COP30 (30th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change or UNFCCC) in Belém, Brazil, has concluded. But no real progress was made toward a radical transformation of agri-food systems to address the climate crisis. If anything, COP30 further tightened the corporate grip on the global climate agenda. This is the reality that the Brazilian presidency cannot deny despite its attempt to stress collective action, community, Indigenous rights, South-South cooperation, and justice in its so-called Global Mutirão.
Agriculture at the margins
The Sharm el-Sheikh Joint Work on the Implementation of Climate Action on Agriculture and Food Security (SJWA) is the official space within the climate COP process where formal talks on agri-food systems take place. In Belém, the SJWA negotiations failed to yield a substantive outcome. Instead, negotiators agreed to further delay the discussions until SB64 (the 64th sessions of the UNFCCC Subsidiary Bodies) in June 2026.
However, our analysis of the draft SJWA decision, released in the first week of COP30, shows that negotiators continue to favor corporate-driven, techno-centric approaches, even as it mentions agroecology, Indigenous knowledge, and climate adaptation finance. Climate journalism and analysis website Carbon Brief reported that some developed countries sought to introduce “language on precision agriculture, AI (artificial intelligence), and basically a lot of corporate greenwash” into the draft SJWA text before discussions were ultimately suspended and moved to the SB64 meeting in Bonn, Germany, next year. SJWA’s mandate expires in 2026, and it is unclear what shape it will take after COP31 in Antalya, Turkey.
A political signal without food or farmers
Nonetheless, cover decisions, such as the Global Mutirão, provide a political signal that can potentially build momentum for future COP negotiations. They can address key and urgent issues even when these are not discussed or no decisions are made (e.g., agri-food under the SJWA in Belém) during formal talks. But as COP30’s umbrella political text, Global Mutirão, shows a lack of political commitment by failing to mention agriculture, food systems, or smallholder farmers. This omission is important because agriculture and food systems, dominated by Big Agribusiness, account for approximately one-third of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and support the livelihoods of billions, particularly in the Global South.
While it repeatedly mentions “nature” and the need for joint action on climate change and biodiversity loss, the Global Mutirão overlooks proven, community-based strategies, such as people-led agroecology, that can systemically address both crises.
The absence of agri-food and agroecology in the Global Mutirão highlights the contradictions of Brazil’s presidency of the annual climate talks. On one hand, Brazil claimed that 30% of all food served at the official conference came from family farms and agroecological production, under what it called the “Na Mesa da COP30.” More than a catering choice, the program is supposed to be a political statement that agroecology is feasible. On the other hand, the notable exclusion of agri-food and agroecology from the Global Mutirão speaks to the undisputed and ongoing dominance of the big agribusiness agenda in the official climate talks, which systematically undermines agroecology and food sovereignty.
Big Ag wins, agroecology loses
A joint investigation by the climate investigative journalism group DeSmog and the British news outlet The Guardian revealed that more than 300 lobbyists representing Big Agribusiness interests, including industrial cattle farming, commodity grains, and pesticides, were present in Belém to influence the negotiations. The number is 14% higher than at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, last year. A quarter of these lobbyists attended COP30 as members of official national delegations.
The Brazilian presidency, through the state-owned Embrapa (Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation), provided space in Belém for these profit-seeking interests via its AgriZone pavilion, where Bayer (the world’s second largest pesticide company and largest seed company) and Nestlé (the world’s largest food and beverage company) are major sponsors. The AgriZone is a dedicated exhibition and discussion venue at COP30 focused on agriculture, agribusiness, and climate-related food system topics. Brazil, often cited as the third- or fourth-largest agricultural producer globally, is among the top country markets for both Bayer and Nestlé.
