Asset manager VanEck has listed the VanEck Sustainable Future of Food Ucits ETF on the London Stock Exchange and the Deutsche Börse Xetra.
The company said it invests in a pooled selection of innovative food companies from around the world and contribute to more sustainably produced food.
Martijn Rozemuller, CEO of VanEck Europe, said: “The production of food, especially meat, harms both the environment and health. This is due to fertilisers, weed killers and other artificial additives in livestock feed, hormones used in raising animals for slaughter, deforestation to make room for farms, air pollution from long transport routes and methane emissions from large farms.”
He added: “Without profound changes in agriculture and food production, the world will not be able to stop climate change. With all this in mind, consumers around the world are now demanding alternatives. The demand for cleaner, healthier and sustainable food is increasing.”
With the new ETF, investors will invest in about 35 stocks that are positioning themselves early for the transformation of the food industry. VanEck said that individual stock selection focuses on the areas of food technology, precision agriculture, and agricultural sustainability.
This new fund sounds similar in aim to the SDG Farmland Fund, which launched in April 2021. That fund looked to focus on global investment in agricultural land, while “providing a significant, concrete contribution” to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of zero hunger, clean water and sanitation, responsible consumption and production, climate action, and life on land.
Food has increasingly been a topic of interest in the investment world, suggesting that it either is important or people are making financial decisions when hungry.
Earlier this month, Franklin Templeton released a new paper called Food Innovation: Investing to Feed our Future.
Writing in the foreword of that report, Anne Simpson, global head of sustainability at the firm, said: “Disruption of the region’s critical wheat and fertilizer exports threaten to push an estimated 33m–47m more people in 81 countries to the brink of famine in the coming year. It struck me sitting in Kings College—nearly 600 years after it was founded by Henry VI—that we’ve seen extraordinary progress since that time, yet many people globally continue to face the existential challenges of hunger and war, and we all face the consequences of climate change.”
