Jason Clay

Biography

Jason Clay, SVP, Markets, WWF-US is a thought leader on global issues and trends affecting food and soft commodities. He ran a family farm, worked in the USDA, taught at Harvard and Yale, and spent 15 years working with indigenous people. In 1988, he began to help 200 companies buy ingredients that support communities and conservation by making and selling rainforest products to support local economic development. He sourced all the nuts for Ben & Jerry’s Rainforest Crunch and 200 other products generating $100M in sales. The work tripled the price to gatherers and doubled nut prices to all other collectors. The Xapuri rubbertappers in Acre took political power for 25 years.
Since 1993, Clay launched WWF’s aquaculture, ag, livestock, finance, and market transformation programs. He led a 3-year program to reduce key impacts of shrimp aquaculture. He helped develop standards for the production of some two-dozen ag, livestock and aquaculture commodities. He has worked with 70 of the 100 largest food companies to improve their supply chain management.
In 2015, Clay founded the Markets Institute at WWF to spot emerging global issues and trends that will affect the production and trade of food commodities. Each year, the Institute and identifies 15 trends, issues and tools that will be important, publishes a weekly newsletter, and prepares briefs and white papers as well as 4-5 case studies documenting innovation or pilots to address key issues and trends.
Clay has authored 20 books and 700 articles and given more than 1,500 invited talks. He is currently working with companies to address ESG issues and identifying new business models and markets to address them. Clay is helping WWF explore ways to use impact investing to reduce key impacts in the food system. Clay studied at Harvard and the LSE and got his PhD in anthropology and international agriculture from Cornell.