“For us, it’s very important,” says Guindani, an advocate of cooperative food systems who comes from a family of farmers. The shelves of Raízes’s modest showroom were stocked with the fruits of their labour: organic white rice, chocolate made from Bahian cocoa and coffee beans from the southern reaches of Brazil’s Minas Gerais state. Plus a trendy yellow ballcap boasting “Agroecologia” on the front for good measure.  

But nothing can compete with the international exposure of COP. Raízes received another boost thanks to famed Indigenous Brazilian chef Tainá Marajoara, who was in charge of catering for world leaders at the conference and had invited the start-up to showcase its products alongside her. “All the work and effort we’ve put so far into raising awareness around our brand really has been a drop in the ocean,” Guindani says.  

Guindani started the Raízes do Campo project in 2018 in an attempt to help transform the food supply model in Brazil, bringing small-scale producers closer to Brazilian consumers and creating a more equitable system to deliver fair earnings to farmers. The start-up officially launched in 2022, marketing products by hundreds of cooperative producers under a single brand. Its line includes coffee, chocolate, rice, beans, sugar and fruit juices. Three years later, it now represents some 3,000 producers. Along the way, Guindani has come up against myriad challenges, everything from needing barcodes in order to sell in supermarkets to understanding product placement in the aisles. She has learned that the one of the greatest challenge revolves around storytelling – how to help consumers understand the higher costs of sustainable products that abide by an agroecology ethos.  

“We couldn’t market this coffee as if it is any coffee from any hacienda,” Guindani says. So they created something called the “spiral of agroecology,” which assigns value along three pillars: social, economic and environmental. They meet with each cooperative to learn about their process, and then try to guide consumers to understand the attention that the producer places on each of those pillars. So, for example, if there are no women who are part of the management of the cooperative, it may rank lower on the social spiral. “The consumer has to understand that there is a difference,” says Guindani, who has long worked in the farming cooperative movement in Latin America. “At Raízes do Campo, our idea was to turn the families into the protagonists.” 

Proponents of agroecology took COP30 as an opportunity to showcase how small-scale and family farming can transform food systems and provide lasting solutions to climate change. It is the first time that family farming has occupied a formal space at the climate conference, says Paulo Petersen, a Brazilian special envoy for family farming at COP30.  

Petersen wants policymakers to recognize family farming as a “decisive actor” in restructuring food systems that are currently responsible for one-third of greenhouse gas emissions globally. In Brazil, family farming is the backbone of its food system, even if it is largely invisible. Family farms make up 77% of Brazil’s five million rural properties, according to the World Bank, and produce most of what more than 200 million Brazilians eat. While COP30 did not produce an agreement regarding agroecology, Petersen says, their voice was stronger than ever: “Our presence in different spaces at COP was about creating our own narrative.”  

The role that food systems play in the climate battle has only recently joined the global conversation. But it’s Big Ag that takes up most of the room, even now as the narrative shifts into technological advances that promote “regenerative” or “climate intelligent” agriculture. Industrial agriculture has sought to encompass family farming in its messaging and lay claim to practices that support biodiversity and equity. 

“Family agriculture is not part of Big Ag,” Petersen stresses. “What has happened in the last 50 years is that industrial agriculture has disconnected agriculture from its natural environment, production from consumption, and nutrition from health,” he says. Monoculture farming and commodities-based agriculture destabilize the ecological environment in a way that is then remedied with pesticides and chemical fertilizers, he says, which have their own detrimental effect. 

“Family agroecology is a recognition of the peasant farmer methods of doing agriculture, that is based on diverse production, biodiversity, culture and local markets,” Petersen says. Its principles are not just ecological but economic, since a large part of the production is to feed the families themselves. That which is meant for sale requires local markets – but the farmers are at the mercy of powerful middlemen.  

Guindani has seen this first-hand, and how those unequal power balances leave families with meagre returns. “Since they are small pieces of land, and small productive units, they don’t have enough of a volume to make it to the bigger market,” she says. So, it’s the wholesale buyer that ends up occupying an outsized role, scooping up the product, generating volume and leaving the earlier links of the value chain further behind.   

At Raízes do Campo, our idea was to turn [family farmers] into the protagonists.

– Carla Guindani, executive director, Raízes do Campo

In order to reap the benefit of the agroecological family-farming model, it has to be integrated into food distribution systems that reduce energy consumption in processing, packaging, refrigeration and transport and shorten the chain of intermediaries. That means that public investment can’t just be directed at the small farmer; it must be invested in the entire supply chain that creates the conditions for it to make a wider impact.  