Beyond the AgriZone, Bayer also established “Casa Bayer,” a separate event hub in Belém, where it hosted discussions with businesses, governments, and civil society on sustainability and climate issues at the UN climate conference. Nestlé also organized panels and exhibitions during COP30. These corporate giants are notorious for their high-emission core profit models (i.e., Bayer’s synthetic inputs and Nestlé’s food and livestock supply chain), links to monoculture and deforestation, and promotion of false solutions such as climate-smart agriculture, carbon markets and offsets, and genetic engineering, among others, to justify and sustain their lucrative but destructive operations.
Adaptation without transformation
The undeniable presence and influence of the Big Ag lobby in Belém explain why and how systemic reforms in agri-food production and distribution, such as through people-led agroecology, continue to be sidelined in climate talks, favoring the status quo of corporate, chemical-intensive agri-food systems through techno-fixes and greenwashing. One of the major official decisions made at COP30, as part of its formal agenda, is the adoption of a package of 59 adaptation indicators to help track outcomes under the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) and measure progress toward it.
However, these indicators are not only voluntary but also not legally binding. In terms of food and agriculture-related metrics (e.g., extent or level of climate-resilient food and agricultural production, agricultural yields in managed areas, and the proportion of families with equitable access to adequate food or nutrition as outcomes of adaptation), the GGA indicators are framed as outcomes of adaptation efforts rather than as indicators that require systemic transformation of food systems (i.e., through agroecology).
Meanwhile, COP30 saw a surge in new or updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) submitted for the 2025 cycle, with around 113 countries submitting by Belém. NDCs are the national climate action plans (i.e., commitment to reduce GHG emissions and adapt to climate impacts) that countries parties to the 2015 Paris Agreement update every five years. While more countries are featuring food systems and low-emission agriculture more prominently in their NDCs than before, serious gaps remain. Many NDC entries related to agriculture are often vague or focused on technical fixes and usually refer to contentious “nature-based solutions,” “bioeconomy,” or “sustainable intensification”. They still do not provide specific commitments to support smallholders or promote agroecology, nor do they set measurable targets to reduce GHG emissions or deforestation.
No money for genuine climate actions
Lastly, climate finance remains severely insufficient and essentially nonexistent for transformative programs such as agroecology. The Global Mutirão issued a political call to triple adaptation finance from USD 40 billion to USD 120 billion annually by 2035. However, it falls well short of what is needed and is a long-term aim rather than an immediate source of new funding. While accounting for about a third of GHG emissions, agri-food systems receive only about 7% of total climate finance. Belém did not produce binding, large-scale finance commitments for agri-food systems transformation, much less for agroecological transformation or food sovereignty pathways.
What Belém produced are several climate finance initiatives for food and agriculture through the Brazilian presidency’s Action Agenda. These flows are neither legally binding climate finance commitments nor aligned with the public interest. Instead, they depend on private capital interests that often undermine public accountability, transparency, and community control—core principles for advancing agroecology and food sovereignty as genuine climate solutions.
Climate justice through people’s movements
COP30 in Belém once again exposed the profound disconnect between climate rhetoric and political reality: corporate influence continues to dominate the agenda, agroecology and food sovereignty remain marginal in formal negotiations, and climate finance is steered toward voluntary, market-driven initiatives rather than binding, transformative commitments. The sidelining of agri-food systems in key political decisions, the capture of official spaces by Big Agribusiness, and the persistence of techno-fix “solutions” all reinforce a model that exacerbates ecological breakdown and social inequality, while promoting corporate profits.
If meaningful climate action is to be realized, it will not come from closed negotiating rooms dominated by corporate interests. It must be built through sustained political actions, organizing, and solidarity beyond the COP process—by farmers, Indigenous Peoples, social movements, and allies demanding people-led agroecology, food sovereignty, and climate justice as non-negotiable conditions for the planet and humanity to truly confront the climate crisis. ###
Arnold Padilla is the Deputy Executive Director of PAN Asia Pacific (PANAP). He was in Belém, Brazil, as an observer at the official COP30 negotiations and participated in people’s movements that held counter-summits to promote agroecology, food sovereignty, and other people-led solutions to the climate crisis.
