United Nations

"In terms of sustainable financing, which commodity presents the greatest challenges? If you look at my area of responsibility, most challenges are in cocoa and coffee, simply because of their level of complexity and the need to improve the livelihood for smallholders. We spend a lot of time on those two commodities, even though they’re much smaller in terms of volume than grains and oilseeds. Our challenge is to stop deforestation and prevent climate change, while feeding the world: how can those two objectives coexist? We have to embed sustainability in the business and our daily thinking. Our ‘sustainable toolkit’ includes services and financing from Rabo Foundation/Rural Fund, as well as the fund we established with the United Nations called Agri3 to combat deforestation and enhance the livelihood of smallholder farmers."

"Earlier in 2023, China announced its first population decline since 1960 (the year millions starved from Mao’s Great Leap Forward). The population drop was slight. But it was the start of a dip that will yawn larger each year for decades. By 2100, China’s population is projected to halve to seven hundred million. Childbearing is collapsing in China. The country’s official (and certainly overstated) number of new births has undershot even the most pessimistic projections. In 2019, China had fifteen million births; four years later, it fell to nine million. The number was below what the United Nations described as a “low-fertility scenario” only a few years before. [Six million Chinese married](private://read/01k3jwt46q240aq6fe12mqkyr0/16_Notes.xhtml#_idTextAnchor394) in 2024, half the level of a decade ago. Chinese families now have a lifetime [average of 1.0 children](private://read/01k3jwt46q240aq6fe12mqkyr0/16_Notes.xhtml#_idTextAnchor395), far below the 2.1 children needed for a stable population."