Petersen points to policies in Brazil’s semi-arid region in the northeast that helped turn around an area that is home to half the country’s family farms, and is particularly vulnerable to droughts. The policies provided public services and social protection to farming families, including a cistern system with access to potable water. And it devised local chains of supply and demand that supported small-scale farms. The result is an area that is now more resilient and better able to withstand the shocks of droughts that have become more extreme.  

“What we’re saying is that there isn’t a policy for the climate,” Petersen says. “There are policies for food sovereignty, and it’s those policies that generate mitigating effects around greenhouse gas emissions, that promote adaptation, food security, women’s empowerment and local economies. It’s a win-win effect.”  

For Guindani, the focus continues to be on telling the story of Brazil’s family farmers, who are key to a more sustainable future.

Natalie Alcoba is a Buenos Aires-based journalist and senior editor at Corporate Knights. 

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The country feeds nearly 20% of the global population, but must do so with less than 9% of its arable land and only 6% of its water resources, according to Reuters. Rising temperatures, erratic rainfall and more frequent droughts and floods are battering Chinese agriculture, jeopardizing decades of food self-sufficiency policy. Wheat, rice and maize – the cornerstones of the country’s food system – are increasingly exposed to climate shocks.

“Climate change poses a severe threat to China’s food security,” former agriculture minister Tang Renjian said in early 2024, noting that extreme weather events have already reduced yields in several major grain-producing provinces. In the same year, the Ministry of Agriculture warned that “unusual changes in temperature and rainfall can slow down the growth of food crops, resulting in a drop in the average yield of grains.”

China’s agricultural sector is uniquely sensitive to climate change. The northern plains, home to a majority of China’s wheat production, are becoming hotter and drier. The southern provinces, which grow much of the country’s rice, are increasingly prone to flooding. According to the China Meteorological Administration, average national temperatures have risen faster than the global average, climbing more than 1.6°C since the 1950s.

The country has managed to preserve about 95% self-sufficiency in wheat for nearly two decades. But climate stress is forcing new strategies to the fore, both in agricultural practices and in international trade.

To address growing risks, the Chinese government has embedded climate adaptation directly into its agricultural-reform agenda. The country’s 14th Five-Year Plan (2021 to 2025) prioritizes investments in water-saving irrigation, climate-resilient seeds, precision farming technologies and early-warning systems for extreme weather.

In addition to bolstering domestic yields, China is hedging its food security by deepening trade relations along its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) network, especially with countries in the Global South, to secure grain from a broader base of suppliers.

China seeks to limit agricultural imports

Wheat has historical and cultural roots that run deep in China, and the stakes for maintaining supply stability are high. The country consumes more than 130 million tonnes of wheat annually, largely to produce staples like noodles, dumplings and steamed buns. While the bulk of demand is met by domestic harvests, higher-end processed foods increasingly rely on imported wheat with specific quality characteristics – particularly from countries like Canada, France, Australia and the United States.

But as Trump’s universal tariffs strategy demonstrates, trade relations are anything but predictable.

In 2019, Canada was China’s leading supplier of imported wheat. By mid-2020, that changed dramatically. The diplomatic row over the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou led to a sharp drop in Canadian wheat purchases, down from more than 50% of imports in 2019 to just 15% by mid-2020. The influential online Chinese media portal Sohu blamed “wrong decisions” made by Canada for the souring of trade ties.

Australia, once a beneficiary of Canada’s fall from favour, has seen its own wheat exports face heightened inspections in China. While this hasn’t triggered a formal ban, it’s a sign that bilateral tensions can quickly spill into food trade.

These shifting trade patterns highlight a deeper strategic calculus. China wants to limit its dependence on Western suppliers for food staples, just as it has for semiconductors and energy. Expanding partnerships with emerging economies such as Kazakhstan, Pakistan and Brazil are a cornerstone of this plan.

Challenges for China’s agricultural productivity

Meanwhile, internal agricultural productivity is under stress. In a 2022 report, the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences estimated that climate-related yield reductions could amount to 5% to 10% by 2030 under current warming trends. One study estimated that China’s key cereal crops could lose around 2.6% yield per degree Celsius of warming, with more vulnerable regions facing up to 12.7% loss per degree across wheat, rice and maize. Another study with different crop modelling – in this case without carbon dioxide fertilization – projected up to 37% yield decline within decades if warming continues unchecked.

For a country where 1.4 billion people depend on food-system stability, even small disruptions can cascade.

