The world relies on sustainable agriculture, resilient supply chains, and the availability of healthy food. BCG works with businesses, foundations, and governments to make the world’s food supply flourish—even in the face of climate-related threats.
The challenges related to food systems and security are complex and urgent. Climate change can and does threaten the food supply—along with the incomes of those who grow crops or raise livestock. Catastrophes such as COVID-19 can throw just-in-time supply chains off balance in a flash. At the same time, workers, customers, and shareholders are exerting pressure on companies to reduce their carbon footprint and their use of plastics in packaging.
BCG helps organizations manage these complexities. We bring deep expertise on issues ranging from supply chain management to advanced data and analytics. And we take a holistic, systems-mapping approach to help our clients address challenges.
Large food-systems companies manage expansive supply chains that crisscross the globe. And yet many of their challenges are local. Looking upstream, CPG, food and beverage, and agribusiness companies must seek out and support local suppliers of food sources; looking downstream, they must deliver the healthy food that consumers want—sold at prices that in turn sustain suppliers. Our holistic approach to food systems consulting helps keep these dynamics in balance.
Sustainable Agriculture
We help build the coalitions that can make sustainable agriculture a reality. For example, we helped a large CPG company work with Morocco’s Ministry of Agriculture to scale a sustainable dairy farm pilot program to an entire region. We’ve also worked with companies and foundations on regenerative agriculture and soil carbon sequestration; sustainable fisheries and aquaculture; and the role of R&D, innovation, and digital in advancing sustainable agriculture.
Food Loss and Waste
Every year, 1.6 billion tons of food—worth about $1.2 trillion—are lost or go to waste. That’s one-third of the total amount of food produced globally. The problem is enormous, but there is a clear way forward. BCG has identified five drivers of the problem that, if addressed, could reduce the dollar value of annual food loss and waste by nearly $700 billion. Real headway will require commitment and coordinated action from consumers, governments, NGOs, farmers, and companies.
Food Supply Chains
We help agribusiness and food industries improve efficiencies along their supply chains in ways that are environmentally sustainable and that improve food security. We also help them find ways to optimize the import and export of food products.
Food Packaging
Food packaging can do more than just attract and inform buyers. Companies can revise packaging to reduce their global carbon footprint or to incorporate technologies that increase product longevity.
Agricultural Development Client Work
We work across the entire agriculture value chain, from equipment and seed to trade and retail, to serve leading food and agriculture companies and well as governments, foundations, NGOs, and coalitions.
Digital Agriculture
Digital has the potential to transform agriculture in ways that can improve food security as well as the livelihoods and resiliency of farmers who are feeling the effects of climate change. But digital transformation doesn’t come easily, especially in a such a complex, fragmented space. We worked with the Gates Foundation to take a systems approach to understand what a strong digital agriculture ecosystem looks like, and how best to facilitate the development of both public and private sector digital solutions.
Smallholder Farmers
These small, often single-family-owned farms face particular challenges to thrive or even to subsist. We create custom solutions based on our careful study of each situation. For instance, a thorough review of successful smallholder support systems in China yielded a plan for applying best practices to parts of Africa. We also worked closely with a major foundation to take a systems-change approach to supporting smallholder livestock development and digital farmer services.
Agricultural Trade Policies
Trade policies are key to unlocking food self-sufficiency possibilities, building an agricultural sector, meeting worldwide food demand, and more. In one engagement, we helped an African country and a regional free trade union understand the mutual benefits, negotiation strategies, and legal risks involved in entering a free trade agreement.
Agricultural Markets and Development
The agricultural value chain is subject to many new trends and disruptions. We help clients understand emerging trends and incorporate them into long-term plans. For instance, we helped a ministry of agriculture in Latin America create a development plan for the country’s agriculture frontier region.
Food Systems Transformation Journey
Transforming a country’s food system begins with a thorough analysis of that system. BCG, in collaboration with the Food System Transformative Integrated Policy Initiative, developed a toolkit that offers a step-by-step process guide as well as practical tools that, using a collaborative design approach, help to identify the key challenges and opportunities in a country’s food system.
Food Security and Nutrition Client Work
In our food security consulting, we seek to follow the mandate set forth in this UN Sustainable Development Goal: “End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture.”
Stunting
Stunting, one of the effects of malnutrition, has long-term impacts on brain development and cognitive function. BCG’s food security consultants partnered with the World Food Programme (WFP) in Tanzania to address chronic hunger and the stunting it causes. This work illustrates how our approach called Smart Simplicity can be used by any organization to address complex problems, such as food security and malnutrition, using current resources and funding.
Nutrition
Encouraging better nutrition begins with understanding where the problems are. In our work with the Atlanta Community Food Bank, we mapped supply and demand of nutrition assistance. In other projects, we have developed training and communication tools and strategies for improving the production of, and access to, nutritious foods.
In the face of the looming food crisis, the cost of inaction is enormous—but so is the opportunity to make a difference.
In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, our global food systems are struggling to feed those most at risk.
It’s time for a radical rethinking of food policies in Africa. Here, BCG’s Chris Mitchell joins Federico Bellone of High-Level Climate Champions at COP27 to discuss what it will take, amid rising temperatures, to transform food systems across the continent.
Climate change is pushing natural systems to the brink. Companies that integrate sustainability into their core can change the game.
From "got milk?" to "avocados from Mexico," marketing influences what you eat. Since farmers in Africa are more likely to receive funding for seed and fertilizer than advertising, BCG partner Zoë Karl-Waithaka outlines three ways we can help African farmers improve their livelihoods—and positively impact society, the economy, and the environment.
Food traceability is here to stay. The question is whether food companies, distributors, and retailers treat it as a regulatory burden or a strategic opportunity.
For more than a decade, BCG has supported WFP to enhance its effectiveness on a wide range of strategic, operational, and organizational issues.
BCG is the knowledge partner of OP2B, a business coalition dedicated to driving transformational change to protect and restore biodiversity, with a specific focus on regenerative agricultural practices.
Managing Director & Partner
Washington, DC
