Economist, Risk Analyst
1. How does the polycrisis affect agriculture and food systems?
The polycrisis is already reshaping the operating conditions of agriculture and the food industry. Weather extremes, outdated production and breeding technologies, volatile input prices and logistics disruptions all increase uncertainty. Yet many organisations continue to base decisions on past patterns of stability. As an agronomist, I believe success now depends on recognising real systemic exposure and adopting a mode of operation rooted in nature-based, system-level adaptation rather than short-term cost optimisation.
2. What role do financial systems play in supporting or blocking adaptation?
Financial systems – banking, insurance and investment alike – continue to support a business as-usual logic, pricing in growth trajectories that are no longer realistic in the age of the polycrisis. From a financial and economic perspective, there is a pressing need for new planning, valuation and risk models that incorporate resource limits, ecological and social pressures and the feedback loops that arise from them. One of CASSee’s strengths is that it approaches economic and financial issues together with real physical and environmental constraints.
3. Why do organisations need system-level, complex analysis?
Many organisations still base decisions almost exclusively on financial indicators. Meanwhile, energy prices, climate anomalies, supply-chain vulnerabilities, unused raw materials and energy, or overproduction and its environmental impacts can influence performance as much as changes in interest rates. System-level analysis reveals the interdependencies that traditional business planning often overlooks. The CASSee Program provides a framework to integrate these previously neglected relationships into strategic thinking, resulting in more robust and future-ready decisions.
