n a rebuff to climate deniers, the CEO of American food giant General Mills has asserted that global warming is being created by human activity and is threatening to disrupt global food supplies.
Announcing that the company has set a goal of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 28 percent over the next decade across its value chain, from farm to fork to landfill, Ken Powell told The Associated Press: “We think that human-caused greenhouse gas causes climate change and climate volatility and that's going to stress the agricultural supply chain, which is very important to us. Obviously we depend on that for our business, and we all depend on that for the food we eat."
A spokeswoman for the company, whose brands range from Yoplait yogurt and Pillsbury to Haagen-Dazs ice cream and Green Giant vegetables, went further, telling The Huffington Post that a failure to address climate change would make it extremely difficult to feed the world’s growing population, which is expected to exceed 9 billion by 2050.
She pointed to extreme weather and the decline in pollinating insects as worrying signs that are already impacting food production, and she noted that climate change will place stress on vulnerable growing regions around the world that provide important ingredients to make food. For example: 70 percent of the world’s cocoa is sourced from two countries in West Africa; 90 percent of the world’s vanilla is sourced from Madagascar; and 80 percent of the world’s almonds are grown in California.