I’m a campaigner with Greenpeace Nordic, working right now from the Brazilian city of Belem, at the mouth of the Amazon river. If, like me, you were waiting outside the COP30 climate talks this week, you might have seen someone holding a sign exposing what is really happening inside. The reality? Industrial agriculture is out in full force.
From JBS, the world’s largest meat company, to pesticide giants like Bayer, global agribusiness is at COP30 to make you forget that food systems contribute around a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, and instead, convince you that it actually is a solution to global heating.
COP30 should be a defining moment for the climate. With political leaders gathered in the Amazon, there is a real opportunity to close the 1.5°C ambition gap, have robust decisions towards ending deforestation, hold big polluters accountable and avert the worst impacts of climate change.
That’s why we’re urging governments to see through the corporate smokescreens, deliver a Forest Action Plan, and channel funding to Indigenous and local communities, the real climate leaders already protecting forests and biodiversity – add your name here to demand global leaders Respect the Amazon.
Ask political leaders to act on their promises to stop Amazon destruction.
Join the movementBut from glitzy receptions to side events, press conferences and sponsored pavilions, Big Ag is everywhere you look at COP30, with a very different agenda. Over 300 corporate lobbyists are throwing around buzzwords like ‘climate-smart agriculture’ and ‘no additional warming’ to divert attention away from the rampant deforestation, spiralling emissions and unchecked pollution upon which the industry is based.
JBS’s COP30 showcase: Greenwash and the false promise of “climate leadership” from Big Ag
Few companies epitomise Big Ag’s efforts to gloss over its abysmal environmental record than Brazilian beef behemoth JBS.
JBS has been repeatedly linked to deforestation, corruption scandals and indigenous land rights violations, including as recently as this year. According to a recent report by Greenpeace Nordic, IATP, Foodrise and Friends of the Earth, JBS is estimated to be by far the largest greenhouse gas emitter amongst 45 major meat and dairy companies examined. And emissions from this sector contribute the bulk of the whole agricultural sector’s total emissions.
Despite this, JBS has long sought to cast itself as a climate leader, with admittedly limited success. In fact, just days before COP30 began it settled a lawsuit with the New York Office of the Attorney General for USD1.1 million over alleged greenwashing. Now it is facing a fresh legal challenge from NGO Mighty Earth over its net-zero claims.
This track record might make JBS an unlikely candidate to spearhead the meat industry’s greenwashing efforts, but JBS is steaming ahead. In corporate presentations and events at COP30, it has tried to convince the world that livestock farming can be a solution to, instead a driver of the climate crisis.
According to Bloomberg, JBS’s poster child for this supposed breakthrough is Fazenda Roncador, one of Brazil’s largest cattle and crop farms. In the run-up to COP30 JBS touted Roncador for introducing practices which the farm claims to have enabled them to achieve a “carbon-negative” balance since 2014.
They argue greenhouse gas emissions from livestock production have been calculated all wrong and that regenerative livestock farming in tropical climates (“tropical agriculture”) means farms can capture more carbon than they emit. In short – crop and livestock integration results in soils taking up more carbon than the cows kept on the same farm emit as methane – a super-potent gas that scientists estimate has driven at least a third of warming in recent years.
It’s not just JBS jumping on this snazzy new concept. Several other agribusiness giants are throwing their weight behind this narrative at COP 30. Even Brazil’s “special envoy for agriculture,” Roberto Rodrigues, is telling COP attendees that his country can take the lead in “low-carbon tropical agriculture.”
Behind the greenwashing curtain
However, as is so often the case with Big Ag, all is not what it seems. Both Brazil’s research institute Embrapa and Kansas State University were contracted to validate Roncador’s ‘carbon-negative’ claims. To the best of our knowledge, neither has published comprehensive details on their results or the methodology used. A lack of transparency like that should raise red flags for policymakers and investors alike.
Furthermore, there is always a limit to how much carbon grassland soil can hold. Once the soil reaches equilibrium with the ecosystem it stops absorbing carbon — but cows grazing on that land don’t stop emitting methane! So while “regenerative agriculture” can have positive effects on nature and biodiversity, it is no magic wand for the climate. Scientists warn that additional storage of carbon in soil simply cannot offset the huge climate impact from ongoing livestock emissions, particularly methane.
Whatismore, major actors in the sector, including Roncador, aim to profit from selling carbon credits based on these uncertain figures, while, at best, farms like Roncador just repay the soil carbon debt caused by years of mis-management leaving pastures degraded. And, when rainforest is chopped down to make way for pasture (as 90% of deforested areas in the Brazilian Amazon reportedly are), it leaves a colossal carbon and biodiversity debt that no amount of soil sequestration can even begin to repay.
Better agriculture practices in some farms alone is not enough – it must be supported to become the norm across all of Brazil and, crucially, combined with the full elimination of deforestation from supply chains, alongside binding targets to reduce agricultural emissions, and a transition to agroecology.
Beyond Big Ag
The above example is just a snapshot into Big Ag’s lobbying efforts at COP. Hang around COP’s dedicated ‘Agrizone’ and you will hear lobbyists singing the virtues of the industry’s favourite fixes, from carbon offsets to ‘tropical agriculture’.
