Clients to only invest in ESG funds from the end of 2022, says leading ETF provider

David Stevenson, co-founder, FutureFoodFinance, spoke to Stuart Forbes, co-founder Rize ETF, and Tom Barker, product specialist, Rize ETF, about the Rize Sustainable Future of Food ETF in a wide-ranging video interview covering hot topics in the FoodTech sector.

Clients have told a leading ETF provider that by the end of the year they will only invest in ESG funds, underscoring the heightened demand for green investments.

Rize ETF is a thematic exchange traded fund provider, whose funds span cybersecurity, education tech and sustainable food.

David Stevenson, co-founder, FutureFoodFinance, spoke to Stuart Forbes, co-founder, Rize ETF, and Tom Barker, product specialist, Rize ETF, about the Rize Sustainable Future of Food ETF in a wide-ranging video interview.

The video interview encompassed many hot topics in FoodTech, including the performance of listed FoodTech stocks and the rise in sustainable investing.

Forbes said: “Some clients are telling us they are not going to invest in anything other than an Article 8 or 9. They are only going to be Article 8 or Article 9 from the end of 2022 onwards.”

Article 8 funds must promote ESG characteristics while article 9 funds must prove their fund has a sustainable investment objective.

In the video interview, Forbes mapped out the case for a shift to a more sustainable food system.

He said: “We had the global methane pledge that the US government led on as part of Cop26.

"And the funny thing was, they were talking about capping and limiting the methane coming from the oil and gas industry which is less than 30 per cent of total methane emissions.

"The majority of it comes from the food and agri sector. And the majority of it comes from animal agriculture.

“I think the conversation around reducing greenhouse gas emissions- but also more acute environmental issues like deforestation, tropical deforestation in particular- they cannot be addressed without addressing the food system."

He added: "The first thing is you have got to figure out what is the source of all the emissions and all the environmental degradation? The food sector is mammoth when it comes to dealing with this."

“We cannot have a sustainable food system, and we cannot address some of these major environmental issues, without talking about the food system and the transition to a sustainable food system in the same way we are talking about the transition in energy.”

Forbes and Barker spoke about the criteria companies must meet to be included in the Sustainable Future of Food ETF (for example, companies that are principally meat, dairy and commercial fishing companies are excluded).

They also talked about the recent performance of the ETF, up 2.5 per cent year to date, albeit showing “a bit of weakness recently” in the interview with Stevenson.