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food systems
Why Climate Action Must Start on Our Plates
Rebalancing industrial animal farming cuts emissions, limits disease risk, protects biodiversity, and strengthens food security, reminding us that human, animal, and planetary well-being are inseparable.
Nov 10, 2025
Every year, world leaders gather to tackle the climate crisis. They promise to cut emissions, restore forests, and invest in a greener future. Yet one of the most powerful tools for change often goes unmentioned: the food on our plates.
After more than a decade of working in, and with, the United Nations, I’ve learned something crucial: Food sits at the center of everything we are trying to protect—our climate, biodiversity, health, and livelihoods. This year, for the first time, food systems are formally part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of Parties (UNFCCC COP30) Action Agenda—a long-overdue recognition of their central role in solving the climate crisis. Still, too often, they remain the missing piece in global climate discussions.
The science is clear. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that food systems—from how we grow and process food to how we transport and waste it—account for about a third of global greenhouse gas emissions.
The message is simple: We cannot fix the climate crisis while ignoring what we eat.
A Hopeful Solution Within Reach
This reality should give us hope. Food offers a solution that is immediate, inclusive, and within reach. Every meal is a chance to make things better.
Plant-rich eating is not a trend or a restriction. It is a climate solution, backed by science and rooted in fairness. Research in Nature shows plant-rich diets produce 75% less climate-heating emissions compared with high-meat diets, while using 75% less land and 54% less water. By eating this way, we can cut global food emissions by nearly one-third, improve public health, and ease the pressure on forests and ecosystems.
As negotiations unfold in Belém, COP30 offers a historic opportunity to embed food systems into the heart of climate policy.
But consumption is only part of the picture. World leaders must change how food is produced. Industrial farming, which relies heavily on deforestation and feed crop production, drives much of the problem. At COP30, hosted in Brazil, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has pledged bold action to protect forests, including a $1 billion commitment to the Tropical Forests Forever Fund. Reducing the expansion of soy and maize for feed—a major driver of deforestation—is essential not only for reducing emissions, but also for helping communities adapt, especially in vulnerable regions.
At Compassion in World Farming, we see this every day in our work with farmers, policymakers, and communities. Agroecological and regenerative practices, such as crop rotation, help restore soils and reduce the need for synthetic fertilizers. They also align with traditional and Indigenous knowledge that works with nature rather than against it.
Why This Matters to Me
As a father of a Gen Alpha child, I think about what kind of planet my daughter will inherit. We eat three times a day, every day, and we will do it for the rest of our lives. Our choices shape whether her world is sustainable or fragile.
I have been part of countless UN meetings and summits on climate, food systems, and sustainable development. In the past year, I have witnessed growing momentum across the UN system to integrate food into climate discussions, especially following the UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) and the COP28 Declaration on Food and Agriculture’s recommendations. This shift is encouraging and signals the world is ready to treat food systems as central to climate action.
When I look at my daughter’s future, I want to believe that we will have the courage to connect these dots: to see that what we grow and eat is not just personal preference but global policy.
What Leaders Must Do
At COP30 in Belém, governments have a chance to change course. To do so, they must:
- Integrate food into climate plans. Countries’ climate pledges, known as Nationally Determined Contributions, should include agriculture, livestock, strategies to eat more sustainably, and reducing food waste. They must move away from industrial farming and feed crop expansion toward regenerative agricultural practices that cut emissions and build resilience.
- Make plant-rich diets a climate priority. This is not about telling people what to eat but enabling sustainable, lower-emission choices that realistically align with the planet’s ecological boundaries. In practical terms, the recently launched EAT-Lancet 2.0 report, supported by leading scientists and policymakers, offers a clear and actionable framework for countries to adopt healthier, climate-friendly diets.
- Support farmers through a just transition. Those least responsible for climate change, who tend to be the most vulnerable populations, must be supported with finance, capacity building, and fair access to markets.
These shifts must fit local realities. In the Global South, diets, cultural traditions, and nutritional needs vary widely. Supporting plant-rich diets must go hand in hand with respecting local contexts and ensuring food sovereignty.
A New Kind of Climate Leadership
Reframing food as climate action must include the recognition that human, animal, and planetary health are deeply connected and dependent. Rebalancing industrial animal farming cuts emissions, limits disease risk, protects biodiversity, and strengthens food security, reminding us that human, animal, and planetary well-being are inseparable.
As negotiations unfold in Belém, COP30 offers a historic opportunity to embed food systems into the heart of climate policy—not just as a mitigation tool, but as a pathway for adaptation, resilience, and equity. Global action on food must reflect its true potential: to drive down emissions, regenerate ecosystems, and chart a more sustainable future for everyone.
This is the climate leadership we need: bold, inclusive, and rooted in the principle that climate action begins with what we eat.
