Santander Mexico: Investment Opportunities for Sustainable Agri-Food Systems

Mariuz Calvet, Chief Sustainability Officer México at Santander is speaking at the upcoming World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit in Mexico City on ‘Capitalizing on Nearshoring: Leveraging Alliances Between Mexico and International Partners’ on October 30 at 9am.

Ahead of the summit, Mariuz delves into the financial opportunities for agri-food systems and how to take advantage of working with global allies.

Watch the 6 minute video or read the full transcript below.

What opportunities for investing into sustainable agri-food systems exist in Mexico currently?

[Mariuz Calvet]: The opportunities are endless. Mexico is a very vulnerable country to climate change impacts, and we’re in a climate stressed world. But in Mexico, the impact of climate change has been escalating throughout the years, impacting food production and of course, leading to different consequences as economic impacts with the increase of prices. So the opportunities that we have seen in terms of escalating food production, increased productivity, but managing well resources, soil management and increasing technology for better productions, I think that, as I have said, are endless.

We do believe that the topic, of course, of resources, around water and the usage of energy, but also the topic of increasing new scientific innovations that makes crops and farms more resilient. And if we see also on the social side, we have so many opportunities towards small farmers, small producers. In Mexico, we have different topics around marginalized communities, indigenous communities, even gender issues. So, the possibilities for us is to increase production while not degrading natural resources, I think that us as a bank, we have a good opportunity to move this sustainable agriculture agenda further.

How is Santander supporting and nurturing Mexico’s brightest agricultural talent and innovation?

[Mariuz Calvet]: Well, in centenary, it has been years since we started talking to clients about advancing their sustainability strategies. Agriculture is one of the most important sectors in all our green finance initiatives. We have a public commitment of net zero emissions in our investment and financing portfolios in 2050 so what we have been doing is accompanying clients to advance sustainability.

But we believe this is not the only thing we can do. We can only support climate innovation, and not only in agriculture, but agriculture would be a very broad, important sector that we will impact. This year, we created a new climate Innovation Award for start-ups and entrepreneurs that are bringing solutions to actually advance in climate, and we know that we’re going to see a lot around agriculture. So we’re not only accompanying companies and businesses and clients with different financial products in their advancements towards sustainability, but we are also starting to accompany start-ups and to actually support innovation, to reach the climate goals that we need for humanity.

You will speak on a panel on ‘Capitalizing on Nearshoring and Leveraging Alliances Between Mexico and International Partners.’ What are you most looking forward to discussing at the summit?

[Mariuz Calvet]: Well, not only in the panel I’m participating in, but I’m very excited about the event. We know that in the 2030 agenda, the Sustainable Development Goals, we have the number 17 goal, which is alliances towards sustainable development. I think this event actually embodies this sustainability goal by bringing together the private sector, banks, companies and producers, from the different parts of the ecosystem that we need to sit together to build alliances and advance this topic. I congratulate you for this wonderful event, and I’m very, very honored to participate and to talk about how to advance the sustainability agenda in the agricultural sector.