The Netherlands based, co-operative-owned giant in agricultural lending, Rabobank, is on a mission to make farming and the food supply chain around the globe sustainable.
"This includes maintaining soil quality, that the biodiversity gets addressed, that the means through which it's (food production) done are sustainable, and that renewable energy is used," says Rabobank global chairman Wiebe Draijer.
He said the role of the bank should be helping farmers understand the financial and technological hurdles, and so has also required some different thinking about how the finance and risk in that process for farmers is managed.
"That's where the role of the bank should be in terms of understanding those shifts in financial terms, understanding better what it takes for a farmer to be securely financed during the transition and providing extra services so any volatility can be absorbed through insurance products, or by other means," he said.
"There is an urgent need to find ways to be innovative - I think Australia will lead. It has the more urgent need to find ways of doing it in a sustainable manner."
Mr Draijer, who is based in the Netherlands, said Rabobank was a co-operative bank that stemmed from combining richer farmers to funnel money to poorer farmers so they could invest in machinery and upgrade their practices and join the race to have a better food supply.
"We see our role now as to do precisely this, to bring the winners of the next era and help the others to catch up, and in that there's a co-operative bank that wants to finance that and help clients," he said.
"We're not stock listed, we're a co-operative, so our members own the bank and that gives us the ability to have a longer look on the cycle. We're not driven by next quarter's results, we're driven by long relationships with clients."
Mr Draijer, who is a mechanical engineer by training, also trained to be a journalist at university and has been a consultant in the public sector advising the Netherlands government on change, said he brings "a practice and a skill in bringing about change in a professional service environment".
"We can actually help our clients make the transition - mostly the farmer. If they want to adopt sustainable practices, it's in the money, it's financial ... but it goes through a transition phase."
He said the transition phase had volatility and uncertainty, and this was where the bank saw its role - to provide not only the investment case for that transition, but also to support the farmer during the transition.
"It's our mission, and that's what we want to do when we grow up and we're busy growing up," Mr Draijer said.
But this shift was new territory. The bank has the biggest research group in the world of banking to provide new insights, data and knowledge "and we bring out this knowledge open and free to the world".
He said in the transition, two types of shifts in the nature of finance were needed that a bank traditionally could not do, but was increasingly needed.
It's our mission, and that's what we want to do when we grow up and we're busy growing up.
- Wiebe Draijer, Rabobank
One was equity-type investment. He said there were many innovative companies needed to make this change and they were not served best by the traditional banking credit line.
"They need equity, so we have set up equity from within the innovation fund by which we can do the equity investments as well to enable those kinds of companies to come to market and grow," he said.
The second change involved the expectations around the time it took an investment to bear fruit, and providing investment options that matched that.
"So what can a bank do in combination with other partners to enable that to be offered? A timeline of 10 years, or 15 years?" he said.
"You can, but you need to find new ways of linking up with institutional investors so you help the client make the investment and the building phase, but then as the change is operationalised it can then also be financed by other players that have a much longer duration, like pension funds and institutional investors."
There was also a third leg, which included a model where consumers provided the finance. This could occur if the consumers that benefited from the change could also participate through, for example, crowd funding.
"We launched this week a new crowdfunding platform in the Netherlands whereby we do suggest that local consumers can invest in a local enterprise that brings local manufactured food through the market," he said.
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He sees this change towards sustainability being driven by new technology (in broadacre systems), aquaculture and glasshouse agriculture.
With technologies available now that can significantly extend the shelf-life of food, he said "it's not only the smartness with which which the agriculture takes place, but also the using of agtech ... so that we can use more of the food that we produce and not let it get wasted".
"Today, that's what we're really for, and creating that focus has shifted away from some of the shorter term orientation of just making a profit."
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