China isn’t short on ambition to use technology to solve big problems. It leads the world in the development of hybrid rice varieties and is rapidly digitizing its farm sector with satellite monitoring, AI-driven pest prediction and big-data analytics for yield forecasting. Other innovations come from its “Smart Agriculture” program, which integrates advanced tools such as sensors, drones and blockchain technology into the food supply chain.

Historical memory still shapes China’s focus on food security, especially the famine of 1958 to 1962 that led to the deaths of an estimated 15 to 55 million people – one of the deadliest disasters of the 20th century. While today’s threats are different, the possibility of disruption carries echoes of the past. The Chinese government’s commitment to self-reliance now finds new motivation in the science of climate change.

Gordon Feller is a writer based in San Francisco.

The post Climate change is battering China’s agriculture sector. Here’s how it is responding. appeared first on Corporate Knights.

In our passion for spuds, humans have consecrated an area of the earth roughly equivalent to the size of Great Britain. From those vast tracts we produce 375 million tons of potatoes globally, which is something like the weight of every car in the United States put together. The world’s potatoes are collectively worth US$116 billion, and the market is booming. 

What makes a potato good? Sure, it’s flexible in the kitchen and can be mashed for ease, scalloped for excellence or grated for latkes. But best of all it can be cut into strips and fried in oil until it is both crispy and soft – an unparalleled comfort food, adored by vegans and omnivores alike. 

Everyone eats french fries. (Well, 98% of North Americans, at any rate.) As you read this, you’ve probably got a bag of frozen fries in your freezer, just waiting for you to dump them on a pan and bake them in the oven at 425°F for 20 to 25 minutes the next time you’re too tired to cook. 

In the kingdom of frozen french fries, only one producer could rightfully claim the throne: McCain Foods, a Canadian company founded in the small town of Florenceville, New Brunswick, and now in its 68th year. Today, it is active in 160 countries across four continents, and its annual sales of frozen potato products exceed $16 billion. A major supplier for McDonald’s, McCain claims to produce one out of every four french fries eaten in the world. 

But McCain has a problem. It’s the same problem that confronts us all, to a greater or lesser extent: climate change is imperilling how we get our food.

A crisis for agriculture

“When we first started on our journey as a company, we probably would have experienced a climate event once every 10 to 15 years,” Charlie Angelakos said on a video call in April. “What we’ve found, particularly in the last 10 years, is that climate issues started happening with our crops on a more frequent basis.” 

Angelakos is McCain’s vice president of global external affairs and sustainability, and he’s telling me about a study the company issued in 2018 to assess its vulnerability to the impacts of a rapidly changing climate. The results were startling. “It showed that if we were to stay on the same trajectory, we would have more and more climate disasters with our crops in the different growing regions around the world.”

Today, Angelakos says the company contends with three to five climate events every year across the 3,900 farms globally that supply its potatoes. By “events” he means crop killers: entire harvests destroyed by fire, flood or drought, as well as wild swings in yield from year to year. The company’s executives realized they needed to act quickly to secure their supply chain. The solution, they realized, was hiding in plain sight: a traditional form of farming that preceded industrial monoculture agriculture, protects against droughts and floods, and even offers better returns for farmers – aka, regenerative agriculture. 

It’s an assured supply strategy. How do you build a sustainable, resilient food supply chain for the future?

—Charlie Angelakos, VP of sustainability, McCain Foods

So the company embarked on a new mission to attain 100% regenerative agriculture across its farms by 2030. Currently, 71% of its farmers are at the onboarding level.

Other large corporations like Pepsi and Nestlé have announced commitments to regenerative agriculture in recent years, but those pledges have largely been framed in terms of meeting emission-reduction targets. For McCain, the logic is more immediately existential: the goal is to better cope with environmental and financial shocks. “It’s an assured supply strategy,” Angelakos says. “How do we build a sustainable, resilient food supply chain for the future?” 

Replenishing the soil

“Regenerative agriculture” is a $10 phrase that sounds too wholesome to be interesting – until you consider the stakes. Namely, the viability of a food system that keeps us fed at the expense of nature and our health. 

Basically, it’s the opposite of monoculture farming, which has sustained the earth’s exploding population for decades but relies heavily on herbicides, pesticides, fungicides and synthetic fertilizers. Regenerative agriculture strives to cut back and eliminate all those harmful chemical inputs, so the farms can function as healthy, self-sustaining ecosystems. In other words, it’s a method for turning dirt into soil, by bringing back the micro-organisms and other stuff that make plants happy.