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In the Year of Climate Finance, We Need to See Billions Flow Towards Transforming Our Food Systems
A growing coalition of philanthropic organizations, under the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, is committing to scale up funding for agroecological food systems to address intersecting challenges across climate, food and nature.
Jun 23, 2024
This year climate finance is all the talk. As the UN Climate Conference in Bonn wraps up and the stage is set for COP29 later this year, expectations are high for governments to agree on a new climate finance package that will tackle the worsening climate and ecological crises.
In many countries, food production is the climate frontline. Nearly 95% of nationally determined contributions (NDCs) include adaptation and mitigation actions in the agriculture sector yet fail to address the full food system.
It only takes one climate disaster—a drought, flood or heatwave—for entire villages to spiral into debt, poverty and hunger, impacting regional food systems and economies.
Responding to the climate and nature crises, will require a transformation of food systems backed by a rapid redirection of funds to flip agriculture from being part of the problem to offering solutions. Last year, 25 philanthropies—coordinated by the Global Alliance for the Future of Food—called for a tenfold increase in funding towards agroecological and regenerative approaches. Philanthropy, multilateral and bilateral organizations and governments must scale and align funding to catalyze a transition to 50% regenerative and agroecological systems by 2040 and to ensure all agriculture and food systems are transitioning by 2050. Read the full report.
Right now, industrialized food systems account for one-third of greenhouse gas emissions and at least 15% of fossil fuel use. This broken system—the ‘true cost’ of food production—comes at a staggering $12 trillion a year, according to the FAO last year. It manifests in hefty medical bills and the degradation of our soil, air, water, and biodiversity.
In this decisive decade, the way we grow, consume and package our food cannot be ignored or siloed in an all-hands-on-deck effort to meet our climate and biodiversity goals.
Moving away from a fossil-fuel based food system will not be cheap. It requires unlocking $250-430 billion per year, but this is in fact cheaper— than what is currently spent each year on harmful agricultural subsidies ($635 billion each year) and a fraction of the true cost of current food production.
Right now, investments into agroecology and regenerative approaches by the philanthropic, public, and the private sectors is estimated to be just $44 billion per year.
As representatives of leading philanthropy we are committed to scaling up funding into agroecological and regenerative approaches as a means to leverage existing policies that address the challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss. By embracing agroecology, communities have better control over the food they produce to future-proof their livelihoods and to make decisions to strengthen food sovereignty based on locally-tested solutions and knowledge.
There is a political appetite to make this transition and intergrate agroecological approaches into policy.
For example, the Tanzania government has worked with national civil society organizations to develop a National Ecological Organic Agriculture Strategy and implementation plan. Similar agroecology strategies are being developed in other Eastern African countries, like Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda. Priority actions include making agroecological and bio-inputs available, ensuring avenues for knowledge exchange and skills-sharing among farmers, expanding market access for food producers, mainstreaming village land use planning, fostering investments across the value chain, and supporting coordination, capacity building and governance at all levels.
And they’re not alone. In the Andes, smallholder farmers are stewarding thousands of varieties of native potatoes, preserving their cultural heritage, supporting their livelihoods and providing food for domestic consumption while also growing new markets in collaboration with researchers, civil society experts and other food system actors. Mountains are unique ecosystems, many of which are biodiversity hotspots and home to Indigenous Peoples. Mountain ecosystems are generally forgotten in national and international discussions, but are critical to biodiversity and resilience, especially in the face of climate change. The Andes are also not an island—they are critical for the existence of the Amazon and in turn the Amazon has a dramatic influence on the climate of the Andes, highlighting the interconnectedness that very often is broken by industrial agriculture. Support for Indigenous and agroecological approaches is vital to sustain the important contributions made by smallholder farmers in building thriving and sustainable local and regional food economies.
In this decisive decade, the way we grow, consume and package our food cannot be ignored or siloed in an all-hands-on-deck effort to meet our climate and biodiversity goals. It’s a race against time and we urgently need to see the money—in the tens of billions of dollars—move towards real solutions, particularly where policies are ready to be turned into action.
We are calling on governments, the private sector and other philanthropic partners to join us in this initiative and commit to scaling up their investments so communities, Indigenous Peoples and the health and the future of all living beings and the planet are at the center of our financial decisions.
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I Loved a Sheep and I Also Loved Lamb Chops. Until I Realized the Two Were Not Compatible
We can build a more peaceful and healthy world right now, so let’s start eating for the future we want today.
Jan 21, 2024
I have many friends who adore their pets and regularly post photos of them on social media. Sometimes these same friends also post photos of their barbecues, or rather barbecued animals. My hunter and fisher friends often post selfies with the animals they’ve killed. They hold a fish dangling from a hook and smile unselfconsciously as the fish suffocates. Or they crouch behind the not-yet-cold bear they’ve shot, beaming with pride, with their beloved companion hunting dog by their side.
