Living at the intersection

Mike Redwood

Columnist

International Leather Maker

By 2050 it is predicted that two thirds of the world population will live in cities. Over the next five years, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF), the top growing sector for jobs will be farmworkers, although this will slow over the following years as the sector modernises and consolidates. The history of leather demonstrates a profound dependency on both rural and urban environments—raising the question: how will the leather industry chart its future at this new crossroads?

Cities exist only because the countryside can supply adequate food, thus large cities historically were slow to develop, restrained by crop failures and wars. Yet, when cities did grow, many became centres for highly skilled leather manufacture. Córdoba in Spain, for example, transformed the global leather industry with its luxury and beauty, while Rome and Xi’an in China emphasised leather’s military and equestrian applications.

Throughout history, tanneries have remained closely linked to cities, often situated just outside city boundaries. Their location was influenced by logistics—such as proximity to ports, access to labour (including skilled migrants), water supplies, and clusters of suppliers of chemicals and tools—as well as closeness to downstream customers: shoemakers, saddlers, and upholsterers. Great leather towns and cities such as Fez, Istanbul, Florence, Liverpool, Leeds, Northampton, León, Wenzhou, Kanpur, Chennai and Himeji all demonstrate the immense value of urban assets and the role of city dynamics in empowering leather manufacturing.

Conversely, where tanneries became isolated—whether by chance or economics—they suffered from reduced access to knowledge spillovers, specialised skills and rapid prototyping. Such isolation limits innovation and adaptability. For me these strengths became especially evident when I moved to work in Tuscany’s Santa Croce district in the 1970s in the region of Florence.

Marketing is, at heart, a form of urban semiotics. Urban elites, sometimes derided, are in fact the creators and disseminators of colour palettes, sustainability norms, and expectations around repair and reuse. City environments foster the creative processes through which styles and tastes emerge, and differentiation becomes evident in the arenas of retail and aftercare.

Cities also anchor different aspects of the evolving leather market: New York and Shanghai are global hubs for high-fashion turnover, Denmark and Oslo exemplify high circularity expectations, while Tokyo and London both have strong repair cultures. Milan continues to celebrate leather as a craft tradition. In the southern hemisphere, Johannesburg and São Paulo illustrate the growing importance of the longevity of leather within emerging urban economies—where unique blends of heritage, modernity, and innovation are shaping the industry’s future trajectory.

Farmwork is moving towards nature positive and climate adaptive work

Raw material depends more on the food supplies provided by agriculture from the countryside. The new farm employees being sought over the next five to ten years along with the other jobs in the top five – delivery drivers, software developers, construction workers and shop sales staff – are essentially in frontline roles.

Economics is now pulling the green economy and farmwork towards nature positive and climate adaptive work despite the absence of coordinated governmental leadership. This means more variety and quality in the work. The “farmworker growth” is a global aggregate so not every country will see huge farming-job booms. In developed economies, automation might suppress growth; in emerging markets, labour intensity may remain higher.

Automation will change the shape of agricultural work so some “farmworker” tasks will shift to more tech-assisted, more precision agriculture, or different tasks as robotics scale. But the underlying fact for 2030 and beyond is that climate change will force the biggest changes. As we will are seeing at COP30 uncertainty and self-interest is back. CADE, the soy association, is fighting to end the soy moratorium, launched in 2006 and credited with curbing Amazon deforestation by prohibiting the purchase of soy from Amazon forest cleared after July 2008. While cattle are often falsely blamed for deforestation the intention is nearly always to grow more profitable crops with cattle pushed on temporarily only to demonstrate new ownership – or theft – of the land that has been cleared.

Soya demand is quickly growing. 75% goes towards animal feeds but this is not about cattle. About 37% is used to feed chickens and other poultry, 20% goes to pigs and fish farming which is fast increasing in Asia accounts for about 6%.​ Only about 2% is used in beef and dairy cattle feed. So those saying leather is linked to deforestation have been setting the wrong targets, even if they have refused to comprehend that cattle are not kept for their hides. Overturning the Soy Moratorium will do great harm to the climate.

Climate change will not hit everyone equally

The livestock sector will feel rising temperatures in various ways. Heat stress and drought will see diseases spreading wider and faster. A 2°c world, quite plausible by 2050 or earlier will “reward” temperate regions and penalise already-hot ones. For leather, this means quality hides will become a more geographically concentrated asset, one increasingly linked to governance, infrastructure, and veterinary capacity. But it is hard to imagine continued hide and skin supply growth, rather the reverse. Falling sheep numbers in Australia and New Zealand are already linked to climate – in New Zealand via a risky commercial forestry programme.

The leather industry should prepare for this now. Hide geopolitics in the 2030s and 2040s will not be determined by cattle numbers alone, but by which regions can keep animals healthy and productive in a warmer, more volatile climate. For anyone concerned with the future of leather, this is not a distant scenario – it is the strategic landscape already forming. Getting unused hides back into the leather system is also vital.

Leather exemplifies how an existing by-product of agriculture can become the foundation for a high-skill, low-carbon, circular material economy rooted in local ecosystems which will be largely found in the extended hinterlands of urban centres but carry jobs and wealth into their urban centres.

In the Nature Economy leather’s role should be to turn regenerative grazing and woodland coppice (a major piece of leather history requiring re-establishing) into a renewable material base. This immediately provides and embeds manual skill and cultural continuity into the Craft Economy.

In Industrial Policy terms modern leather making demonstrates clean manufacturing and export potential, producing durable, repairable goods that minimise waste. This can allow social regeneration and cultural value via reviving rural industry and heritage employment, while creating large numbers of associated creative and service jobs in cities.

A responsible leather industry as a system node

So, rather than an isolated industrial sector, it becomes a living node in a broader ecosystem of value — exactly the structure envisioned by both nature economy and craft economy frameworks. It tells the story of land, animal, and human skills intertwined and reminds of our past achievements in agriculture and beautiful design, in country and in town. This is not a celebration of sentimentality but perfectly suited for the challenges of the 21^st century and beyond.

mike@internationalleathermaker.com

You can find Dr Mike Redwood across social media at @michaelredwood.

Publication and Copyright of “Redwood Column” remains with the publishers of International Leather Maker. The articles cannot be reproduced in any way without the express permission of the publisher. The views are those of the author and not necessarily those of ILM.