Agenda

A senior U.S. agrifood official opens the day with a direct read on where U.S. agrifood policy is heading, food security, supply chain resilience, farmer competitiveness, and the trade environment that will shape sourcing decisions for the next several years.

No More Normal: Leading When Disruption Is the Default 

A proper conversation, direct, unscripted, and without the usual guardrails, with a leader in one of the world’s largest food and beverage businesses. The question isn’t how they got here. It’s what they’re actually doing now, and what they wish they’d done sooner.   

• Why the strategies that drove growth in stable conditions are the wrong ones for what’s coming  

• Making consequential decisions when the data is late, incomplete, or contradictory  

• What it takes to build an organisation that doesn’t freeze under pressure  

• Getting supply chain, finance, and commercial pulling in the same direction when it matters most  

• What you had to do differently with your team when disruption hit, and what that taught you about the people your function needs 
• What they would rebuild differently if they were designing the function today 

Offering a rare opportunity to hear directly from a top industry expert, gain learnings to help inform your strategic decisions in 2026 and beyond. 

Tariffs in Motion: US–China Trade and the Next Phase of Food Supply Disruption

Tariffs are leverage now, not just trade policy. The US-China relationship is reshaping access to supplies, and food is at the centre of it. Most organisations react to announcements. The ones getting ahead spot the signals first. 

This session features a House Agriculture Committee member and former China-US ambassador on how policy is made, where pressure is building, and what procurement leaders need to see before disruption hits. 

• How tariff policy decisions really happen, politics, leverage, and where early signals emerge 

• Mapping the geopolitical risk, you can’t see in your supplier base 

• Securing priority when supply gets tight, before you need it 

Reimagining Procurement: What 2036 Looks Like

Procurement reinvents itself every decade, and it’s already started. Most CPOs know the function they’re running today won’t be the one they’re running in five years. The harder question is what replaces it, and who gets to design that. This session is about the version of procurement that’s coming and what it asks of the people leading it. What did they see coming? What did they do differently? What would they do sooner? 

• Supplier ecosystems as a route to new markets and new revenue, not just continuity of supply 

• Building multi-partner networks that create value across the chain, beyond traditional supplier management 

• Circular value chains that deliver measurable commercial return, not just a sustainability headline 

• AI as a strategic partner in decision-making, extending what procurement can do at scale 

Redefining Procurement’s Role in a Permanently Disrupted Environment

Something has shifted. Procurement is being asked to do things it was never designed for: own continuity, manage enterprise risk, protect margin, and manage AI as team members, while doing more with less, and the environment gets harder. The function is being redefined, whether or not CPOs are ready. This session explores what procurement needs to become and how to position it as a strategic business partner, especially when disruption creates urgency.  

• What it looks like when procurement operates as a strategic function, not just claims to  

• Owning the COGS conversation at the board level, not just reporting into it  

• Making commodity intelligence a live input into sourcing decisions, not a quarterly report  

• How long has your function been waiting for the boardroom to recognise it, and what would it take to stop waiting? 

• The capability and governance changes that actually make the rest of this possible 

The Commodities Moving Markets Right Now

Expana’s senior price reporting analysts give you a straight read on what’s moving, what’s driving it, and what it means for procurement decisions. Grains, proteins, dairy, oils, and packaging. Followed by commentary by our forecasting experts.

One question to discuss.  

What is the single biggest decision you are facing in the next 90 days that you haven’t resolved yet?

Decisions Under Pressure

One senior leader. A real crisis. What they knew going in, the calls they made, what broke, and what they’d do differently. This isn’t a case study; it’s the version of events that doesn’t usually make it into a conference session. 

Building Procurement Resilience in a Volatile Supply Environment

• Reducing exposure to disruption through more resilient sourcing approaches 

• Strengthening supplier risk visibility across the procurement network 

• Creating continuity plans that protect operational stability 

• Using data and forecasting tools to identify emerging supplier pressures early

How Leading Food Companies Are Getting Ahead of Volatility

The honest version of this conversation: most risk frameworks in food procurement were built for a world that no longer exists. Contracts can’t absorb what markets are doing. Budget assumptions are breaking before the quarter ends. Supplier relationships are being stress-tested in ways nobody planned for. The pressure is not just the volatility itself. It’s the speed at which decisions now have to be made, often without perfect information. 

• Who owns risk when procurement, finance, and commercial all have a stake in the answer 

• The early warning signals that matter, and the ones leaders have learned to ignore 

• Closing the gap between knowing you’re exposed and acting fast enough to matter 

• How the best-run teams make decisions when the data is incomplete, and the pressure is high 

• What leading organisations have stopped doing to create room to act decisively

What It Takes to Build Supplier Partnerships That Last

A look at how organisations decide which suppliers to treat as long-term partners, what shared values look like when conditions change, and where those relationships deliver in R&D, growth, and commercial outcomes. 

• How the best organisations identify which suppliers survive volatility 

• What relationship capital looks like in practice 

• Where long-term partnerships deliver speed, innovation, and priority allocation

Redesigning Supplier Strategy for a Permanently Disrupted Environment

When supply tightens, price becomes secondary. Suppliers decide who gets served first, and most organisations are not positioned to be prioritised. This session examines how leading organisations are redesigning supplier strategy across two dimensions: the relationship capital that secures priority when it matters, and the contractual architecture that absorbs volatility without sacrificing continuity. 

• Moving from price-based sourcing to a relationship-driven supplier strategy 

• Securing priority allocation by defining the conditions under which suppliers choose your demand over others 

• Embedding supplier performance into ongoing decision models, not periodic reviews 

• Restructuring supplier agreements, indexation, hybrid pricing, and force majeure, for a volatile environment 

• Balancing contract rigour with the relationship capital needed for continuity under pressure 

• Building early risk visibility through supplier relationships before disruption hits 

The CPO Exchange 

Closed session with Chatham House Rule. Senior procurement panel where we openly discuss what is keeping us up at night and what you’d learned from your mistakes.   

• What’s the decision you made in the last 12 months that you’re least confident about in hindsight?  

• How much of what your procurement team does every day actually matters to business outcomes, and what would you cut tomorrow if you could?  

• Is procurement genuinely seen as a strategic function in your organisation, or is that still mostly aspiration?  

• We all say we want sustainable sourcing. Who’s doing it? What’s stopping the rest of us?

Four Questions. One Commitment. What Happens Next.

This is fifteen minutes to figure out what you’re going to do differently.   

• What’s the one thing you heard today that changes something you were already planning to do?  

• Where is your organisation most exposed right now, and did you know that before you walked in?  

• What’s one talent or capability decision you need to make differently, because of what you’ve heard today? 

• What’s the first call you make Monday morning?  

Take-away: Your Monday Morning Action Card; one changed decision, one identified exposure, one committed action.