Listen up!
With all the noise, we may overhear the whistles which may herald a pervasive change in our life. Not how we feel about life. But how we live it.
One such whistle was blown last week: By executives from leading UK food companies. A confidential memo from inside the UK’s largest food companies has delivered a stark warning to business leaders: the global food system is teetering on the brink. In a rare act of corporate whistleblowing, senior executives representing over half of Britain’s food market share declared that “we have reached a moment of threat to food security like none other we have seen”.[1]
The memo, released on April 3 was addressed pointedly to “investors, directors, owners, and creditors” – those with the power to change course. Its message was urgent and unambiguous: environmental degradation and short-term thinking have brought us to an imminent food security crisis. This isn’t a distant concern, it’s a systemic business risk unfolding here and now. And if we fail to act, the whistleblowers caution, the collapse of nature will become the collapse of markets and meals alike. The insiders’ memo outlines “a number of structural and cultural issues are preventing the severity of this challenge being fully accepted by industry”[2].
Here are the five fatal flaws they highlight:
- Deteriorating Natural Foundations: Soil, water, and climate stability are eroding, undermining the very basis of agriculture. The memo describes degrading soil health, water scarcity, global warming and extreme weather as already "affecting yield, quality and predictability of supply – with clear commercial impacts."[3] We are seeing more frequent crop failures and volatile harvests as fertile land turns to dust and weather extremes become the norm.
- Blind Spots to Systemic Risk: The industry is failing to grasp the full, interconnected nature of the threat. Producers, manufacturers, and retailers are largely "sourcing in isolation," often from the same dwindling regions.[4] This lack of coordination masks how close the entire system is to a breaking point. The whistleblowers confess there is "a bias toward pleasing rather than being honest with our directors, shareholders, owners and creditors," meaning bad news about climate and resource risks often goes unspoken.[5]
- Dangerously Wishful Strategies: Current corporate strategies for these risks amount to wishful thinking. Many companies bank on simply shifting sourcing to new regions as old ones falter. This is a "dangerously insufficient" plan. "Compared to the scale of threat," today’s sustainability measures are "simply not material" to the crisis at hand.[6]
- An Unfit Business Model: The prevailing food business model is structurally unsuited to the challenge of sustainability. Companies built on single crops or far-flung supply lines find themselves one climate disaster away from ruin.[7] As one executive noted, the very structure of sourcing contracts fails to incentivize investment in soil health, water management, or community resilience.[8]
- Lagging Governance and Oversight: Legal, regulatory, and governance mechanisms are dangerously behind the curve of these escalating risks. Regulation has been piecemeal and reactive. The memo’s authors warn that industry groups lobbying against tough environmental rules are effectively sawing off the branch we all sit on.[9]
Each of these five points would be worrisome on its own. Taken together, they amount to a systemic crisis. The whistleblowers paint a picture of an industry in dangerous denial – one where executives privately acknowledge that "long-term threat is now a short-term threat," yet publicly cling to business-as-usual because "we share the good news" and are "incentivised to create good news in the short term" at the cost of "ignoring and underplaying systemic risk."[10]
It's not just one memo: The chorus of warnings grows. This insider memo is dramatic, but it is not an outlier. In fact, it resonates with a growing chorus of high-level “whistles” warning that nature’s decline is becoming a dire economic threat. Consider three signals blaring alongside the executives’ memo:
- Global Risk Reports Sound the Alarm: The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2025 identifies environmental collapse as a top-tier threat to global prosperity. In the long-term outlook, environmental risks dominate, with biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse ranked among the most critical challenges of the next decade.[11]
- National Food Security is "Fraying": In the UK, a National Preparedness Commission report released in February warned that the post-World War II model of food and society is coming apart. The report describes Britain’s food system as "no longer fit for purpose" and in a "precarious state."[12]
- Backlash Against Sustainable Diets: The EAT-Lancet Commission’s 2019 report led by Gunhild Anker Stordalen, MD/PhD proposed a climate-friendly "planetary health diet." Its recommendations were grounded in science led by Johan Rockström, yet met with a coordinated backlash. A leaked document revealed that a PR firm funded by a meat industry coalition orchestrated an aggressive and highly effective campaign to discredit the study and the scientific credential of its authors.[13]
- A Bubble warning: On April 7th, Forbes warned that the global food system is encased in a fragile bubble – one inflated by just-in-time supply chains, monocultures, and cost-driven procurement. This bubble gives the illusion of stability but is dangerously thin [14].
