Jan Christoph Kabath, LDC’s Head of Sustainability & Energy Transition, shares his views on how to keep agri-food and energy systems functioning under real-world constraints, while transitioning them to become more resilient and sustainable, which is essential to continue sustaining the world’s growing population.
“In 2026, supply chain disruptions are a daily reality in global commodity markets, as climate and geopolitics impact food and agriculture systems that must continue to deliver under tighter land and resource constraints. Much of the current transition debate focuses on a shift from sustainability to resilience. But in practice, the transition requires both: resilience to enable continuity under stress, and sustainability in defining long-term production models.
The food and energy systems nexus: a strategic focus
Understanding how food and energy systems transition and interact in practice, has become a strategic focus for LDC, as we observe their interconnectivity in our day-to-day operations and activities, with stress in one system translating into the other. Recent shocks in the Middle East have shown how energy volatility feeds directly into food system volatility; and when disruption hits, farmer livelihoods and local food security come under pressure first – particularly for smallholder farming communities.
Agricultural and food supply chains account for around 30% of global energy demand, from natural gas for fertilizer production to fuel for farm machinery and electricity for processing and logistics. Sharp increases in energy and fertilizer costs reinforce the need to reduce reliance on volatile, centralized energy systems, and examples from our activities demonstrate how energy transition strategies can also deliver agricultural advantage.
Boosting productivity and cost-efficiency through regenerative agriculture
At farm level, fertilizer application and nutrient management are key yield and productivity drivers. Yet, fertilizers also represent a significant share of farm operating costs and are a major contributor to farm-level emissions, reinforcing the need for greater efficiency and precision in using inputs.
That’s why a key focus of our regenerative agriculture programs is to optimize nutrient management as part of soil health approaches that also include regenerative techniques such as cover crops or crop rotations. These enhance nutrient use efficiency, support more resilient soils and help farmers manage both cost exposure and emissions intensity, while maintaining yields.
In collaboration with supply chain partners and leading crop protection companies such as Syngenta, we are working to scale these practices across programs, already covering more than 65,000 hectares.
Connecting crops to energy markets
Agriculture is also an increasingly important part of the energy supply chain, primarily as a source of biomass for fuel. For LDC, this is not new: we have been processing and merchandizing biofuels and diverse plant-based feedstocks for energy producers for decades, across key markets in Europe, Asia and the Americas. Biofuels already account for around 5% of global road transport fuel, with demand growing in hard-to-abate sectors such as aviation, marine and heavy-duty transport, where alternatives remain limited. In today’s environment, energy security concerns are reshaping these trade flows as countries with feedstock availability increasingly prioritize domestic use, reducing export availability and shifting global market dynamics.
In this context, the food, fuel and land nexus must be actively managed to ensure that meeting additional energy demand is not at the expense of food production or natural ecosystems. LDC leverages its traceability and risk management capabilities to supply lower-carbon agricultural goods to food, feed and energy markets, while managing land use risks. For example, LDC issued its own branded emission factors under the Global Feed LCA Institute (GFLI) for Argentine soybean meal going into feed value chains, while the soybean oil from the same processing facility is used as edible oil and as feedstock for biofuels production, reflecting the value chain connection between food, feed and fuel.
LDC also promotes the adoption of newer feedstocks – in particular intermediate crops, such as camelina, that do not compete with food production as they grow between traditional crop harvests, contributing to soil protection. To derisk their introduction, we work directly with farmers and connect these novel crops to emerging demand points in biofuel markets, and help merchandize the byproducts for food and feed, linking farmers to food, feed and energy markets simultaneously. Working with partners, we have helped expand camelina cultivation in South America from 5,000 to 45,000 hectares since 2023. The camelina grown is a source of both protein for animal feed and a low-carbon oil suitable for advanced biofuels, including sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).
In parallel, ICAO’s Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) framework supports aviation decarbonization by combining the use of SAF with eligible carbon credits to meet airlines’ obligations. As part of our carbon markets activity, LDC has developed dedicated CORSIA-aligned portfolios, acting as an operator to supply compliant credits into aviation markets. This helps airlines derisk procurement, both from a compliance perspective and in terms of credit quality and reputational safeguards.
Beyond CORSIA, carbon markets offer an interesting opportunity for farmers to generate new revenue streams while reducing emissions and sequestering carbon in the soil. LDC sources, structures and manages carbon credit portfolios, working directly with project developers across a range of standards and geographies, often in or around our sourcing regions, creating a link between our agricultural footprint and our carbon activities. For example, in Uruguay, we are involved in forestry-based carbon projects such as Montes del Este, which generate verified carbon credits while supporting sustainable land use and long-term biomass production systems. These projects combine emissions reductions with measurable impacts on ecosystems and local communities.
As we process crops at scale in our industrial facilities, we also implement efficiency measures to reduce both energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions by increasingly purchasing local renewable energy, such as solar or biomass. Interesting opportunities arise where local assets can benefit from processing waste streams for their own energy needs. For example, LDC has invested in a large-scale biogas facility at our juice processing site in Bebedouro, Brazil, that will transform citrus effluent into energy to help meet the site’s full energy needs, driving operational cost-efficiency and resilience, as well as environmental benefits.
Connecting systems to build resilience
Agriculture and energy have always been linked, but those linkages are now deepening as both food and energy systems transition under tighter constraints. The challenge now is for these systems to work together: to decarbonize without shifting risk or land pressure elsewhere, and to keep food and energy supply functioning under volatility.
At LDC, we work to support this trajectory at scale, connecting farms, processing and logistic facilities, markets and capital under real-world constraints. We believe this is central to sustain a growing global population within planetary boundaries – now and into the future.”
