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Sam Webster, director of growth and innovation at HowGood, explores how the food and beverage industry can build systems that last in a world with an ever-changing climate, challenging supply chains and impacting prices for consumers across the globe.

Over the past 50 years, the number of natural disasters has increased fivefold. As the temperature rises, increasing moisture leads to heavier rainfall, and an ever-revolving cycle of extreme weather events, such as wildfires and droughts, is replaced by torrential rain and flooding. These disruptions have hit the agriculture industry the hardest, threatening food security, putting farmers’ livelihoods at risk and permanently disrupting global supply chains.

To adapt, the sector must evolve and execute quickly. The solutions already exist, but scaling them, particularly the transition to regenerative agriculture, requires coordinated action across farming practices, technology, water management and supportive government policies and finance.

Step one: Regenerative farming practices

Approximately 33% of the world’s soil is moderately to severely degraded. This is due to a myriad of reasons, including monoculture, overgrazing, deforestation and pollution, as well as climate change impacts such as wind and water erosion, salinisation and drought.

The key framework for climate-resilient food production is regenerative agriculture. This holistic approach is designed to mitigate these issues by focusing on soil health, ensuring increased fertility, water retention and overall productivity. Farmers have a variety of options to consider under this umbrella: Crop diversification, no-till farming, cover crops, agroforestry, water management techniques and integrated pest management. Incorporating these regenerative practices has infinite benefits that feed into farm and community resilience to change by empowering farmers to contribute to restoring ecosystems, cutting costs, strengthening farmer skills, securing diverse and nutritious food supplies and delivering ecological, economic, social, nutritional and energy gains.

Step two: Climate-smart technology

Lifestyles are shifting across the globe as a result of worldwide shifts that, in turn, put the agri-food sector under increased pressure. That’s why farmers and the wider industry are turning to digital agriculture (DA), or 'smart farming,' to boost efficiency, gain foresight against climate threats and reduce risk.

Using data-driven approaches that integrate tools like sensors, drones, GPS, artificial intelligence and satellite imagery to monitor, analyse and manage factors such as soil conditions, weather and crop health is critical for farmers today. This technology is vital for the effective implementation and measurement of regenerative practices.

One proven technology is long-range weather forecasting. In fact, the University of Chicago conducted a study that provided farmers in India with important information about the next growing season, which helped them make more informed decisions around whether to plant at all, how much to plant, what to plant and how to adjust crop choices.

Step three: Water management

Approximately 70% of the world's water is used for agriculture, yet it is constantly competing with domestic, industrial and environmental uses for a limited water supply. Moreover, unsustainable farming also erodes wetlands, which agriculture depends on for water regulation, soil fertility, carbon storage and biodiversity.

Climate change is intensifying water scarcity through longer droughts, erratic rainfall and shrinking freshwater supplies. Sufficient water of adequate quality, quantity and stability is a requirement for building agricultural systems. Smarter water management strategies, a core tenet of regenerative agriculture, such as drip irrigation, rainwater harvesting and wastewater recycling, can reduce risk and extend resources.

Step four: Government policies and finance

The global cost of climate change damage is estimated to be between $1.7 trillion and $3.1 trillion per year by 2050. Farmers cannot shoulder the costs of adapting to climate change on their own; they need supportive government policies backed by both public and private funding to facilitate the transition to systems like regenerative agriculture.

Sectors heavily dependent on public investment, such as agriculture, tend to be significantly underinvested. However, this differs greatly between developed and developing countries, the latter of which need adaptation investments most. By instating reliable regulations, enforceable laws and secure property rights, a stable investment environment is created, enabling private capital to better support these costs and the transition to sustainable practices long-term.

The challenge of building resilient agricultural systems is one of humanity’s most pressing issues. While the path forward for sustainable agriculture is multifaceted, the industry has the tools, the urgency is there, and now the collective must execute.

The broad adoption of regenerative agriculture, including practices that restore soil health and diversify production, leveraging climate-smart technology to provide data-driven foresight, implementing smarter water management strategies to preserve limited resources and securing supportive government policies and finance accelerate the global food system’s ability to move beyond mere survival.

These integrated solutions are essential not just for protecting farmer livelihoods and food security but for creating an ecologically, economically and socially robust future that can withstand and thrive in the face of uncertainty. The future of the world’s food supply depends on choices made today, and the cost of inaction far exceeds the investment required now.