Of all the many New Year 'lists' that have appeared over the past couple of weeks, one of the few that made me think of the bigger picture and avoided superficial marketing fads was from Portfolio 21 based in Portland, Oregon.
They produced a green investing 'top 10' guide for 2010 - Portfolio 21 manages a global mutual fund investing in green companies - so their investing advice does not apply directly to the food industry, but in my view is especially relevant to future risks facing food and beverage companies.
For example, they suggest going beyond looking at whether companies say they care for the environment, but look for the substance and relevance of what the company is doing. They write: "Greenwashing has no place in a company that is serious about its future". Much of the content of this blog reports on just this issue - how much or how little 'greenwashing' is going on in the food sector.
Portfolio 21 also cautions investors to pay attention to the company business model to ensure companies are adapting to gain competitive advantage within ecological constraints and as a result are they going beyond 'business as usual'. This is a key issue - in what way is the future of food about having to redefine and implement new business models or will it be a case of tweaking existing practices?
In food there is a real risk the 'tweakers' will become the long-term market losers. As Portfolio 21 say, as far as the ecological crisis is concerned the future is now. They remind us that ecological limits are not going to happen someday, they are happening right now. They write: "From an investment perspective, we cannot afford to be in denial or hope and wait for a technological solution to solve the ecological crisis".
With this in mind, it is interesting to question which food companies are really managing ecological risk and opportunity compared to those that seem more involved in damage limitation (or even denial).
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