According to Sylvain Charlebois, Professor at Dalhousie University, family businesses in the food industry – including smallholders, multinational agribusinesses and everything in between – are having to adapt quickly.
Openness to new ideas and collaboration with others might well be the deciding factor when it comes to sustainability. The full extent of climate change’s impact on food production and distribution is unknowable. As such, the ability to react well, implementing effective technologies or practices as soon as they appear – even if that means working with the competition – is an essential strategy going forward. Simply put, when it comes to climate change, we are all in it together.
Without the same technology and resources, developing nations farming coffee, vanilla and bananas are most at risk. In these cases, collaboration, according to Sylvain, is not just an effective strategy; it’s our responsibility. Those most affected will not only require external help in overcoming the symptoms of climate change but also assistance in meeting their environmental goals to ensure the problem does not get worse.
