Excluding Food Systems From Climate Deal Is a Recipe for Disaster

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Agriculture is both a challenge and a solution for climate change. Busani Bafana/IPS

by Busani Bafana (bulawayo)
Friday, January 09, 2026
Inter Press Service

BULAWAYO, January 9 (IPS) - As they ate catered meals, COP30 negotiators had no appetite for fixing broken food systems, a major source of climate pollution, experts warn.

Food systems are the complete journey food takes—from the farm to fork—which means its growing, processing, distribution, trade and consumption and even the waste.

The International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) warns that the final COP30 agreement risks deepening climate and hunger crises. It failed to address global warming emissions from food systems and the escalating damages caused by fossil-fuel-dependent industrial agriculture.

Food appears only once in the negotiated text, as a narrow indicator on ‘climate resilient food production’ under the Global Goal on Adaptation, IPES-Food pointed out.

“There is no mention of food systems, no roadmap to tackle deforestation, and no recognition that industrial agriculture drives nearly 90 percent of forest loss worldwide,” noted the think tank, emphasizing that negotiators also weakened language in the Mitigation Work Programme from addressing the ‘drivers’ of deforestation to vague ‘challenges.’

IPES-Food argued that the omission of food systems in the COP30 agreement was in stark contrast to the summit itself, which was held in the heart of the Amazon. Thirty percent of all food served during COP30 came from agroecological family farmers and traditional communities, and concrete public policy proposals for a just transition of food systems were on full display, IPES-Food said.

By not supporting a transition to environmentally friendly and low-emission agriculture, the agreement has left the global food system—and the billions who depend on it—highly vulnerable to the very climate shocks it helps cause, experts said.

“Food solutions were on display everywhere around COP30—from the 80 tonnes of local and agroecological meals served to concrete proposals for tackling hunger—but none of this made it into the negotiating rooms or the final agreement,” said Elisabetta Recine, IPES-Food panel expert and president of the Brazilian National Food and Nutrition Security Council (Consea), in a statement.

“Despite all the talk, negotiators failed to act, and the lived realities of people most affected by hunger, poverty, and climate shocks went unheard.”

Big Oil and Big Ag, Bigger voice

More than 300 industrial agriculture lobbyists were registered as delegates to COP30. They are blamed for influencing discussions and promoting false solutions to climate change.

“COP30 was supposed to be the Implementation COP—where words turned into action,” Danielle Nierenberg, an expert on sustainable agriculture and food issues and President of Food Tank, told IPS. “But once again, corporate interests won over people, nature, and the future of our food and agriculture systems as part of the solution to the climate crisis.”

Raj Patel, IPES-Food panel expert and professor at the University of Texas, argues that agribusiness lobbyists captured COP30 to influence outcomes favoring industrial agriculture and big oil interests.

“Food systems are second only to oil and gas as a driver of the climate crisis, and unlike oil wells, they are also the first victim of the chaos they create, Patel noted.

Obstacles and Opportunities

Scientists have warned that carbon emissions, including those from agriculture, must be cut considerably if the world is to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 2°C or less.

Even if fossil fuel emissions were eliminated immediately, emissions from the global food system alone would make it impossible to limit warming to 1.5°C and difficult even to realize the 2°C target, scientists have said.

Selorm Kugbega, a Research Fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute, agrees that despite many promises made to tackle agriculture-linked emissions, COP30 turned out to be a damp squib for agrifood systems.

Initiatives such as RAIZ to restore 500 million hectares of degraded agricultural land by 2030 and TERRA to scale out climate solutions for smallholder farmers through blended finance, which were launched at COP30 omitted to highlight the effects of industrial food systems. Over 300 industrial agriculture lobbyists participated in discussions at COP30, leading to accusations of swaying the outcomes.

Kugbega observed that after several years of slow progress and momentum in integrating food systems in climate negotiations, COP30 should have been the opportunity to seal agriculture’s centrality in future COPs. However, it ended with no clear agreements on grant-based public finance for adaptation in agriculture or redirection of public funds that subsidize industrial systems.

The climate negotiations demonstrated power inequality in climate negotiations with the implicit protection of industrial agriculture interests, which weakened the credibility of any global efforts at mitigating agriculture-based emissions, Kugbega observed, highlighting that smallholders bear a high burden of climate risks and have little adaptation financing.

Kugbega argued the most powerful countries, which are generally less dependent on agriculture, tend to prioritize sectors such as energy and transport in climate negotiations. However, many least developed countries, particularly in Africa, are highly dependent on agriculture for employment and economic stability and face urgent climate risks.

“Yet these countries often lack the political influence to elevate agriculture and food systems as central issues in COP negotiations,” he said. “COP30 in Brazil presented a major opportunity to shift this imbalance, making the failure to position food systems at the center of the climate agenda particularly troubling.”

Frugal Financing for Food and Farmers

According to the Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) and the UN’s Standing Committee on Finance, agriculture receives a small and insufficient share of total global climate finance.

Of the available approximate total global climate finance of USD 1.3 trillion per year on average, agriculture gets around USD 35 billion per year. This is a huge shortfall given that food systems are estimated to be responsible for roughly one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions and are one of the sectors most vulnerable to climate impacts, according to the CPI. Worse still, smallholder farmers, who produce up to 80 percent of food in developing countries, only receive 0.3 percent—a striking imbalance, yet they feed the world and are more exposed to climate impacts.

Will COP31 Deliver?

While COP30 highlighted the need to tackle climate change impacts through the transformation of food systems, such as highlighted in the Belém Declaration on Hunger, Poverty and Human-Centered Climate Action, it remains to be seen if COP31 will deliver a positive outcome on food systems.

Waiting for COP31 to save the world is surrendering because agribusiness lobbyists do not take holidays, argues IPES-Food panel’s Raj Patel.

“The test is not whether diplomats can craft better language in Antalya, but whether farmers’ movements, indigenous movements, and climate movements can generate enough political pressure to make governments fear inaction more than they fear confronting corporate power,” he said.

COP31, to be hosted by Turkey with Australia as negotiations president in 2026 , is expected to prioritize an action agenda centered on adaptation finance, fossil fuel phase-out, adaptation in Small Island Developing States, and oceans.

While this agenda aligns with broader climate justice goals, it means food systems risk becoming indirectly addressed rather than explicitly championed, Kugbega said.

Given the stalled negotiations on financing sustainable agriculture transitions and the postponement of the Sharm el-Sheikh Joint Work on Agriculture, Kugbega said COP31 will likely focus more on developing new roadmaps and agreements than on full-scale implementation.

COP32 could be a greater opportunity for the implementation of the work program under Ethiopia’s COP32 presidency, given the country’s direct exposure to climate risks in agriculture, he noted.

“COP31 will likely shape whether the world arrives at COP32 ready to implement and operationalize sustainable food systems or once again be forced to renegotiate what is already known.”

This feature is published with the support of Open Society Foundations.

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