Drought and extreme weather are threatening both essential and luxury crops globally, including coffee, cocoa, wheat, and wine grapes. In 2025, England had its second-worst harvest on record, with output reductions across the majority of the main cereal crops.
France’s wine output forecast was also at a historic low for the second year, at 16% below the five-year average. In 2024, weather-driven crop losses exceeded $20.3bn (£15.1bn) in the US.
These are not isolated anomalies. They are the consequence of treating nature as an infinite resource, including forests that regulate water, stabilise soils, and support biodiversity. The costs are now materialising across global food supply chains.
At the same time, scrutiny of those supply chains is intensifying. ESG regulations are tightening, investors are demanding clearer sustainability data, and issues like deforestation continue to concern consumers.
Still, research by the World Benchmarking Alliance shows that that the vast majority of companies are failing to assess their impact on nature and their nature related risks. Most companies talk about ‘nature-positive’ strategies, yet only 14% measure or disclose the extent of their reliance on natural systems, and just 9% quantify their nature-related risks.
This creates a growing disconnect between ambition and reality.
The uncomfortable truth is that many brands don’t actually know whether their flagship sustainability claims would stand up to objective scrutiny. That uncertainty is where their biggest risk now lies.
Nature risk is business risk
The way we have treated nature for decades is now directly affecting business resilience, making environmental risks one of the decade’s biggest threats. Many food and beverage producers depend on forest ecosystem services to keep their supply chains stable, from water availability and soil health to pollination and climate regulation.
When forests are degraded or cleared, those systems weaken, and the impact quickly shows up in lower yields and less secure supply chains. Despite this dependency on forests, many companies still lack reliable information about the ecosystems behind their ingredients.
F&B companies are feeling this pressure from all sides, as they are expected to manage resource use, fair labour practices, and deforestation risks simultaneously. In conversations with food manufacturers, a common frustration is clear: they’re drowning in ESG questionnaires, yet still lack clear, verified information about their nature-related risks, including forests. To respond credibly, they need reliable sustainability data and transparent reporting that shows real-world outcomes, not just intent.
New rules, new expectations
Across global markets, sustainability reporting is moving from voluntary to mandatory. The momentum is already visible, evidenced by the growing adoption of the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) standards, reflecting demand for more consistent and comparable sustainability disclosures.
The EU Directive on Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition is set to reinforce this shift. It aims to promote sustainable consumption by tackling greenwashing and banning generic terms like ‘eco-friendly’ unless there is verifiable proof of sustainability, helping consumers make more informed and responsible choices. As a result, brands will increasingly be expected to back their sustainability messaging with verifiable evidence rather than marketing language.
For food manufacturers operating complex global supply networks, this marks a decisive shift. Today’s consumers want products to be more sustainable, and most are happy to pay a premium as long as they meet verifiable sustainability standards. Regulators, investors and consumers are all moving toward the same expectation. They want to see the data.
The push for proven impact
Right now, it’s still easier and cheaper to design a sustainability campaign than to overhaul a supply chain. As long as that imbalance persists, greenwashing will remain tempting, making it one of the biggest reputational risks facing the industry. While consumers want sustainable choices, overstating environmental impact often backfires once inconsistencies come to light.
Take an ‘eco-friendly’ chocolate bar that highlights sustainably sourced cocoa but comes in mixed-material packaging that’s nearly impossible to recycle. Strictly speaking, the cocoa claim might be accurate. But the overall impression – that the product is environmentally responsible end‑to‑end – doesn’t match reality. Once consumers or campaigners expose that gap, the entire brand’s credibility is called into question.
And the spotlight is only getting brighter. Media, stakeholders, and consumers now expect hard evidence, backed by credible, third-party verification. According to Edelman’s Trust Barometer 2025, the food and beverage sector ranks among the most trusted industries, but nine in ten respondents said trust depends on evidence, not promises. Investors share the same view. With climate risks growing, they want to see clear, long-term plans that deliver measurable results.
What verified impact looks like in practice
Without independent verification, even the best-intentioned sustainability reports are more of a liability than an asset. That’s because certification and verification show that a company’s claims have been tested and validated against recognised benchmarks.
In practice, this shift is already influencing how some supply chains operate. Frameworks like FSC’s Verified Impact, which looks at ecosystem services, meet the clear, science-based standards that regulators and investors expect. These standards validate how brands have considered impacts from the forest to the finished product.
Take, for instance, Viña Concha y Toro, a major wine producer in Chile, operating in a region where 200 years of land conversion, logging and forest fires have heavily degraded native forests and shrublands. Against this backdrop, the company manages more than 4,000 hectares of native forest and other vegetation around its vineyards, treating these forests as core to long-term vineyard health.
Through the Verified Impact framework, Concha y Toro has had the positive impacts of its forest management on carbon stocks independently verified, with further verification of biodiversity and watershed benefits planned.
The company’s experience shows that conserving and restoring forests can sit alongside productive agriculture, strengthening resilience to climate and water stress while creating clear, verified evidence of real-world environmental outcomes.
The benefits go well beyond compliance. Certified materials help reduce exposure to climate and regulatory risk, strengthen reputation, and demonstrate a positive contribution to people and nature. In Concha y Toro’s case, it helped them become a Certified B Corporation.
Building long-term resilience
In the coming years, the real competitive divide in food and drink will be between companies that can verify their sustainability stories – and those that can’t. Climate volatility is now unavoidable, regulatory and investor scrutiny is rising, and the risk of greenwashing is only increasing. From farm to fork, or forest to factory, openness and verified sustainability are what will keep trust intact and resilience strong.
If I were sitting on the board of a major food brand today, I would be asking one question: ‘Which of our sustainability claims could we defend in court?’ If the answer is anything less than ‘all of them’, the next investment should be in verified data, not another campaign.
