The Next ESG Frontier Is Genetically Modified Food
War in Ukraine has tested ESG resolve on defense and energy companies. Food security now poses an equally tricky dilemma.
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Photographer: Bloomberg/BloombergRussia’s invasion of Ukraine has challenged ESG opposition to defense and conventional energy stocks. The next test for the ESG purists is likely to be food security, where reconciling environmental and social goals poses a challenge to existing dogma.
The need to feed an expanding population while cutting agriculture’s high greenhouse gas emissions means farming must become more efficient. The increased use of genetic technology in seed manufacture is one solution. Yet GMOs remain a bugbear for many ESG funds, which are wary of the unintended consequences of intervening in the food chain (the so-called precautionary principle).