Rama Variankaval:
J.P. Morgan Chase set up the Center for Carbon Transition to 1. define our own Paris alignment pathway, and 2. engage with our clients on their own transition to a lower carbon, more sustainable future. Companies across different economic sectors across the globe are working on a transition path. They're all at different points in that transition. We want to work with all of them, want to deploy our best strategic advice, our balance sheet, our connectivity to investors on behalf of our clients as they embark on this transition. We've talked specifically about food sustainability and food transition. Let's give a listen to Eric Oken who's a Global Chairman of the Investment Bank.
Erik Oken:
Food sustainability is basically generating food using methods at a productivity level that allows to provide food for the world's population. Why it's important is because it has major environmental issues. The way we produce food right now, it does not, from a sustainability basis, address many of the major crisises that we're going to have around emissions, around water and land usage, and about doing that in a democratic way that addresses food insecurity for the world's growing population.
In terms of achieving food sustainability where we are, I'll give you sort of a half-full half-empty. The half-full, the good news is that food sustainability and food transition is now a global issue that people are starting to focus on. The challenge, the half empty, is that the actual battle is quite big. If you look at population growth expectations and the amount of food we would need to provide using the existing systems, there are major issues around emissions, particularly as it relates to protein, issues around land, water usage, and particularly around waste. All of these things are accentuated by climate change.
It challenges really a couple of things in addressing food sustainability. One is inertia. The global food system knows it's need to change, but doesn't necessarily have the incentive to do it. Secondly, I think is really around the time horizon, around the type of investment that needs to be made to accomplish food transition. A lot of that time horizon is much longer than the average constituent or the average investor is willing to look at. And then lastly, any big problem like this we have, there is a challenge of coordinated action. If you have an issue that is global in nature, that it involves public and private, involves governments working together, city states all working in unison, getting them all to work together is critical.
Technology plays a very powerful role in food sustainability transition. Really it's one of the primary ways we can change the productivity profile of the existing system: making more food in a more efficient way and a less climate-destructive way. And that involves technology being deployed all through the up and midstream part of the food supply chain. So it's everything from cell-based meat, to monitoring systems, to novel farming structures, to digital marketplaces. Anywhere that we can apply technology in the food process to increase productivity and efficiency.
Number one, we need to make sure that there is enough public and private capital flowing to agricultural transition as it relates to food sustainability. Number two, we need to make sure that agricultural soft power, and particularly technology-based, is a core part of us foreign policy as we deal with other countries. Thirdly, we need to regain our position as a leader in research and development in the agricultural and particularly agtech sector. And then lastly, we need more coordination as we have historically around this issue between the government, between the private sector, between academia, the intelligent community, and all of the major stakeholders in that issue.
JPMorgan Chase can do a couple of very important things in helping to address the food sustainability issue. Number one is we have some of the most powerful relationships in the world in the entire food supply chain. Everyone from the producers, the agricultural companies, to the very end users in the community. Bringing them together around best ideas and the best practice is one very powerful thing we could do. Secondly is what we traditionally have done for the last 200 years, and that's providing strategic advice to people who are addressing this issue and raising capital in all of it forms.
