Food Security and Resilience – Peaceinvest at GrainCom2024
Yusuf Merchant, Vice President and Head of Financial Structuring, recently attended GrainCom to showcase how Peaceinvest is contributing to the future of agriculture.
Last week, GrainCom held a three-day event (May 14-16, 2024) bringing together agri-business experts to discuss the future of the grain industry. Yusuf Merchant was invited to deliver a presentation on Peaceinvest’s financial products and projects that sustain food security on a global scale.
Yusuf’s presentation, “Food Security and Resilience: Grain Storage, Pricing, and Convenience Yield in the Context of Geopolitics, Climate Change, and Catastrophe Risk” emphasized the urgent need to shift the financial paradigm as it stands, to one that is equipped to tackle the growing food insecurity crisis. The reason why, as Yusuf stated, is because not doing so is costing countries dearly: 20% of income for low-and middle-income countries, $3 trillion a year environmental costs, and $11 trillion in costs related to health.
The key solutions put forth include building more robust food storage facilities in African countries alongside production and crop yield measures to provide adequate insurance policy. Africa, with 24% of the global agricultural land, can become the world’s breadbasket, but faces the gravest levels of food insecurity.
Africa, with 24% of the global agricultural land, can become the world’s breadbasket, but faces the gravest levels of food insecurity.
The market favors this solution, since past experiences in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Oman prove that increasing storage capacity has directly translated into greater food security.
Equally important is the products which newly developed storage containers will hold. By 2050, 50 to 70% more food will be required to feed a population of 10 billion people – or better, 50 to 70% more nutritious food will be required. Currently, the biggest bottleneck to food security is the lack of protein and other fundamental nutrients. Animal-based proteins and soy are water- and land-intensive, thus aggravating the impact of the agricultural sector on climate change. This translates to a high demand for green-positive plant-based products with satisfactory nutritional levels that in the future will need more investments.
To address these issues, Peaceinvest and its partners are facilitating the large-scale production of a “super water lentil” with 45% protein and the installment of state-of-the-art food storage silos in several African countries.
Peaceinvest’s initiatives and Yusuf’s participation in the 2024 GrainCom reflect the firm’s ongoing dedication to sharing our work with diverse actors who have a common goal of using finance to innovate food systems. Using Yusuf’s own words, by de-risking investments, Peaceinvest and partners can “capture the dividends from peaceful coexistence.”
Read more about Yusuf’s outlook on peace and food security here: Five Questions for Yusuf Merchant (commodityconversations.com).