Really, regenerative farming is just the old ways of doing things, says Harold Perry, a potato farmer in Alberta and a supplier for McCain and Frito-Lay. Perry’s family has been farming 6,000 acres near the town of Lethbridge since 1909, beginning with his great-grandfather John. Perry’s daughter is studying agronomy and will take over next, the fifth generation to raise crops on that land. 

Perry, who is 54, has been fascinated by the science of soil health for nearly three decades. He received a scholarship from Nuffield Canada in 2006 to travel internationally and meet other farmers using regenerative practices, and he’s well-versed in the research and language of plant biology. But for all the complexity of modern agronomy, the techniques for achieving healthy soil are fairly straightforward. “Our major thing is to keep the ground green at all times,” Perry says over the phone, referring to the practice of planting so-called cover crops such as buckwheat, clover and hairy vetch during times when regular cash crops are not being grown. Cover crops not only deposit more nutrients and organic material into the ground; they also protect the soil from damage from extreme heat. 

This basic principle of regenerative farming – often referred to as “armouring” the soil – is also one of the six key principles in McCain’s Regenerative Agriculture Framework, produced in partnership with the U.S. Soil Health Institute, which the company is using to guide its network of farmers through the program and measure their progress.

While most other food producers that carry the financial heft of McCain would use brokers, the company contracts directly with farmers, which allows it to more effectively implement new standards and practices. 

Another key tenet of regenerative farming is tilling the ground less or not at all, which the company calls “minimized soil disturbance.” There’s a mechanical straightforwardness to the logic to this practice: by avoiding tillage and allowing the roots from cover crops to break up the soil, it becomes less dense and compacted, so more water, nutrients and micro-organisms can soak down into it. 

In conventional agriculture, the soil can’t hold water nearly as well, so it’s more vulnerable to flooding. “When it rains a lot, a significant amount of soil is washing away from your field, and the top layer is very important because this is where there’s more nutrients and more organic matter,” says Claudia Goyer, a molecular biologist for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. Flooding carries not only topsoil into the watershed, but fertilizer as well, where the fertilizer feeds algal blooms.

Surging adoption

Unlike many other solutions to society’s most pernicious problems, regenerative farming has one overwhelming advantage over conventional agriculture: it’s more profitable – as much as 75% to 80% more profitable, according to research by the Soil Health Institute. “Conventional systems are focused on yield, whereas regenerative systems are more focused on profit,” explains Salar Shemirani, CEO at the certification provider Regenified. “Yield can go down for a year or two during the transition, but you are using less inputs, less fuel, less labour.” Fewer costs means better returns. 

This is especially important as conventional farming can be a low- or no-profit business, and farmers lately have been forced to contend with historically high costs of doing business. The prices for fertilizer, seed and other inputs have all soared, while commodity prices for their products have plunged. In the United States, President Donald Trump’s universal trade war has made the situation even worse.  

Still, farmers can take a hit at the very outset of their transition. “We do know that in the early years there will be a slight dip in profitability for the farmer, and then over time, as yields increase, it does become a profitable endeavour,” Angelakos says.

McCain has partnerships with financial institutions in eight different countries to offer low-interest loans and other discounted financing options to help its farmers invest in things like cover crops and new equipment. 

Transitioning to regenerative practices can be an uphill struggle for other reasons too. “A lot of growers felt that it was forced on them,” Perry says. When big companies insist on new practices, it can feel like they’re saying that farmers don’t know what they’re doing, and this can be an impediment to adoption. 

It is essential that companies set up frameworks that lead to steep reductions in agrochemical use in their supply chain at an urgent pace.”

—Sarah Starman and Kendra Klein, Friends of the Earth

Still, because of its many upsides and few downsides, regenerative farming is rapidly gaining traction; stakeholders using the language of change curve models now say it has moved past the early adopter phase and entered the early majority phase. A market analysis by Grand View Research projects that regeneratively farmed products will see a compound annual growth rate of 15.7% from 2023 to 2030. 

Gabe Brown, the well-known advocate for soil health and co-founder at Regenified, says that he’s seen more change, more commitments and more progress in the past two years than in the past 30 years combined. 

Among regenerative agriculture’s most notable fans is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., currently serving as the U.S. secretary of health and human services. His Make America Healthy Again plan lists “advancing regenerative and precision agriculture” among its top goals. The former environmental lawyer advocates for a “nutrition-based approach to disease prevention” that starts with soil health. Kennedy points the blame at “highly chemical, intensive processed foods.” 

