We’ve all seen the headlines: empty shelves, skyrocketing food prices, and delivery delays. But here is the hard truth: this isn't a temporary hiccup. This is the new normal.
The fact is, we are operating in a world where volatility is the new baseline. Climate extremes, geopolitical conflict, and fragile logistics systems are converging to put our global food supply under immense pressure. A BCG report released this May projected that yields for key crops could drop by up to 35% by 2050.
This is why building resilience isn't just a buzzword for a quarterly task force: it's essential business management. As co-founder and CEO of Finches, Catharina van Delden, pointed out during the recent "Value Chain Reloaded" panel at Anuga 2025, every single business decision must now account for this new volatility.
In scenario planning, we used to discuss "black swans" or "wild cards": events that were highly unlikely but had severe impacts. Catharina noted that today, the majority of these formerly unlikely wild cards have come true, transforming risk management into daily operational necessity.
For Catharina, this crisis is deeply personal. She is an entrepreneur who built technology specifically for supply chain resilience, stemming from her experience running a family farm where she personally lost her entire harvest due to extreme weather events. Seeing neighbors lose everything drove home the urgency of this challenge.
Finches is on the frontline, developing software to predict these environmental and agricultural risks early. But the fundamental challenge isn't the data itself; the problem is the lack of understanding the data within a specific business context.
You might know a drought is coming to a region in California, but that generalized data doesn't help if you source hazelnuts from Turkey. You need to understand precisely how that risk applies to your unique value chain.
Here's how AI is transforming agricultural raw material surety:
By making sense of this complex, multi-layered data, companies can anticipate risks long before they hit, bridging the gap between the agricultural world and the food world.
As soon as risks threaten core business KPIs – like product price variance, cost of goods sold (COGS), and availability – companies need to pay attention because they are losing significant capital. Making resilience a core part of the daily business manages that risk.
Our ultimate vision, as Catharina shared, is to use AI and data to truly feed the growing world population within a currently failing agricultural system. Leaders who marry resilience with responsibility will win in the long term.
Massive thanks to all the panelists who joined the discussion on "Value Chain Reloaded" at Anuga 2025, including Catharina van Delden (Finches), Sebastian Jeschko (Kern Tec), Antje Schubert (Supervisory & Advisory Board member in the food industry), and Kristal Golan (AgriFoodTech Venture Alliance) - and especially to Nikola Baumschlager (UnternehmerTUM) for the amazing moderation.