This is the second in a three-part article examining how the UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) and related processes, including the upcoming UN Summit of the Future, preserve and deepen corporate control over food and agriculture–and why rural peoples are pushing back.
The UN Summit of the Future (SOTF) faced criticism when world leaders and Nobel laureates objected to removing the commitment to transition away from fossil fuels in the Zero Draft of the Pact for the Future. Although the UN reinstated the text, the incident highlights the summit’s hypocrisy. Despite its forward-looking claims, preparatory processes like the UN Food Systems Summit have often aimed to maintain an unjust, unequal, and unsustainable global order.
Endorsed by 159 nations, the COP28 UAE Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems, and Climate Action placed agriculture and food systems at the forefront of climate talks. According to the Secretary-General, this creates “a robust foundation for ongoing multi-stakeholder collaboration.” However, this ‘inclusive’ approach is dominated by wealthy governments, philanthro-capitalists, and institutions like the World Bank and World Trade Organization (WTO), often in partnership with large food and agriculture corporations. Strengthening the WTO is a key commitment of the UAE Declaration, signalling an intention to maintain corporate global value chains and neoliberal policies. Meanwhile, rural communities are marginalized in climate action and decision-making, their voices reduced to tokenism.
Keeping the neoliberal food trade regime up and running is essential not only to maintaining imperialist control of big corporations and rich countries over food systems. It also opens up new avenues of profiteering through facilitating the adoption of proprietary ‘climate-smart’ techno-fixes ala-Green Revolution; closely aligning food and agriculture with carbon markets and other market-led schemes through digital technology; and enhancing company reputation and consumer brands through greenwashing.
AIM4Climate’s real aim: Corporate domination
The US government has notably taken the lead in efforts at the nexus of climate action and food systems. Launched at COP26, the US-led Agriculture Innovation Mission for Climate (AIM4Climate) boasts of USD 17 billion worth of investments raised from 2021 to 2025 from partner governments, as well as “innovation sprint” and “knowledge” partners, many of whom are the world’s biggest food and agriculture corporations.
Most AIM4Climate initiatives focus on technological ‘innovations,’ such as developing so-called ‘climate-smart’ crops, including through genomics (genetic modification and genome editing). In many of these initiatives, agrochemical or biotech corporations are in the lead or are participants with publicly funded research institutions. These include:
| Initiative | Country/ region | Investment (in USD) | Participants |
| Precision Breeding: Climate Resiliency through Crop Improvement | Global | 60 million | Bayer |
| Climate Smart Rice Technology Project | Asia and Africa | 12.5 million | International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), USAID, Bayer |
| Accelerating a Transition to Sustainable, Climate-Smart Pesticide Management | Nine pilot countries, starting with Kenya & Morocco | 13 million | CropLife International, BASFBayer, Corteva, FMC Corporation |
| Capturing plant diversity with new tools to accelerate deployment of climate-smart legumes with improved disease resistance | Africa | 6.6 million | The Sainsbury Laboratory,Bayer, Kaneka Corporation |
| AgMission: Cultivating Climate-Smart Solutions Includes gene-edited, drought-tolerant rice | Global | 45 million | Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR)Includes PepsiCo, McDonald’s,Syngenta Foundation, Bayer, Corteva |
| Scaling-up Innovative Climate Adaptive Practices and Technologies for Smallholders | Bangladesh | 50 million | Includes Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture |
| Expanding Climate Smart Toolkit with Innovative RNA Crop Protection | Global | 100 million | GreenLight Biosciences |
| Cellular Agriculture for the Public Good | Global | 10 million | New Harvest |
| Fast Tracking Climate Solutions from CGIAR Genebank Collections | Global | 40 million | CGIAR, FFAR & BMGF |
The CGIAR, key in promoting proprietary seeds with toxic chemical inputs since the Green Revolution, secured most of the funds pledged for the UAE Food Systems Declaration. Over USD 890 million from the World Bank and the governments of the US, UK, Netherlands, and Norway, along with a significant portion of the USD 200 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundatin and UAE government, will fund CGIAR-led “climate-focused agricultural research and innovation.” CGIAR’s USD 4 billion investment case at COP28 focuses on climate-smart crops and new technologies, continuing a top-down, techno-fix approach that relies on commercial seed varieties with costly inputs, which have burdened small farmers with debt and harmed biodiverse local food systems.
CGIAR’s 2030 Research and Innovation Strategy emphasizes ‘genetic innovation,’ advocating for a steady stream of supposedly more productive, nutritious, and resilient seed varieties for small-scale farmers. Many of these ‘climate-smart’ varieties use gene-editing, a less regulated second-generation biotechnology. CGIAR is developing gene-edited crops with traits like disease and insect resistance, enhanced heat tolerance, improved input use, reduced GHG emissions, better nutrition, weed resistance, and reduced postharvest loss in crops such as banana, cassava, rice, maize, wheat, potato, cacao, beans, and sorghum. However, like GMOs, gene-edited crops are linked to increased chemical input use, resistance issues, and significant risks to human health and the environment.
More fundamentally, a solution to climate change that focuses solely on ‘improving’ crops ultimately leads to the dominance of a few varieties—fitting perfectly into monocultural and unsustainable food systems shaped by a handful of seed and agrochemical corporations that profit. It further puts at risk and displaces low climate impact and climate-resilient agroecological farming systems, where genetically diverse, farmer-managed seed systems are central.
