Human history sometimes shifts abruptly, sometimes subtly. The early 2020s look to be abrupt. Climate change has become an everyday reality, with unprecedented droughts, heat waves and floods that sweep the globe. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine broke nearly 80 years of respect for acknowledged borders, and threatened the vastly expanded trade which that respect enabled.  The war constricted shipments of grain and fertilizer long taken for granted, threatening hunger for hundreds of millions of people far from the conflict. Increased rumblings between China and the US over Taiwan raise the specter of an international crisis that could be still worse.

These big shifts have increased anxieties, but also opened opportunities, in an economic sector that is easily ignored in less volatile times: commodities, specifically metals and foodstuffs. The world seems finally united on the urgency of lower-carbon technologies like electric vehicles (EVs) and renewable energy, but has barely acknowledged the vastly larger supply of metals that will be needed. Mining is associated more with destroying the earth than saving it—along with exploiting its work force and ravaging surrounding communities—yet demand for copper, the basis for untold miles of new “green” wiring, will double by 2035, researchers at S&P Global predict.  “Unless massive new supply comes online in a timely way,” they warn, “the goal of net-zero emissions will remain out of reach.”

With food, the issue is not change in demand, but supply. Drought in some key growing regions and war impacts—including blockades—in others have thrown global food trade into turmoil. Increasingly erratic rainfall could cut China’s yields on key crops 8% by 2030, the World Resources Institute warns. Global yields could fall 30% by mid-century “without effective adaptation,” the United Nations has found.

Improved Cooperation

Miners and the ngos who monitor them are also moving toward cooperation, pushed by end-customers’ rising concern about sustainable supply chains. “There’s been a big change over the last two years in companies who purchase mined materials,” says Aimee Boulanger, executive director of the Seattle-based Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA). “Automakers, jewelers, wind power producers are asking for what campaigners also want: less harm in the extraction process.” IRMA is auditing a dozen mines around the world for their impact on surrounding environment, communities and employees.

Anglo American is their lead corporate partner, voluntarily placing seven facilities under the sustainability microscope, from nickel in Brazil to platinum group metals in Zimbabwe. Boulanger also underlines her work with the two relative giants in lithium extraction, SQM and Albermarle. Water depletion by these companies’ “brine” operations in Chile’s high desert has drawn bad publicity, but jolted the young industry into a search for better ways, she contends. “These smaller companies,  who are trying to do what’s never been done before, recognize the urgency of the moment,” Boulanger says.

Agriculture is as decentralized as mining is centralized. That makes increasing food production both harder and easier. It’s harder because no board of directors can mobilize finance and yield-enhancing technology for the world’s  approximately 500 million family farms. It’s easier because progress can come in small steps, by trial-and-error, without multi-billion dollar outlays.

Hardier, genetically modified seeds and other innovations keep production increases steady, Gro Intelligence’s Haines says. Global wheat harvests have increased by 12% over the past decade, rice by 8%—roughly in line with the 9% global population growth.

Weather and war both threaten this hard-won equilibrium, the hazards magnified by the high concentrations that have evolved in a (more or less) free-trading world. Russia and Ukraine, as we are all now keenly aware, account for about 30% of global wheat exports. The top three rice exporters—India, Vietnam and Thailand—take up two-thirds of the market. Localization efforts are unlikely to get far, according to Haines. “Using more landmass to produce less crop, that’s not something we’ve seen yet,” he says.

One way or another, business, investors and the general public will take non-oil commodities a lot less for granted going forward. Food production and costs may swing substantially for reasons beyond our (short-term) control. Producing the metals we need is more of a social choice, but one the world shows little sign of facing. “Society needs to decide which poison it wants, and get comfortable with more mines,” Wood MacKenzie’s Kettle says. “Right now society is hypocritical.”

The world will likely adapt, as it has before, but not easily. “This will not be a very smooth transition,” says Miller Benchmark Intelligence’s Miller. “It’s going to be a very rocky and bumpy ride for the next decade.”