Learn more about Lifelines for food

More than 7 billion people rely on global trade for the food they consume. In 2019 alone, 2.7 trillion tons were traded on 14,800 routes connecting 240 countries and territories. And while the headlines focus on global disruptions such as the pandemic and trade wars, exposure remains high, disruptions are frequent, and consequences are unclear at the outset.

Uncertainty in the face of disruptions is a topic manifest to all, yet not discussed because of the lack of linguistic tools, a vocabulary, and a mindset to make that conversation possible. To inspire a dialogue about a world we do not understand but insist on predicting, we need a third language.

Business and government discourse are rich with a language deterministic in nature, built with trust in outcomes sized with clear assumptions to implement plans in a predictable world—our first language.

The second is a language of reassurance, probabilistic in nature, built around sizing likely outcomes and hedging consequences to tell shareholders and citizens they are safe.

The third language frames an everyday conversation about many possible futures with no known probabilities: a mindset to acknowledge that we simply don’t know and that “winging it” can be survival.

At the core of our discourse is the vulnerability of the global food value chain across its multiple tiers. Lifelines is our war-gaming coach, designed to engage your teams in modeling global food value chain disruptions and assessing their impact on three core areas of your exposure:

Develop a food crisis readiness capability. This is the inception of an institutional capability to navigate shocks. Whether the imperative is ensuring food security or gaining a competitive advantage in a new landscape, there needs to be an alternate governance and capabilities at the ready.

Inform long-term foreign policy and agri-food investment decisions. Lifelines traces the origin of water embedded in food, exposing dependencies on depleting aquifers that inform long-term foreign policy decisions and validate agri-food investment plans.

Shift the paradigm to global emissions ROI. To accelerate a positive turn in the vital signs of the environment, Lifelines traces the CO₂ emissions footprint to target investments in reducing carbon emissions where they have the biggest impact.

Learn more about Lifelines for water

Food is migrating across geographies, to find water. But water sources are also shifting: Half the water we use to irrigate crops is depleting freshwater stocks unsustainably, pushing food production to migrate further afield into regions where agriculture is rain-fed. But climate change is making rainwater availability more unpredictable, putting pressure on groundwater reserves for the future of our harvests. But more than 60% of groundwater is depleting 42 times faster than it regenerates: Every year, more than 240 billion tons of non-renewable groundwater are used to irrigate crops, a net loss that would take the Ganges River two months to refill.

Hydro diplomacy is on the rise including investments abroad to secure groundwater sources. Lifelines provides a country-level scan along the four tiers of the entire food value chain—fertilizers to crops, crops to feed, feed to meat, meat to dish— exploring the journey made by each commodity, to quantify and locate the origin and dependency on aquifers.