But surging interest in regenerative farming has made it vulnerable to greenwashing. Bloomberg News warned in 2023 that Big Food’s regenerative agriculture push was running a greenwashing risk, due to the lack of established targets. A report by the investor network FAIRR found that among 79 agrifood companies worth US$3 trillion, most (50) had announced some kind of regenerative initiative with their suppliers, but few were measuring their progress and only four were actually supporting farmers financially to deploy regenerative practices. Lots of talk; not much meaningful action.  

Regenerative agriculture intrinsically means taking a holistic approach to farming, and industry greenwashing can generally be identified by its reductivity – especially by equating the whole methodology with the single practice of tilling less, while continuing to pour agrochemicals onto the soil.

A new report published in April by Sarah Starman, senior food and agriculture campaigner, and Kendra Klein, deputy director of science, at Friends of the Earth, found that “the vast majority (93%) of U.S. corn and soy acreage grown in no-till and minimum-till management systems relies on toxic pesticides that harm soil health and threaten human health.” 

Asked about McCain’s regenerative framework, the authors wrote in an email to Corporate Knights that the company had made a great start by explicitly lifting up agrochemical reduction as a pillar of its program and by using an accepted benchmarking system to effectively measure its progress. But key aspects of their approach could be improved: “McCain doesn’t share a specific timeline for moving growers in their supply chain beyond the first level, ‘Engaged.’ Given the devastating impacts of agrochemicals on biodiversity, climate, soil, and human health, it is essential that companies set up frameworks that lead to steep reductions in agrochemical use in their supply chain at an urgent pace, not leave the door open for a continuation of the status quo.” 

Despite its commitment to regenerative farming, McCain is not otherwise a leader on environmental, social and governance metrics. Sustainalytics gives McCain an “average” rating for its management of ESG material risk. McCain does not disclose enough information to be a contender for Corporate Knights’ Best 50 list of Canada’s most sustainable companies.

Making the case

As auspicious as the overall trend looks, conventional agriculture remains extremely entrenched, and most people don’t know or care about regenerative practices. “According to our most recent research, most people aren’t sure what regenerative agriculture is, or its potential in mitigating climate change,” Angelakos says. Fewer than one in 10 Canadians understand the concept of regenerative agriculture practices; 26% of Canadians had never heard about it. 

Still, the market indifference to regenerative agriculture could be taken as an indicator that McCain is being honest about its motives and serious about its transition. But they aren’t leaving consumers to find their own way. The company is working hard to promote the idea of regenerative agriculture, through ad campaigns, partnerships with influencers and a demonstration project with the Sustainable Markets Initiative in the United Kingdom to show the strong business case for regenerative farming. It even made an augmented-reality game, whereby a cartoon farm is projected onto a surface using your phone’s camera. Users gain points by growing potatoes and then investing in pollinators, crop cover, livestock and technology. 

But change happens on the ground, not on our phones. Our food system needs more biodiversity, not more industrial inputs. Fortunately, farms really do work best – and farmers do better – when nature takes the lead.

*Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the number of countries in which McCain is active. 

Cover image: Harold Perry inspects fresh piles of compost and digestate at CKP farms near Coaldale, Alberta on May 23, 2025.

Mark Mann is a journalist in Montreal and the associate editor at Corporate Knights. 

Photography by Guillaume Nolet.

The post How McCain Foods embraced regenerative farming appeared first on Corporate Knights.

In East Africa, a quieter crisis is unfolding – one that reveals how deeply global food systems are interconnected. In Kenya, the price of a tray of 30 eggs has nearly doubled since early 2023.

For families where eggs are a primary, affordable source of nutrition, this isn’t just economic turbulence. It’s a direct blow to food security.

Let’s follow the trail.

Unlike Canada, where a regulated poultry supply management system has helped keep prices relatively stable for both farmers and consumers, East Africa operates in a far more volatile environment. Poultry feed in the region is deeply tied to global commodity markets, especially for maize and soy – crops that have been battered by drought in southern Africa, conflict in Ukraine and fluctuating international demand.

In Kenya, feed costs account for up to 80% of total poultry production expenses. Between January 2023 and early 2024, the price of soybean meal rose from 86 to 113 shillings per kilogram – a jump of more than 31%. Yellow maize, another critical feed component, surged from 40 to 60 shillings per kilo in the same period. For smallholder farmers, these price swings are not just inconvenient; they are existential threats.

Part of the problem lies in how East Africa has been integrated into global supply chains under the banner of food security. Kenya imports around 90% of its soybean needs, much of it from the United States. This dependence isn’t accidental: it reflects decades of donor-driven policy choices. U.S. foreign assistance, particularly through the U.S. Agency for International Development, has historically prioritized food aid in the form of surplus U.S. grain and oilseed exports, reinforcing global trade flows rather than investing in local production ecosystems that could reduce such dependencies.