You might hear new – and deeply concerning – efforts to reclassify methane emissions under the banner of ‘no additional warming’, allowing major livestock producers to continue producing dangerously high levels of methane.
But scratch the surface and you will quickly find the ugly reality concealed beneath: our current food system is not designed to ‘feed the world’ but is instead supercharging climate change and destroying ecosystems like the Amazon.
That’s why at COP30, it’s so urgent that governments see through Big Ag’s greenwash. We urgently need effective action that not just halts, but reverses deforestation. Only then can we really start repairing the damage that Big Ag has wrought on the world’s greatest rainforest and avoid irreversible tipping points.
Add your name to the Respect the Amazon petition and demand that leaders at COP30 deliver a strong Forest Action Plan to implement the goal of halting and reversing deforestation and forest degradation and work to keep the 1.5°C goal within reach.
Jehki Härkönen is a campaigner at Greenpeace Nordic.
Ask political leaders to act on their promises to stop Amazon destruction.
Join the movement
Discussion
You have made some decent points there. I looked on the internet for additional information about the issue and found most people will go along with your views on this site.
COP needs EVERYONE to get on board, yes, that means you as well Trump.
We must act immediately, too much time has been wasted already, this planet has little of surviving for much longer!
The amazon forest is crucial for the survival of our planet.. not to mention countless species and indigenous people. It must not be exploited any more.
We Humans are Part and Parcel of Nature and Not Above Nature, It's Just the Matter of Ours "Sensible Scientific Mind" That We All Think Ourselves to Be Above Everything in Nature BUT One Day When Death Dawns on Us Then We Also Become Helpless, It's Time We Start Protecting and Nurturing the Nature. Thnkyou One and All.
Those of us who subscribe to these messages because we already see the environmental destruction and already understand the consequences, desperately want ALL governments to stop promoting and enabling destructive and non-renewable industrial and commercial projects, and the profit-above-all-else corporations behind them. But we - the concerned and active and informed citizens of the world - are in a minority. Governments are only concerned to be elected and to stay in power. They will not act to reverse the destruction that they are complicit in creating, unless a majority of citizens raise their voices and begin using their votes to threaten the corrupt and undemocratic relationship between private and corporate wealth, and political power, that results in destructive policies. We are entering a time of modern feudalism, where all wealth and property - material and intellectual property - is being hoarded by a tiny minority of the global population. A minority who conspire together to enrich themselves as they impoverish everyone else, beginning with those who have the least. They represent the epitome of hubris - a belief in their own genius, and that wealth will save them from any global crisis or catastrophe. We need to amplify this message. We need to get the majority of global citizens to start acting to rescue the future for themselves, and to demand true representation from their governments. I do have hope that this will happen. Because history shows us that it always does happen. That people will rise up against corruption, and against tyranny, and against divisive fascism, and work together to deliver a sustainable future for all. We are global citizens, now more than ever. And we must work together, without division. The threat is global - the response must be global.
Coming towards the end of my life I am appalled by the damage my generation has done to the planet. For much of the time there was no information on what was happening, but governments do now know that the rain forest needs to grow and survive and should be top of the priorities being set if we want to have a planet that we can continue to live on.
Its a disgrace. Greed is ruining the world
We must DO THE RIGHT THING NOW. There is no more time to waste.
Please stop the destruction. We need forests for so much help to the planet, animals and people. It’s time to help the planet not make it worse. It’s all about money and not about the environment.
Hallo , es ist dringest notwendig das die verantwortlichen Regierungen , die ein Volk vertreten dem Wunsch entsprechend verfolgen.Viele negative Umweltbedingungen sind nicht vertretbar , Versprechungen durch die Verantwortlichen werden nicht umgesetzt , offensichtlich sollen Probleme/Katastrophen vermieden und verhindert werden , allerdings folgt nach jeder geplanten Aktion eine neue Probleamatik auf , die von der Grundproblematik abweicht. Die Menschen wissen letztendlich nicht mehr was wichtig ist , abgeshen hiervon sind Medien vorrangig , somit entfällt das logische Denken. Bei einen guten IQ und Schulausbildungen dürften zahlreiche negative Handlungen nicht entstehen. Durch ein vernünftiges Handel der Verantwortlichen bei hohen Gehalt wären sehr viele Probleme nicht entstanden , es liegt ein Mangel an Kompetenzen und Wissen bis zur Dummheit vor. Es ist nicht vertretbar die Natur dergl. zu zerstören um diese wieder unmöglich zu neutralisieren. Kurzum : Inkompitente verantwortliche Führsorgeorganisatoren /Beschäftigte müssen abrupt wegen quantitative Handlungen werden. Pers. werde ich weiterhin soweit möglich nicht untätig sein Verbleibe mit besten Grüßen Rainer Merschel
I cannot believe that large numbers of both fossil and agri-business lobbyists have been allowed to enter this climate and nature conference. These people are only interested in profits and do not care about wrecking the planet's rain forests. Why doesn't the Brazilian government get these people out of the conference.? I thought that Luis da Silva cared about the Amazon rain forest or is he just another lame duck full of blah blah blah!
Wovon sollen die Enkelkinder der Lobbyisten leben? Die brauchen den Planeten genauso wie meine Enkelkinder. Hört auf! WIR MÜSSEN DEN PLANETEN ALLE ZUSAMMEN SCHÜTZEN!!!