problems are. And they're definitely not being transparent with their investors about it.

They describe company mitigation strategies as "wishful" rather than realistic. For example, businesses will tell us they're going to shift to alternative ingredients or move to different sourcing regions - but they don't actually analyze whether those alternatives are viable at scale.

The memo specifically calls out, that food manufacturers who rely on single crops from some of these threatened regions, face the biggest commercial risks. So, if you’re sourcing something like coffee only from a place like Sumatra, which has seen a dramatic drop in production lately, you’re gonna be in trouble. And the retailers will feel this as well when they simply can't stock certain products. And then we feel the pinch as consumers, in both price and availability. 

We’re currently seeing huge food security issues in places like South Sudan, Pakistan, Madagascar, and well, a lot of other places. And it’s not just the heat — it’s drought, it’s inconsistent rainfall. And, when I say inconsistent rainfall, its rain that’s coming all at once, which causes floods that wash away that topsoil, as opposed to rain that’s more spread out over the year like it normally comes in. A lot of things are preventing us from, growing food now. 

What's especially troubling though, is their claim that investors and board members are being given a "false confidence" through environmental risk reports that don’t, reflect, actual, risk levels. In short, they’re saying there's a lot of greenwashing that’s going on.

The authors don’t just present this doom and gloom scenario though - they offer some concrete suggestions, some viable steps to follow. What they're not saying is "sell all your food company stocks" or anything drastic like that. Instead, they're advocating for investors to get more actively involved, with these companies to help secure the future of the food industry. Meaning, to help food keep flowing to our tables, and that’s kind of a big deal, right?

Their desire in all of this, what they’d love to see is investors really digging in deeper and staring to challenge the food companies on their climate plans. Like, don't just nod when a company says "Oh, we'll just, source from somewhere else if Spain dries up.” Ask them to prove that these alternative regions will actually be viable long-term, that they make sense. The memo also specifically suggests that investors should be very intentional in dissecting these sourcing plans to see if the economics actually line up. For example, are these alternative ingredients available at the scale that they’re needed? Can these new growing regions actually be as productive as we need them to be? 

Just looking at it from the outside? I think if there were regions that could have already been exploited? I’m guessing they would have been by now. Again that’s just a guess and I’m open to the fact that I might be a little biased here. 

But, and more importantly, they recommend bringing in independent third-party experts who actually understand the science behind climate change, and its relationship with agriculture, to verify these claims, as opposed to again, simply taking the company's word for it. It's all about adding that extra layer of actual accountability. Accountability, what a concept.   

They're also calling for serious involvement on the part of governments, collectively. 

Remember during the height of COVID, how governments pulled together these emergency task forces, with experts from a lot different sectors? That's exactly what they're suggesting should happen now with food security. They want to see a similar urgency, they want to see a similar response, where the government brings together diverse groups – not just big food companies, but farmers, local growers, agricultural scientists, climate experts, along with local authorities. 

The idea is that this crisis, and they are using the word crisis, has become way too big for individual companies or countries to solve on their own. It needs a coordinated action across the entire food system, with again, government investment backing it up. And it's not just about emergency response as it was with COVID either; it's about creating a strategic framework for long-term food security in a changing climate. I think that comparison to COVID is pretty compelling – if we could mobilize that kind of collective expertise for a global pandemic, why can’t we do it for something as basic and as important as our ability to grow food?

We’ve already seen that there are certain things that we can do to adapt to climate change through things like GMO’s. And I know, GMO’s are a hot button topic for a lot of people, but we’ve seen things like varieties of corn that have been developed to allow farmers in Africa to actually grow corn where no corn was grown before. 

We covered this last week, China and Sweden together have also just developed some rice that puts out roughly 70% less methane than do more conventional varieties. And then there are things like watering technologies, weather forecasting models, farm design and, a lot more stuff. But coming together to create and implement, or honestly simply just to talk about to acknowledge the challenges that we’re seeing now, and doing a little bit of looking forward, well, it kinda makes sense, it’s one of those things that should happen, in an obvious kind of way. 

Again, what struck me most about this memo though, is that industry experts are joining the call, saying this could jeopardize "the very ability to produce food supply sustainably." That's not hyperbole - that's food professionals talking about what’s happening in their own industry.

One expert quoted in the article, "The idea of a soil and food systems collapse is real." And there's also kind of an interesting legal angle as well. Apparently, as climate regulations evolve, CEO’s and  board directors could potentially face legal proceedings if they're not taking these risks seriously. 

We, as a people, are becoming increasingly aware of the damage that corporations are doing to the environment and, evidence of this is presenting itself inside the legal system. 

In fact, I believe it was last week, the last week of April, that the State of Hawaii filed a lawsuit against the oil industry, and a few other people . And they’re seeking to recover some of the damages that it’s experienced as a result of sea level rise, storms and wildfires. Remember that one on Maui last year? Ya, pretty bad.

A little while ago, some documents from inside of some of these big oil companies were leaked, and they show that big oil, knew full well, what would happen if we kept doubling down on fossil fuels. And they reacted to this knowledge by launching a huge smear campaign, just an out and out hatchet job, against climate science as early as the 1970’s.  

They were very aware back then of the ramifications of continuing to use fossil fuels, There was at least on major study that had come out by then, the Manabe/Wetherald study in 1967, and they saw this as a threat to their business model, so, with the kind of deep pockets that only big oil has, compared to science that has nothing, completely discredited that science on a huge marketing campaign, and now they’re being sued many times over because of this. It’s been proven that they knew what would happen, and they still kept doing it. 

By the way, notice how now, big oil is trying to paint themselves to be the champions of green energy? 

I read another article in the Guardian recently that talked about some of this stuff and there’s one snippet that said,  “Of the 140 climate-washing cases reviewed between 2016 and 2023, 77 have officially concluded, 54 of which ended up with a ruling in favor of the claimant.” In other words, these companies are successfully being sued. 

And the bulk of the cases have, at this point, been against big oil. Considering this memo, we may be seeing this exact same thing happen in the agricultural industry in not too long. This memo is claiming that they have full knowledge of what’s happening, they know what they’re doing. But, like big oil, they’re glassing over it and it’s business as usual.  

But ya, that tipping point. 

Again, when we see them, it’s too late. It’s already here, and there’s not a lot that we can do about it for the time being. 

I really want to be wrong about this, and I want  these crop issues that we’re seeing, just to be due to weather anomalies that will even out in the next few years. Honestly though, looking at everything, I don’t see how that’s the case. 

Buckle up, it’s gonna be a wild ride! 

Again, I just kinda got stopped when I read, just the myriad of articles out there. Interestingly though, these articles were all in smaller publications but, do yourself a favor if you want to read this, Google Inside Track x Food and memo, and that’ll bring up more than enough info. I’ll actually link one of the articles in podcast description, because this stuff is huge. We’re talking about food security, once that becomes an issue, I don’t know how we don’t talk about that. Anyway, enough about that. 

So what’s up next? I think we’re going to dive back into the stratosphere, there’s company that I read about a few weeks ago in Florida who sells climate credits, and they were recently shut down by the EPA in the US for “polluting the stratosphere.” It kind of brings up an interesting question: Who actually owns the stratosphere? Who do we get permission from if we want to do stuff up there. There’s a lot of technology, a lot of ideas that we have about doing stuff up in the stratosphere that could make life better for us, but, who do we get permission from? 

Anyway, that’s what’s next. Again, I’m Dave and thank you so much for joining me today on Running My Mouth Off About Climate Change. I hope you have an amazing week!