In 2022 alone, USAID (whose funding has been gutted under President Donald Trump) and partners provided nearly $2 billion in emergency food aid to sub-Saharan Africa – much of it as imported commodities. While crucial in humanitarian crises, these flows have had an unintended side effect: crowding out investment in regional feed production, processing infrastructure and local supply chain development. The result is a chronic dependence on volatile global markets that leave farmers vulnerable to external shocks.

The consequences are visible across the region. As feed prices climbed, many commercial poultry farmers were forced to reduce flock sizes, creating a supply shortfall that drove egg prices even higher. Consumers, especially in lower-income households where eggs are often the most accessible source of protein, have borne the brunt of these price surges.

Yet, amid this volatility, something remarkable is happening.

The collective economy steps in

Across East Africa, women-led poultry cooperatives are demonstrating an alternative. Far from being passive victims of global market failures, these co-ops are building local resilience – one egg at a time.

Take the Kuku Women’s Poultry Cooperative in Kenya’s Rift Valley. Confronted with skyrocketing feed prices, the members of Kuku shifted to sourcing alternative local ingredients such as sunflower seedcake and cassava peels, reducing dependence on expensive imports. By pooling their resources, they negotiated bulk purchases of essential feed components and invested in small-scale feed mills owned by the co-op itself. “We couldn’t wait for traders or donors to rescue us,” co-op leader Ruth Wanjiku says. “We had to create our own safety net.”

In Tanzania, the Building a Better Tomorrow for Livestock and Fisheries (BBT-LIFE) program has been instrumental in empowering women and youth in the poultry sector. Launched by the Tanzanian government in 2023, this initiative aims to modernize the poultry industry by providing training, resources and support to small-scale farmers. The program has facilitated the formation of cooperatives and encouraged the adoption of innovative practices to enhance productivity and sustainability. Women have established mini feed-production systems, sourcing maize locally and experimenting with protein-rich moringa leaves and black soldier fly larvae as feed supplements.

We couldn’t wait for traders or donors to rescue us. We had to create our own safety net.

—Ruth Wanjiku, Kuku Women’s Poultry Cooperative

Building a Better Tomorrow has garnered significant attention from international organizations. Notably, the African Development Bank approved a US$129.71-million loan to support the program, covering more than half of its total budget. The Tanzanian government contributes the remaining funds, demonstrating a strong public–private partnership model.

These stories aren’t outliers; they reflect a broader shift. Across Africa, women account for 60% to 80% of food producers, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, and poultry farming remains one of the most accessible economic activities for women in rural areas because of its low capital and land requirements.

Lessons from the Global South

This pattern echoes globally. During Argentina’s economic collapse in the early 2000s, smallholder farmers in the Federación Agraria banded together to pool resources, secure better prices and access international markets. Spain’s Mondragon Corporation – a federation of worker cooperatives – navigated the 2008 global financial crisis without mass layoffs, sustaining both employment and community stability. Even in the United States, the Organic Valley cooperative kept its supply chains steady during COVID-19 disruptions, while many industrial agribusinesses struggled.

There’s a deeper reckoning underway in global food systems. For decades, factory farming in the Global North has obscured the real cost of food production, propped up by government subsidies for feed crops like corn and soy, lax environmental regulations, and low-wage, precarious labour. According to FoodPrint, a food awareness project, these subsidies artificially depress the price of key inputs, masking the environmental damage and labour exploitation embedded in industrial agriculture.

In the United States, egg prices surged from an average of $1.49 per dozen in 2021 to more than $4.25 in 2023, largely driven by avian flu outbreaks and supply chain disruptions. Yet, sustainable production models – those that ensure fair labour, animal welfare and environmental stewardship – suggest that the true cost of a dozen eggs could range from $8 to $10, aligning with the prices seen for pasture-raised or certified humane eggs. This disparity highlights how deeply externalized costs have been embedded in the industrial food system, leaving consumers disconnected from the actual price of ethical, sustainable food.

As global prices inch closer to reflecting these real costs, East Africa’s co-ops offer a powerful lesson: resilience is local, cooperative and community-driven.

A global wake-up call

This is not going unnoticed. According to a 2023 report from the FAIRR Initiative, a coalition of investors that monitors risks and opportunities in the livestock sector, 84% of institutional investors now see intensive animal agriculture as a material financial risk, and 78% consider sustainable proteins critical to their environmental, social and governance strategies. Funds like AgDevCo and RSF Social Finance are beginning to direct capital toward African co-ops, recognizing the value of shorter, more resilient supply chains.

