President Joe Biden discussed the fight against climate change with Chinese President Xi Jinping as part of a two-hour phone call on Tuesday, marking the latest environmental action undertaken by the new administration after a flurry of executive orders that included cancellation of the Keystone XL Pipeline and rejoining the Paris Agreement.

To cement U.S. leadership on global stage, Biden plans to host major economies for a climate summit within the first 100 days of his term.

In a new interview, Sara Menker — a former Morgan Stanley commodities trader who founded a data firm that tracks the agricultural sector — said the Biden administration's desire to take an active role in climate talks marks the "most consequential change" from President Donald Trump on the issue. She emphasized the close tie between climate policy and national security, warning that food crises caused by climate change will inflame global conflicts.

"With the changing of the guard, obviously a very big change is around climate," says Menker, the founder and CEO of Gro Intelligence. "The role that the U.S. is going to take in the climate change conversations, which are economic discussions and conversations about trade-offs that every country is going to have to make."

"So I would say that that probably is the most consequential change, as it relates to the world that I I live in, which is climate and agriculture," she adds.

Soon after the onset of the pandemic last year, the global food supply chain suffered a shock as some of the world’s top grain-producing nations like Russia and Ukraine imposed export controls that kept the product within their borders. Meanwhile, demand rose in countries that needed grain to support expanding livestock production. As a result, food prices spiked nearly 20% last year, the World Bank says.

'Food security is national security'

Global food insecurity worsened severely and caused “unprecedented” migration, the United Nations said in November. Climate change will exacerbate food insecurity even further in the coming years as drought diminishes arable land and reduces crop yields, according to a report released two years ago by the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"I always remind people food security is national security — it really is," she says. "We always forget it until there's something that reminds us, and last time it was the Arab Spring."

"Countries like Russia and Ukraine clamp down on exports — you basically have a currency crisis," she adds. "You're sacrificing foreign exchange reserves by curbing exports, because it is still more important to make sure your people are fed at the right price than it is to get more foreign exchange reserves in the country."

Menker spoke to Yahoo Finance Editor-in-Chief Andy Serwer in an episode of “Influencers with Andy Serwer,” a weekly interview series with leaders in business, politics, and entertainment.

Born and raised in Ethiopia, Menker moved to the United States for college at Mt. Holyoke and later received a master’s degree in business administration from Columbia University. She worked as a commodities trader at Morgan Stanley for eight years, but left in 2012 to improve the quality and accessibility of data in the agricultural sector.

Two years later, she launched Gro Intelligence, which aggregates thousands of data sources to model conditions that affect global agricultural output, such as drought and floods.

Speaking with Yahoo Finance, Menker noted disturbing trends that threaten to warm the planet and exacerbate global hunger. But she also sounded an optimistic note, saying her data models and other recent breakthroughs can help end food insecurity.

"We've been saying we can solve food security since the 1970s," she says. "We still are talking about it and we haven't changed it."

"In my lifetime, how do we become that mechanism? And how do we drive that change?"

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