BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Nov 18 2025 (IPS) - As the COP30 entered its second week in Brazil, the urgency to tackle climate change has never been greater, as is the appetite to feed a growing world population.
In the high-stake negotiations expected to discuss climate finance, nature conservation, fossil fuels and renewable energy, farmers, activists and scientists call for food and agriculture to take center stage on the COP30 agenda.
In Zimbabwe’s Umguza District, farmer Agnes Moyo saw her neighbor’s maize—a national staple—wilt as severe drought hit. Yet her pearl millet thrived in simple hand basins dug in the ground where seed and manure were placed. She harvested ten [50-kilogram] bags of millet.
Thanks to conservation farming, known locally as Intwasa/Pfumvudza, Moyo had enough food to feed her family until the next planting season.
“Conservation farming is profitable and helped me harvest even during drought,” says Moyo. “Intwasa is a method farmers should adopt, especially for drought-tolerant crops like millet and sorghum.”
290 kms away in southeast Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, Elizabeth Mpofu is preparing her field for planting. Mpofu’s 10-hectare environmentally friendly farm grows sorghum, pearl millet, indigenous maize, finger millet, groundnuts, Bambara nuts, and pulses. Mpofu’s agroecology methods promote soil fertility, conserve water, and reject industrial pesticides.
“Agroecology strengthens food sovereignty by encouraging local production and consumption,” says Mpofu, who has practiced agroecology for 25 years. As a former General Coordinator of Via Campesina, a global organization representing 200 million peasants, she led campaigns that resulted in the approval of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas by the United Nations General Assembly in 2018.
She urges global leaders meeting at COP30 to support small-scale farmers and sustainable farming as a solution to combating climate change by implementing the UN Declaration of Rights of Peasants and Other People Living in the Rural Areas.
Sustainable food production is a blueprint to combat climate change. Experts note farming methods such as agroecology and conservation agriculture are lifelines for farmers grappling with climate change impacts.
The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) states that agrifood systems contribute one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions. But agriculture remains on the margins of climate action.
Transforming agrifood systems through sustainable food production, waste elimination and clean energy can help the world meet its climate goals, experts say.
While food and agriculture systems have been ignored in climate negotiations, that has changed, says Danielle Nierenberg, an expert on sustainable agriculture and food issues and President of Food Tank.
“COP30 is called the Implementation COP. Negotiators and civil society understand that agriculture has to be part of the conversation or we won’t be able to make enough progress toward limiting warming to 1.5 °C,” Nierenberg told IPS. “We need governments, the private sector, and philanthropy to make catalytic investments that will make agriculture more resilient to the climate crisis and help farmers not just survive but thrive.”
Ten years after the historic Paris Agreement’s pledge to keep global warming to 1.5°C, that target is fast slipping. COP30 has a tall order to produce a bold commitment to reducing planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions. In its framework, the Paris Agreement recognizes the critical role of agriculture and food systems in both climate change adaptation and mitigation.
Scientists note that agriculture has been affected by severe weather events, worsened by climate change. From frequent crippling droughts, flooding, high temperatures to ocean acidification, climate change has hit agriculture hard, triggering a food crisis.
An analysis study by the FAO shows that agriculture has been highly impacted by climate change, suffering losses of hundreds of billions of dollars annually—equivalent to 5 percent of the global agricultural GDP over three decades. Between 2007 and 2022, agriculture accounted for 23% of total disaster-related losses, with droughts responsible for over 65%.
Almost all countries have included agriculture in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) as a solution to climate change. A 2024 analysis by the FAO found that 94% of NDCs mention agriculture for adaptation and 91% for mitigation.
Countries have pledged to reduce methane emissions from livestock through improved feed and livestock breeding and reducing deforestation for farmland. At the same time, they are promoting carbon storage in the soil through agroforestry, conservation agriculture and agroecology.
Edward Mukiibi, Slow Food President, argues that food systems have not been central in climate change negotiations due to the powerful influence of agribusiness and fossil fuel lobbies.
“The current global climate architecture lacks a clear, formal negotiation track capable of addressing the complex, cross-cutting nature of food systems, allowing governments to focus on easier targets like transport and energy,” Mukiibi tells IPS. “This systemic failure lets industrial agriculture avoid accountability for its massive contribution to global emissions.”
