Uploaded June 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Animal agriculture may be the next stranded-asset risk hiding in plain sight.
If markets mispriced fossil fuels, are they now mispricing food?
My guest is Claire Smith, founder and CEO of Beyond Investing, a humane investment platform working across public equity, venture capital and animal-free innovation. Claire comes from traditional finance, but her work now sits at the intersection of climate finance, decarbonisation, food-system resilience, ethical investing and the uncomfortable gaps mainstream ESG still leaves behind.
This matters because climate action cannot stop at clean energy and transport. Those are essential, but food, land use, methane, materials, animal agriculture and supply chains also shape whether we cut emissions fast enough without making fragile systems more brittle. As climate impacts intensify, policy, capital allocation and food security are starting to collide. The question is whether investors, governments and businesses are pricing those risks honestly, or filing them under “too difficult”, where serious problems go to breed.
What changed my thinking was Claire’s framing of animal agriculture as a subsidy-dependent business model with potential stranded-asset risk. We dig into why food is still treated as a climate side issue, even though animal agriculture uses vast amounts of land, water and transport capacity, and why methane makes this more urgent than many portfolios suggest. Claire also explains why some ESG funds can still hold companies climate-conscious investors would assume were excluded, and why “least bad in a bad sector” is not credible climate strategy.
This is not about personal purity, miracle foods or hand-waving. It is about emissions reduction, market design, policy signals, climate tech deployment and the role of finance in building more resilient, lower-carbon food and material systems.
This episode is for business leaders, climate professionals, policymakers, investors and technologists who want to understand the risks hiding beyond the usual fossil-fuel frame.
If you’re working on climate finance, food systems, ESG, decarbonisation or resilient supply chains, I’d be interested in your perspective in the comments.
Links:
Climate Confident podcast: climateconfidentpodcast.com
Subscribe for more conversations on climate tech, clean energy, decarbonisation and real-world climate solutions.
⏱️ Chapters / Timestamps
00:00 – Animal agriculture and stranded assets
00:30 – Is climate risk still mispriced?
01:33 – Why Claire Smith built Beyond Investing
04:06 – The climate deadline that already passed
05:32 – Why fossil fuels are only part of the problem
08:48 – Where mainstream ESG lost its way
12:15 – Performance trade-offs without fossil fuels
15:53 – Why food remains a climate side issue
20:50 – Beef, water, leather and hidden risks
24:01 – The venture capital bottleneck for animal-free alternatives
27:53 – Moving animal-free innovation from niche to mainstream
31:40 – Stranded assets, farm transition and food resilience
Animal agriculture may be the next stranded-asset risk hiding in plain sight.
If markets mispriced fossil fuels, are they now mispricing food?
My guest is Claire Smith, founder and CEO of Beyond Investing, a humane investment platform working across public equity, venture capital and animal-free innovation. Claire comes from traditional finance, but her work now sits at the intersection of climate finance, decarbonisation, food-system resilience, ethical investing and the uncomfortable gaps mainstream ESG still leaves behind.
This matters because climate action cannot stop at clean energy and transport. Those are essential, but food, land use, methane, materials, animal agriculture and supply chains also shape whether we cut emissions fast enough without making fragile systems more brittle. As climate impacts intensify, policy, capital allocation and food security are starting to collide. The question is whether investors, governments and businesses are pricing those risks honestly, or filing them under “too difficult”, where serious problems go to breed.
What changed my thinking was Claire’s framing of animal agriculture as a subsidy-dependent business model with potential stranded-asset risk. We dig into why food is still treated as a climate side issue, even though animal agriculture uses vast amounts of land, water and transport capacity, and why methane makes this more urgent than many portfolios suggest. Claire also explains why some ESG funds can still hold companies climate-conscious investors would assume were excluded, and why “least bad in a bad sector” is not credible climate strategy.
This is not about personal purity, miracle foods or hand-waving. It is about emissions reduction, market design, policy signals, climate tech deployment and the role of finance in building more resilient, lower-carbon food and material systems.
This episode is for business leaders, climate professionals, policymakers, investors and technologists who want to understand the risks hiding beyond the usual fossil-fuel frame.
If you’re working on climate finance, food systems, ESG, decarbonisation or resilient supply chains, I’d be interested in your perspective in the comments.
Links:
Climate Confident podcast: climateconfidentpodcast.com
Subscribe for more conversations on climate tech, clean energy, decarbonisation and real-world climate solutions.
⏱️ Chapters / Timestamps
00:00 – Animal agriculture and stranded assets
00:30 – Is climate risk still mispriced?
01:33 – Why Claire Smith built Beyond Investing
04:06 – The climate deadline that already passed
05:32 – Why fossil fuels are only part of the problem
08:48 – Where mainstream ESG lost its way
12:15 – Performance trade-offs without fossil fuels
15:53 – Why food remains a climate side issue
20:50 – Beef, water, leather and hidden risks
24:01 – The venture capital bottleneck for animal-free alternatives
27:53 – Moving animal-free innovation from niche to mainstream
31:40 – Stranded assets, farm transition and food resilience
