Just In Time For CRAP-30: Your Complete Guide To Industrial Agriculture's Greenwashing Phrases
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Regenerative Agriculture
Served with: grass-fed beef, regenerative grazing, carbon farming, carbon positive
Free from universally accepted definitions or standards, the term “regenerative agriculture” — which broadly references environmentally friendly farming practises that can lead to increased storage of carbon in healthy soils — is a firm favourite in the net zero plans of polluting firms like McDonalds and Cargill. It’s the subject of no fewer than 27 panels scheduled for the climate summit’s “Agrizone Pavilion” (one of several spaces holding themed events on the sidelines of the official negotiations), which is hosted by Embrapa, Brazil’s public agriculture research body, and sponsored by both Nestlé and pesticide firm Bayer. The cropland practices loosely grouped under “regenerative,” such as organic and no-till farming, have benefits that do include long-term storage (or sequestration) of carbon in soil, along with boosting biodiversity. However, a growing body of science has found that carbon sequestration in soil can offset at best a tiny fraction of the agriculture sector’s emissions.
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Tropical Agriculture
Often paired with: regenerative agriculture, climate-neutral, carbon offsets
Brazil’s “special envoy for agriculture,” Roberto Rodrigues, will come to COP30 ready to persuade negotiators that his country can take lead in “low-carbon tropical agriculture.” This Latin American twist on regen ag is used to suggest that warm-region soils and tree planting can absorb enough carbon to offset the methane generated by Brazil’s 195 million head of cattle. In the lead up to the summit in Belém, major agriculture polluters have invoked tropical agriculture to make “carbon neutral” claims. Among them is Brazilian meat giant JBS, which had greater methane emissions in 2024 than ExxonMobil and Shell combined. The scientific underpinning for this idea comes largely from Brazil’s state research agency Embrapa. Its “low-carbon” and “carbon-neutral” beef labels are now central to the industry’s marketing. But independent research shows soil cannot absorb enough methane to offset livestock emissions in the region. “Emissions from livestock can be reduced,” says leading soil scientist Pete Smith. “But any claims that soil carbon could be increased to anywhere near the extent to offset emissions in preposterous – and not supported by the evidence.”
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No Additional Warming
Often associated with: climate neutrality, GWP*, tropical agriculture
The subject of how to best measure methane emissions is likely to come up frequently in Belém, as nations with long-standing, large, and highly polluting livestock industries attempt to lock in methodologies that work in their favour. Their tool of choice is GWP* or “global warming potential star.” Used at a global scale, GWP* can be a helpful metric for comparing the growth in emissions of short-lived heat-trapping gases like methane with the impacts of long-lived CO2. The controversy arises when GWP* — which is not used by the IPCC — is applied by a nation or corporation to itself. This leads to dramatically understating the emissions of large meat and dairy producers, while small increases elsewhere are punished. Promoters of GWP* include powerful U.S., Australian, and Latin American industry groups along with the Oxford University academic Myles Allen, who first developed the metric. This year, for the first time, its proponents include governments — most recently New Zealand, which just enshrinedGWP* into its domestic climate goals and thereby weakening its target for cutting methane pollution.
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Fossil Fuels Are the Real Problem
Often paired with: “Agriculture is a solution,” “Agriculture is unfairly villainized,” “We are making great strides in reducing our emissions”
When challenged on agriculture’s climate impacts, farm lobbies have a history of deflection: pointing the finger of blame elsewhere. Ahead of the climate summit, Latin American trade bodies are trying to get themselves off the hook by shifting the blame onto the fossil fuel industry. One major trade group has bemoaned how recent conferences have had a “distorted” focus on agriculture over “obvious sources of emissions”. For its part, the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) — which represents large producer countries — has declared that its goal in Belém will be to “remove [agriculture] from the dock of the accused.” In response to a request for comment, Lloyd Day, the Deputy Director General of IICA, said that while he would not characteris agriculture in this way, he felt agriculture had been unfairly cast as a “villain” at climate discussions, such as the annual climate summits, when the sector was really “part of the solution.”
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https://www.desmog.com/2025/10/26/big-ag-greenwashing-climate-summit-cop30/