“While the rhetoric around COP30 is strong, true optimism must be tempered by the persistent structural inertia of the global negotiations,” Mukiibi cautioned. “The failure to integrate agriculture was not an oversight; it was a deliberate exclusion to protect the dominant industrial model.”
“Ultimately, COP30 provides the platform and the language for change, but the political will to dismantle the profitable industrial ecosystem that fossil fuels enable remains the highest hurdle.
Fossil fuels are on the COP30 agenda. It remains to be seen whether the phase-out or phase-down of fossil fuels will win the day.
Agroecology works, but uptake slow
Fossil fuel-free food systems already exist, as seen in the practice of agroecology but the world is not embracing agroecology widely.
“That’s the fundamental political question of the global food crisis,” Mukiibi observed. “The world is not fully embracing agroecology because the current, fossil fuel-intensive industrial food system is engineered for centralized control and exponential corporate profit, which fundamentally clashes with the decentralized, autonomous nature of agroecology.”
“The core political issue in the global food crisis is that the current fossil fuel–intensive system is engineered for centralized control and corporate profit, clashing with agroecology’s decentralized, autonomous nature,” Mukiibi explains.
Teresa Anderson, ActionAid International’s Global Lead on Climate Justice, highlighted that agriculture has featured at climate negotiations where discussions have tackled adaptation, early warning systems, soils and livestock.
“We wait and see what the agriculture negotiations will come up with this year and the result next year. But the request for just transition negotiations is to make sure the just transition negotiations include agriculture. It is a parallel track and important to make sure the question of justice when transitioning is part of the just transition conversation.”
Fossil fuels are feeding the world. Global food systems have become a new area for the expansion of fossil fuels, detecting how we produce, eat and market, a report by the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) found.
The IPES-Food Fuel to Fork report calls for major shifts to delink fossil fuels from food systems.
Raj Patel, IPES-Food panel member and food research professor at the University of Texas, says global appetite to end this dependence is growing despite huge fossil fuel subsidies—USD 7 trillion annually, according to the World Bank.
“This isn’t a technology problem—it’s a political one. The sums involved are vast,” Patel tells IPS. “There are plenty of vested interests guarding this subsidy, but at the same time, USD 7 trillion means that there are huge savings to be gained by switching away from funding climate chaos and beginning to invest in agroecology—which is already delivering results in the real world, from soil health to food security.”
Food systems consume 15 percent of all fossil fuels and 40 percent of petrochemicals globally but food remains almost entirely sidelined in national climate pledges and international negotiations, says the IPES-Food report.
Tackling climate change is impossible without cutting fossil fuels out of food systems, researchers say, urging governments to seize the opportunity at this year’s COP30 in Brazil to phase out fossil fuel and agrochemical subsidies while shifting food and farming toward agroecology and resilient local food systems.
“Brazil has a powerful voice on climate and food—but it risks losing credibility if it says one thing at COP30 and does another in the Amazon,” said Patel. “Expanding fossil fuel production while hosting a climate summit is a contradiction too big to ignore. Brazil has a chance to lead—but it must walk the talk.”
This week, 43 countries and the European Union signed the Belém Declaration, pledging to place hunger and poverty alleviation at the center of climate action.
The Declaration commits to address the needs of small-scale farmers, fishers, pastoralists, and Indigenous peoples who are most affected by climate change and are stewards of sustainable food systems.
IPES-Food welcomed the declaration, noting that its implementation will test political courage.
Elisabetta Recine, IPES-Food panel expert and president of the Brazilian National Food and Nutrition Security Council (Consea), said Brazil has, in just two years, lifted 40 million people from hunger through political action that prioritized family farmers, Indigenous and traditional communities, and access to healthy local food.
“This declaration is about taking Brazil’s hunger-beating formula global,” Recine said in a statement. “The message is clear—tackling hunger, inequality, and climate change must go hand in hand. That’s a powerful message to open these international climate negotiations in Belém.”
IPS UN Bureau Report
This feature is published with the support of Open Society Foundations.
Excerpt:
Agroecology strengthens food sovereignty by encouraging local production and consumption. —Elizabeth Mpofu, Zimbabwean farmer