Food and environmental specialists have voiced strong concern following the conclusion of Brazil’s Cop30 summit, after negotiators failed to include any reference to the growing impact of climate change on global food systems in the final agreement. Reducing emissions from food production is considered essential for meeting international decarbonisation goals. The sector is responsible for roughly a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, generated through livestock farming, food processing, waste management and methane released from rice paddies.
From an adaptation standpoint, the omission is equally troubling. Around 500 million people worldwide are smallholder farmers, and their livelihoods are increasingly jeopardised by erratic climatic conditions. An estimated two billion people depend directly on these small-scale producers, who collectively generate about one-third of the world’s food.
Haseeb Bakhtary of the consultancy Climate Focus said negotiators missed a critical opportunity. “It is extremely disappointing that food systems and agriculture were not explicitly addressed,” he said. “Many of us anticipated clear recognition of the need for food system transformation, but that has not materialised.”
Seb Osborn of the non-profit Mercy For Animals expressed similar frustration. He noted that the final agreement referenced sectors such as energy and deforestation but failed to acknowledge the food system’s role in both emissions and vulnerability. “It was an unexpected and discouraging gap,” he said.
A UN report released during the summit estimated that extreme weather events have caused agricultural losses amounting to $3.26tn (£2.49tn) over the past 33 years—equivalent to roughly 4% of global agricultural GDP. With Brazil, one of the world’s largest agricultural producers, hosting this year’s summit, many observers had hoped for stronger commitments on food and farming.
According to Bakhtary, one complication is that food systems differ widely between countries, making negotiations more complex. “Even so, the agreement could have included an acknowledgement that food system reform is necessary everywhere, shaped by local realities,” he added.
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Raj Patel, a research professor at the University of Texas, offered a more critical interpretation, arguing that industrial agriculture interests had too much influence. “This is not a failure; it is a form of capture,” he said. “Until governments prioritise communities over corporate agendas, these negotiations will continue to fall short.” In Belém, on the edge of the Amazon Rainforest, the consequences of climate disruption are already evident.
A short journey from the city centre leads to Combu Island, where cocoa farmer Dona Nena cultivates cacao on land her family has tended for over a century. Surrounded by forest trees, she produces artisanal chocolate but says her harvests have been increasingly unsettled by erratic weather.
Standing among her cocoa pods, she explained how rainfall patterns have shifted. “We’re meant to be in the rainy season, but the rains haven’t arrived,” she said. “By now, we should have far more fruit ready for the December harvest. Last year we realised the seasons were changing—the harvest is smaller, and some fruits are malformed.”
If financial support were available, she said, water infrastructure—such as pumps and simple dam systems—would be her priority. Speaking shortly before the summit’s final deal was reached, she added: “We hope Cop30 will recognise the needs of smallholders, and invest in better public services, from water and sanitation to education and security.”
Florence Collenette, senior technical manager for climate at the Fairtrade Foundation, said the challenges Nena described are widespread. “Every day we hear from farmers confronting increasingly severe weather extremes,” she said. “One cocoa producer in Côte d’Ivoire told us erratic rainfall caused his cooperative’s yields to drop by more than half last year.” She added that although smallholders grow more than a third of the world’s food, they remain largely absent from global decision-making.
For producers like Nena, the most relevant negotiations concerned climate adaptation—financial and technical support for communities facing intensifying impacts.
Aside from the main outcome document, the other major agreement at Cop30 was the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA), which sets a framework for countries to measure progress under the Paris Agreement. Here, food systems did receive some recognition, with references to food production, research and development, supply resilience and land degradation.
Yet Osborn argued that the discussions were neither transparent nor sufficiently robust. “Meaningful debate on indicators only began late in the summit, and most of it happened behind closed doors,” he said. “What we have now is vague, and many countries will struggle to report reliably.”
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Bakhtary described the reference to food systems as a “minor victory”, but said the real disappointment lay in the associated adaptation finance plan, which aims to triple funding for developing countries by 2035. He is sceptical that the proposed funds will reach local farming communities in any meaningful way.