For instance, the Climate Smart Rice Technology Project, led by CGIAR’s IRRI, Bayer, and USAID, aims to introduce and scale direct-seeded ‘climate-smart’ rice varieties among smallholder farmers, with Bayer contributing USD 4 million in-kind. Direct-seeded rice (DSR) is an ancient practice common in Asia’s rainfed and upland rice systems, traditionally not reliant on chemical inputs or commercial seeds. However, in 2023, Bayer launched a new commercial DSR variety, packaged with a chemical herbicide, negating environmental benefits. This project also illustrates how publicly funded research, under the guise of climate action, promotes private interests through CGIAR.
This is further illustrated by the CGIAR’s 5-year partnership with the International Seed Federation (ISF), the global association representing the private seed sector, as a result of commitments made to the UNFSS. The ISF and Syngenta Foundation are among the partners of CGIAR’s Seed Equal Initiative, which aims to deliver “climate-resilient, market-preferred, and nutritious” varieties around the world.
‘Regenerative’ agriculture: Unlocking business opportunities
The UNFSS has framed the transformation of food systems as a market opportunity for the private sector rather than a shift of power to small food producers. Its so-called Finance Lever, including the World Bank, IFPRI, Food and Land Use Coalition (FOLU), and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), claims that financing a healthy, equitable, and sustainable food system could unlock USD 4.5 trillion in new business opportunities annually, such as creating new value chains for regenerative agriculture.
FOLU and WBCSD argue that companies should invest in transforming their value chains, which could reduce emissions by up to 90% by 2030 and generate an additional USD 190 billion annually from new markets. The costs of these investments are less than 2% of the industry’s USD 13 trillion annual revenues, barely affecting profits. New laws requiring companies to set, deliver, and report on ambitious climate and nature strategies further emphasize the need for such investments.
At COP28, top agriculture companies, including Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill, Louis Dreyfus, Nestle, Unilever, Pepsico, Bayer, and Syngenta, launched the Action Agenda on Regenerative Landscapes. This initiative aims to transition over 160 million hectares to regenerative agriculture. While it aligns with corporate commitments, critics argue it greenwashes their role in food, climate, pollution, biodiversity crises, and human rights violations. Nestlé’s regenerative agriculture program, for example, claims to address child labour issues, enhancing its supply chain and public image. Despite promises, child labour in the cocoa industry remains a persistent problem.
‘Regenerative agriculture’ is the ‘nature-based solution’ of choice by top food and agriculture companies. According to the World Benchmarking Alliance, more than half of the companies it assessed referenced it, with one-third implementing strategies through procurement and pricing. However, it noted that “less than 10% of companies disclose data on optimizing the use of fertilizers, and only around 4% of companies disclose data on minimizing the use of pesticides.”
A case in point is ReGen10, an ambitious initiative to transform half of the world’s food production to ‘regenerative’ agriculture by 2030. Launched at COP26, ReGen10 aims to mobilize 500 million farmers and USD 60 billion a year in financing. While it claims to be ‘multi-stakeholder,’ the private sector, through the WBCSD, plays a lead role. ReGen10 has developed the Zero Draft of an Outcome-Based Framework to measure progress and act as a blueprint for corporate reporting, among others.
This framework shows weak outcomes regarding chemical inputs. It doesn’t aim to reduce reliance on them but to “recognize and manage the risks and opportunities” of their use. It offers metrics for “unutilized materials and substances” rather than pesticide use, focusing on optimization rather than elimination. The recommended Environmental Impact Quotient Field Use Rating is limited, especially for herbicides. Additionally, it doesn’t address phasing out Highly Hazardous Pesticides (HHPs), which is crucial for sustainability as committed under the Global Chemicals Framework.
While ‘regenerative’ agriculture was originally meant as a holistic farming practice that regenerates soils and ecosystems, industry has heavily co-opted it. Agrochemical giants are among its leading purveyors, with the aim of promoting a set of practices that lock in farmers to commercial seeds, inputs and digital technologies linked to carbon offset markets. Not only do these detract from real climate action, they also perpetuate toxic industrial monoculture practices, such as:
- No-till agriculture and the use of cover crops, which agrochemical giants promote alongside the use of herbicides, many of which are HHPs. According to Syngenta, “Herbicides help growers adopt conservation tillage, leaving the plants’ roots in the soil for better compaction and enhanced organic matter.” Corteva explicitly advises against reducing herbicides when using cover crops—which already naturally suppress weeds—and even recommends herbicides to “terminate” cover crops.
- Intercropping, a practice meant to diversify farms, is instead promoted as a technique to promote new cash crops for biofuels, such as Bayer’s gene-edited CoverCress and Syngenta’s camelina seeds. Biofuels have lost credibility as a climate solution because their production and manufacturing processes are linked to increased carbon emissions.
- Major agrochemical companies like Bayer, BASF, and Corteva are aggressively entering the bioinputs market through acquisitions and product development. Traditionally used in small quantities, bioinputs are now integrated into industrial agriculture, often combined with chemical products. These corporations also use genetic engineering and synthetic biology to create patentable bioinputs, raising concerns about monopolization and environmental risks.
For rural peoples, these profit-motivated false climate solutions have no place in addressing the climate crisis. At COP28, the Global Peoples’ Caravan for Food, Land, and Climate Justice brought their demands for a just food and energy transition to climate negotiators. Endorsed by 108 civil society organizations from 26 countries, their statement ‘Radical Food Systems Transformation, Not Climate Crisis Profiteering!’ highlighted five demands, including transforming food systems away from fossil fuels towards agroecology and people’s food sovereignty.
Any legitimate pact between States that claims to benefit future generations should ensure similar commitments that rightly puts small food producers, not corporations, at the center of climate action. `
(To be concluded)