None of these signals – from the WEF to the UK’s food resilience experts to scientific advocates of dietary reform – are isolated. They form a single, consistent message: we are witnessing a paradigm shift in the relationship between nature and the economy. The stability of natural systems is no longer a choice; it is the foundation of human well-being and economic resilience.
What we see emerging is a new hierarchy of needs. Businesses and governments have long treated environmental sustainability as something of an aspirational add-on – a concern addressed only after securing profit and growth. This thinking echoes Maslov’s hierarchy of needs, typically illustrated as a pyramid [15]. At its base are physiological and safety needs (food, water, shelter, security), while higher levels include esteem and self-actualization. Environmental concern has often been relegated to an individual statement or moral choice.
Not much longer. In truth, nature is the base – the sine qua non for everything else. Without fertile soil and pollinators, there is no food. Without clean water, no drink. Without a stable climate, no safety from disasters. We must recognize nature as the foundation that supports the entire structure of human needs. Maslov himself saw these moments fore coming: “The order of needs is not nearly as rigid as we may have implied.”
This is a profound shift in mindset. Business leaders must treat environmental stability not as a subset of corporate social responsibility, but as a precondition for economic survival. Nature isn’t a stakeholder; it’s the platform on which all stakeholders sit.
Investing in ecological infrastructure must and will become an essential element of modern capitalism. Investors, corporations, and regulators will have to respond to this new reality: First, by reframing land, water, and biodiversity as critical infrastructure. This means long-term investment in regenerative agriculture, watershed restoration, climate adaptation, and soil health. It also requires new financial tools to reward ecosystem services and stabilize yields.
For investors, a key step is to interrogate portfolios for nature-related risks and opportunities. The memo even provides questions to ask: How has the viability of top sourcing regions changed? Are we prepared for the financial impact of supply shocks?[16]
Corporate leaders must heed the memo’s call for collective action. The pandemic showed that coordination on an unprecedented scale is possible. Industry coalitions, jointly funded resilience efforts, and support for pre-competitive landscape investment are now necessary. And businesses should support, not resist, stronger environmental policies.
Governments, too, must respond. National security planning should elevate ecological collapse to a Tier 1 risk. Legal frameworks must incentivize nature stewardship and enforce transparency. This isn’t about idealism; it’s about risk management in an age of volatility.
There are signs of hope. Many initiatives, pioneers and nature tech companies have started to build the “rail tracks” for that next economy. We at The Landbanking Group have developed the digital, legal, and financial infrastructure to operationalize natural capital as an asset class. They are making it possible for land stewards to be rewarded for regenerating nature, and for investors to align capital with long-term planetary resilience.
We face a pivotal choice. The whistle has been blown. Will we act? Or will we pretend business-as-usual will carry us through a storm it helped create? The time for cosmetic fixes has passed. The future of food – and of business – depends on whether we place nature where it belongs: at the foundation of our economies.
Sources
[1] Investor Memo, Inside Track, 3 April 2025, p. 1.
[2] Ibid., p. 2.
[3] Ibid., p. 3.
[4] Ibid., pp. 4-5.
[5] Ibid., p. 7.
[6] Ibid., p. 3.
[7] Ibid., p. 5.
[8] Ibid., p. 6.
[9] Ibid., p. 7.
[10] Ibid., p. 8.
[11] WEF Global Risks Report 2025, World Economic Forum, January 2025.
[12] "Just in Case: Civil Food Resilience", National Preparedness Commission, February 2025.
[13] DeSmog, "Meat Industry Campaign Against EAT-Lancet Report," March 2025.
[14] Felicia Jackson, "A Food System in Crisis: Why Investors Must Rethink Risk Management", Forbes, April 7, 2025.[15] Investor Memo, Inside Track, 3 April 2025, Appendix: Questions for Investors.
[16] Abraham H. Maslow, Motivation and Personality, 1954
