1The procurement challenge for the food system Resilient, sustainable procurement practices are vital to ensure worldwide food production and supply can continue in the face of systemic challenges. For decades, the global food system has been a remarkable success story, delivering unprecedented efficiency, scale and innovation that has fed a growing world population while driving economic development and business growth. Today, the food system accounts for roughly 10% of global GDP and provides over 40% of jobs worldwide.3 But traditional procurement models were designed for a world with a stable climate, predictable costs and lower expectations for transparency across the supply chain. These foundations may no longer hold. The food system is facing overlapping pressures, including climate volatility, natural resource depletion, market disruptions, geopolitical tensions and changing consumer expectations. These pressures reflect not only external shocks but also the food system’s own environmental challenges. Industrialized agriculture has boosted productivity but also driven significant environmental impacts, contributing to climate change, biodiversity loss and resource depletion. Agrifood systems produce nearly 30% of global emissions,4 while agriculture drives over 90% of tropical deforestation5 and accounts for around 70% of global freshwater withdrawals.6 Degraded soils and reduced ecosystem resilience are heightening the vulnerabilities the sector faces. Scrutiny from certain governments, investors and consumers is intensifying, raising expectations for action. This dual exposure – both contributing to and affected by environmental decline – underscores why companies may want to evolve their procurement approaches. Against this backdrop, volatility stands out as the most compounding risk. Each degree of global temperature rise could cut crop yields by up to 20%.7 Rice yields alone may fall by 20% by 2050.8 Novel research estimates that the probability of simultaneous breadbasket failures is around 6% under today’s climate, rising sharply to about 40% at 1.5°C of sustained global warming (defined as a long-term average over roughly a decade) and 54% at 2°C.9 The world already temporarily exceeded the 1.5°C threshold in 2024, underscoring how close the planet is to breaching these more dangerous long-term thresholds.10 For the food industry, this new volatility could endanger core business performance. The old playbook, based on managing trade-offs across cost, quality and availability, may not guarantee reliable and affordable food supplies. This report proposes a procurement vision that recognizes resilience and sustainability, while ensuring continued availability at the right cost and quality (see Figure 1).1.1 A procurement vision for a new set of challenges Each degree of global temperature rise could cut crop yields by up to 20%. Rice yields alone may fall by 20% by 2050. Resilience and sustainability – definitions BOX 1 Resilience: The Association of Supply Chain Management defines supply chain resilience as “the ability of a network to anticipate, adapt to and recover from disruptions”.11 This paper focuses specifically on resilience to the increasing frequency and severity of impacts on the food value chain from rising temperatures, floods and droughts, pests, degradation of soils and other natural assets, and many other related supply chain impacts. Sustainability: Building on the definition from MIT Sloan, this paper defines sustainability as reducing the negative environmental and social impacts of the food value chain and increasing the positive benefits, to bring them within planetary boundaries and social thresholds.12 First Movers Coalition for Food: CEO Lessons for the Future of Food Procurement 5

First Movers Coalition for Food 2026