New on the scene, the Tilt Collective is trying to encourage a shift to plant-based diets…is it too little, too late or the timing more than perfect? Sarah Lake, CEO, explains their initiatives for creating global change on this edition of The Plantbased Business Hour with Elysabeth Alfano.
Specifically, we discussed
- What is Tilt Collective and why was it created?
- Given the plethora of reasons for tilting toward plant-based options, why has it been so hard to date and how are you addressing this?
- Specifically, how are you looking at winning the global narrative on plant-rich diets?
- How are you building a coalition of public and private sector CEOs/champions? This is very different than policy initiatives.
- You are addressing this at country levels – how so? Much of this seems like on-the-ground field work, not higher-level policy work?
- How do you envision approaching Wall Street, if at all?
- Given the current political shift in the US, how does this inform your communication strategy to build the narrative?
- Can you give a timeline for a tilt toward plant-based diets?
Below is a highlight clip and transcription from our long-form conversation.
Elysabeth: So let’s get right to it as I bring on my guest today, the CEO of the very new Tilt Collective, Sarah Lake. Sarah, thanks for being with me.
This is one of the reasons why in my real job, beyond the podcast, as CEO of VegTech Invest we focus just on Wall Street. Not just with our ETF products, but also with all of our shareholder engagement because it seems that given the size of Tilt Collective and some other very important NGOs like the Good Food Institute, Plant Based Foods Association, Pro Veg, etc., we’re just a rounding error decimal point compared to the impact that the meat lobby has.
You talk about meat being in our foods and it’s because the meat lobby is so tied to our political system. How do you unravel that without gobs of money which we don’t have? So it seems to us that the only way to approach this is to not fight them, but to say, “Look, this is going to be extremely profitable for you. So get on board. There’s equity in leadership. Be the first to adopt. Come out with 20% of your protein line as diversified protein away from animals. Lead, grab the market share, grab the dollars.”
So it’s both a carrot and stick. Avoid the fines and the labor issues. All of these brand concerns for the sector as well as their climate impact and their financial fines. So it seems that there’s an opportunity to avoid pain and adopt diversified proteins early and we make that case and then we give people an investment vehicle to do that. So what do you think about actually working with the meat industry or have you seen any bright lights there?
Sarah Lake: Yeah. The meat industry has to be a part of the solution. They’re not going away. It isn’t like suddenly JBS and Cargill and Tyson aren’t going to exist tomorrow. They’re in fact in a privileged position to make this change happen at a bigger scale and faster than anybody else. So they have a critical role to play. At the same time, we can ask the question of what a food system looks like that doesn’t rely on monopolies and oligopolies in terms of our food production. So we can both move towards more decentralized production systems, more localized food sovereignty, and ask the question of how these big companies can play a role in that.
I fundamentally believe we are in this crisis because of capitalism. We have created market driven food systems that prioritize profit over health and sustainability. So you look at companies like for example JBS announced they’re developing six new processing facilities in Nigeria. They’re spending $2.5 billion to develop meat processing facilities in one of the most food insecure countries in the world. So while one in eight Nigerians are food insecure, we are allowing a company to develop the most inefficient, unhealthy, and least sustainable food solution, and that’s sort of a case in point. It’s all about the profit of JBS in cahoots with government support.
What the silver lining from that is, is that capitalism got us into it and capitalism will get us out because there is a very strong business case for why investing in plant-rich is going to be the future. Part of it is because, like we talked about, there is not a business case for continuing business as usual in meat production. It’s going to get incredibly more expensive as water becomes scarce and carbon becomes priced and the impacts of climate make it harder to grow meat the way we’re doing it now.
The other part is there’s just a lot of opportunity in plant-based. JBS is a great example of this. They are a meat company. They don’t work in fish and they developed a plant-based fish product in Brazil and it’s their fastest growing product segment. They never before could reach consumers who were interested in fish and they never reached vegetarians or vegans and now they have this incredible product that is flying off the shelves in Brazil and so for them it’s a business opportunity. It’s a huge opportunity to do that.
The question is how much does that undermine their core business model which is around meat? It does show that there is certainly profit to be made by these major meat companies expanding into the plant-based protein sector.
New episodes are out every week. Never miss the Plantbased Business Hour or Minute. Subscribe on iTunes and Youtube, and sign up for the newsletter. Follow Elysabeth on Linkedin. For information on Plant Powered Consulting, click here.