However, investment alone won’t be enough. Agribusiness giants still dominate, spending more than US$793 million between 2019 and 2023 on lobbying to entrench their market positions. For collective economies to scale, policy support is essential. Governments can level the playing field with tax incentives for cooperative formation, grants for feed innovation and public procurement policies that prioritize community-based producers.

Donor agencies like USAID, in whatever form it continues, also have a role to play. Moving from a reactive model of food aid to proactive investment in local production ecosystems would build long-term resilience. Supporting regional feed production, farmer training and agroecological research can unlock the full potential of local supply chains.

Because when the next crisis strikes – and it will – it won’t be multinational corporations that keep food on our tables. It will be local producers, neighbours and communities bound by trust and mutual obligation.

Shilpa Tiwari is the founder of No Women No Spice and Isenzo Group. She is based in Canada and Tanzania.

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Politicians have called on the public to “buy Canadian,” provinces have ordered U.S. products removed from shelves, and Canadian retailers have seen a surge in domestic sales. Yet the importance of agricultural adaptations for achieving greater Canadian self-reliance has largely been overlooked.

The federal government’s plan for building a stronger agrifood sector is mainly based on financial safeguards and loan options for affected farmers and supply-chain management of existing products. The broad topic of agricultural innovation is barely mentioned at all.

At a time of changing geopolitical and physical environments, we must ensure the long-term resilience of Canada’s farms. An important step toward achieving this complex and multifaceted goal would be to diversify the country’s crop production.

Over-reliance on a few crops leaves Canada vulnerable

Anyone browsing their supermarket’s produce section will quickly discover just how few of the products are grown in Canada. This is ironic; as most gardeners know, many imported fruits and vegetables can grow extremely well in Canada.

Canada imports around 50% of vegetables and 75% of fruits from abroad, much of it from the United States. This has not traditionally caused concern since the agrifood sector has a net trade surplus. But among Canadian crops, just two – canola and wheat – dominate total earnings.

Canada’s need for imports leaves it vulnerable, but so does its need for exports.

In 2019, for instance, after the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, China imposed harsh trade restrictions on Canadian canola. That year, canola exports to China fell by 70%. Today, Canada faces similar issues with 100% tariffs imposed by China on canola products.

Instead of just bailing out farmers affected by current events, governments should help those who are interested to diversify and grow crops that can be sold domestically.

Crop diversification yields multiple benefits

Even before the current tariffs, there were good reasons for diversifying Canadian agriculture and growing food locally.

The nutritional value of vegetables decreases during storage and transport, suggesting that local produce may be healthier. Similarly, crop diversity can be an important tool for improving plant and soil health and so increasing yields while ensuring environmental sustainability.

In a meta-analysis of 5,156 experiments from across the globe, researchers in France and the Netherlands showed that crop diversification typically enhanced net productivity, soil function and ecosystem services. It had the greatest effect on water quality and organism-induced damage; weed reduction, pest reduction, disease control and associated crop damages showed 33% to 60% average improvements.

To sustain momentum, the government needs to proactively fund targeted, large-scale feasibility studies and provide training, recruitment and transition funding for those interested in novel crop systems.

– Karen Christensen-Dalsgaard, Department of Biological Sciences, MacEwan University

The benefits in terms of soil health and productivity may be compounded by intercropping plant species with fungi. Preliminary results from my current research project suggest that edible saprotrophic fungi could be used as a tool for maintaining soil health while minimizing the use of environmentally problematic soil amendments.

Diversification studies include a range of different land-management techniques, some of which involve elaborate intercropping approaches that might be difficult to implement on an industrial scale. However, even relatively simple crop-rotation approaches have a positive impact on soil carbon, nutrient levels, microbial activity, biodiversity and net productivity, potentially leading to increased profitability.

Diversifying crops increases Canada’s climate resilience

Longstanding arguments for crop diversification have been compounded by climate-change-induced food insecurity. Increases in the frequency and severity of wildfires and droughts suggest that relying on regions like California for food imports might be poor long-term planning.

Similarly, parts of Canada face an increased risk of weather-induced crop failure. Crop species may no longer be a good match for the current climatic conditions where they’re grown. Canola and wheat, for instance, are vulnerable to drought and heat stress during the flowering period.

