Food systems can capture emissions and advance in the fight against hunger, highlights JBS Global CEO in New York

Food systems – from production in the field to reaching the consumer – can play a decisive role in addressing humanity’s two greatest challenges: climate change and food security. This was the point emphasized by JBS Global CEO, Gilberto Tomazoni, on Thursday morning, the 19th, during a panel on unlocking the Brazil-United States potential in renewable energies. The Brazil-US Climate Impact Summit 2024, organized by Valor Econômico and Amcham Brasil, fostered discussions on the challenges and paths forward in the face of climate change, with a special focus on energy transition as the main solution.

“For the transformations that need to be made, resources are necessary, more specifically between $300 and $350 billion annually until 2030,” said the executive, who leads the B20’s Task Force on Food Systems and Sustainable Agriculture, the business arm of the G20, a group of the world’s 20 largest economies. As he emphasized, it is essential to prioritize correctly and place small producers at the center of the strategy. “Today, less than 4% of climate change mitigation investments go to agriculture,” he noted, citing data from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), a UN agency.

The executive stressed that the policy paper “Sustainable food systems and agriculture” – the result of work by 139 people from various geographies, sectors of the supply chain, and partners – presents three essential guidelines to be integrated into the private sector’s proposal for the G20 Leaders’ Summit, scheduled for November in Rio de Janeiro: increasing productivity in the field, improving credit access for rural producers, and strengthening the multilateral trade system.

Alongside JBS’s Global CEO, other participants in the panel “Unlocking the Brazil-US potential in renewable energies” included: Barry Glickman, President of Honeywell’s Sustainable Technologies and Solutions Division; Paula Kovarsky Rotta, Vice President of Strategy at Raízen; Luisa Palácios, Senior Researcher at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy; and Abrão Neto, CEO of Amcham Brasil. The panel was moderated by Francisco Goes, head of the Valor Econômico office in Rio de Janeiro.

• Climate change
• Energy Transition
• ESG
• Food Security
• Food systems