Investors are taking a growing interest in businesses supporting sustainable farming and agricultural techniques, according to investor and philanthropist Peter Rockefeller.
In a media statement promoting the upcoming AIM Summit in Geneva, the managing director of Brock Capital Group, said investors are seeking opportunities in businesses involved in the eradication of hunger – the second of the UN’s sustainable development goals.
“As the world’s population continues to surge it becomes ever more pressing to increase the production of healthy foods using Earth-friendly farming methods that can be sustained into the future,” he said.
“This need is matched by opportunities for forward-thinking investors to deploy investment capital in ways that will simultaneously advance sustainability in agriculture and meet the need to feed additional millions, while generating real returns.”
In 2017, some 124m people, globally, required humanitarian assistance due to starvation, according to official figures from the United Nations Food Programme.
Fund managers and investors have been looking at the role that investment can play in resolving such crises, while making a return for investors, as the UN predicts that food shortages will increase in the coming years as the global population grows. UN projections state that the population will grow from 7.6 bn to around 10 bn by 2050.
Katherine Brown, head of sustainable and impact investing at the World Economic Forum, said: “The future of sustainable and impact investing is based on building industry coherence, and collaboration, to accelerate the evolution from the short-term investment mindset, to one that focuses on long-term investments and sustainable impact.”