Our relationship with animals is full of contradictions—contradictions I understand well. I grew up an animal lover in New York City, stopping on the street for every dog I saw, begging for a dog of my own as a child, sobbing during any movie where an animal suffered. In high school, I befriended a sheep at the children’s zoo in Central Park. I named him Wooly Baba and visited him every week. Whenever I’d arrive and call his name, he’d come running up to me and lift his head for a neck scratch. I loved that sheep.
I also loved lamb chops. In fact, lamb chops were my favorite food. But one day, I could no longer pretend that there was some essential difference between Wooly Baba and the lamb chop on my plate. I considered becoming a vegetarian, but the truth was I didn’t want to give up the foods I liked, so I told myself that because the animals on my plate were already dead, I might as well eat them. I didn’t yet understand the laws of supply and demand. I didn’t realize that our dollar is our vote that says: “Good job. Do it again.”
Eventually, I came to understand that my choices had consequences, and that when I allowed my desires to eclipse my values by eating animals, I was actively participating in the suffering of those I claimed to love. My transformation from omnivore to pescatarian to vegetarian to vegan spanned eight years. I was a slow learner. Or rather, I was slow to commit to living more deeply aligned with my values. It’s true that in the 1970s and 80s, there wasn’t a lot of information on the abuses that occurred in modern farming, and few people had heard the word "vegan." Back then, “substitutes” for meat, dairy, and eggs tasted pretty awful.
Eventually, I came to understand that my choices had consequences, and that when I allowed my desires to eclipse my values by eating animals, I was actively participating in the suffering of those I claimed to love.
How different it is now. Many, if not most, people know that there is rampant cruelty in animal agriculture. It takes little time to learn that soy milk has basically the same amount of protein as cow’s milk but without antibiotic residues, pus, and the toxins that get carried up the food chain, nor to discover the terrible abuse perpetrated on dairy cows in typical factory farms. Many have become aware that fisheries are collapsing one after another as we trawl the oceans and net everything in the path, including the dolphins and turtles we are more inclined to love. And whereas it was once challenging to be vegan, now it’s easy.
I’ve heard so many reasons for not choosing a vegan diet, among them:
“I could never give up cheese and ice cream.”
“You can’t get enough protein on a vegan diet.”
“I have the wrong blood type.”
“We are omnivores, and it’s natural to eat animals. Other animals do so, so why shouldn’t we?”
I understand. I’m a CrossFitter, well aware of the protein needs associated with weight-lifting and high-intensity exercise. But the reality is that It’s almost impossible to become protein-deficient on a healthy vegan diet that meets one’s caloric needs, even if one is an athlete.
I also love the taste of meat, cheese, and eggs and know first-hand that it can be hard to give up the foods one loves, even if many of the plant-based alternatives now taste identical to those foods.
I have the same blood type that a naturopath claimed necessitated meat in one’s diet, but because there is no scientific evidence to support this claim, I have happily continued with my vegan diet for nearly 35 years, along with tens of millions of other vegans, and together our health and longevity provide quite a lot of counter-evidence that the blood type claim is bunk.
And I, too, recognize that non-human omnivores eat animals and that my body can digest meat as well as plants. That doesn’t mean I need to cause unnecessary suffering and death to animals just to please my taste buds.
I believe that one day, the vast majority of us will not eat slaughtered animals or force animals to produce milk and eggs for us.
As a humane educator—someone who teaches about the interconnected issues of animal protection, human rights, and environmental sustainability—I know that most people resist dietary changes even after they’ve learned that their food choices cause immense suffering, not to mention environmental damage. Such resistance can fade when we pay attention to, and educate ourselves about, the consequences of our actions. When the inconsistencies between our values and actions become so stark; when the destruction animal agriculture is wreaking on the planet becomes so urgent; when delicious vegan options become so abundant; and when the desire to live more compassionately becomes so compelling, we can and do change.
I believe that one day, the vast majority of us will not eat slaughtered animals or force animals to produce milk and eggs for us. This day will come when enough people have shifted their diets, and food companies have shifted along with them, changing the food production system to meet the ever-growing demand for humane, sustainable, and equitably produced food. When this critical mass causes a systemic shift, the rest of the population will shift, too. We eat what we eat because that is what is served to us at our dinner tables as children, in school cafeterias, and in restaurants and convenience stores. If what’s served is different, we’ll naturally go along with our new and more humane diets.
How wonderful it would be to speed this change and not wait and look back regretfully wondering why we held on so tenaciously to cruel systems, petting our dog while feasting on bacon; filling our bird feeders while chowing down on chicken wings. We can build a more peaceful and healthy world right now, so let’s start eating for the future we want today. A more compassionate world is just a meal away.
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