Crop diversification has long been used to minimize the impacts of climate insecurities in developing countries with less access to artificial irrigation and soil amendments. Switching to crops that can handle extreme weather events, like some beans, legumes and grains, could similarly increase Canada’s climate resilience. Additionally, using crop-rotation strategies based on a greater diversity of crops grown may help maintain higher yields during adverse weather.

Helping farmers embrace change

Canada is a world leader in agricultural research and ranks fifth globally with respect to articles published but is further behind when it comes to implementation on farms.

Despite the high benefit-to-cost ratios of applications of agricultural research, only 6% of Canadian farmers are willing to adopt new approaches before they have been tested at scale. Meanwhile, almost 30% are reluctant to change approaches at all.

This is hardly surprising. Change is always associated with risks. For instance, while the majority of studies show a net benefit of diversification strategies, there are huge, context-dependent variations in the outcomes. Climate, soil, crop species and microbial communities all matter in ways that can be difficult to predict.

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Most farmers do not have the resources to retool their farms for new crops and assume the risks. Many face financial struggles and rising debt. This is due in part to higher production costs and lower commodity prices caused by large corporations controlling both the sales of farm supplies and the purchase of agricultural products.

Skilled labour shortages and issues with retaining younger workers may also undermine the willingness and ability to diversify with new crops. Qualified migrant workers with agricultural backgrounds could help, but restrictive immigration policies make finding workers challenging.

Reactive government assistance that just keeps farmers above water will not address the challenges of a changing global trade environment and climate. To sustain momentum, the government needs to proactively fund targeted, large-scale feasibility studies and provide training, recruitment and transition funding for those interested in novel crop systems.

Agriculture is part of the foundation for our society. We have become accustomed to having access to plenty of fresh food, but this is not the global or historical norm.

Canada’s food supply is maintained by farmers both at home and abroad who, for generations, have worked long days at low wages to feed us. If they do not receive the support required to adapt to our changing world, we might all discover how valuable food really is.

Karen Christensen-Dalsgaard is an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at MacEwan University in Alberta. 

This story first appeared in The Conversation; it has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style. Read the original article here.

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The scenes were dramatic. Parked tractors brought traffic to a standstill in Paris, and on Thursday burning piles of hay and debris sent up huge, dark plumes of smoke in Brussels. The protests show no sign of slowing down and are expected this week across Italy, Slovenia and Spain.

Farmers’ demonstrations have been portrayed as a revolt against net zero, by the media and far-right groups.

This is the message received by governments – and they are acting on it. So far, the farmers have won key concessions, with the EU decision on Tuesday to drop its plans to cut pesticide use, hot on the heels of the same move by France on Friday, despite numbers of birds and pollinators plummeting in Europe.

Yet the reality on the ground in Brussels last week was more mixed. While Europe’s largest farming union, Copa-Cogeca, paints environmental measures as an enemy to farmers’ prosperity, an analysis by Carbon Brief has found that a fifth of farmer concerns were not on green issues, relating instead to high production costs, food pricing and trade-related concerns.

Other groups of farmers came out onto the streets of Brussels with a different message. They say the EU should see the protests as a sign to do more, not less, to protect the environment.

“We are very clear that as farmers we want to take action to struggle against the climate crisis,” said Morgan Ody, a farmer from Brittany who belongs to the European chapter of La Via Campesina (ECVC).

Ody travelled to Belgium with over a thousand farmers connected to Via Campesina – and other allied national smallholder farmer groups from Belgium, France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands and Germany – to protest last Thursday.

Via Campesina and its smallholder allies also insist that ambitious action to address climate breakdown and biodiversity loss must go hand in hand with tackling other farmer concerns – such as low pay. Difficult working conditions, they say, are also at the root of the frustrations of many who showed up to demonstrate.

Big Agri vs EU Green Reform

The position of Via Campesina stands in contrast to those of other powerful groups, which also attended the protest in Brussels and others across Europe.

Copa-Cogeca, which enjoys privileged access to many of the EU’s key decision-makers, has taken an aggressive stance on EU sustainable farming policies proposed through the bloc’s Farm to Fork. It has also undertaken lobbying to derail key EU-wide measures such as a nature restoration law which was only narrowly approved by EU lawmakers at the end of last year, full of loopholes.

We are very clear that as farmers we want to take action to struggle against the climate crisis.

 

– Morgan Ody, a farmer from Brittany

The group’s political legitimacy has rested in part on a claim to represent 22 million farmers and their families across the EU, which a recent investigation from Lighthouse Reports found to be exaggerated. Many smallholder farmers interviewed by Lighthouse Reports and others have said Copa-Cogeca does not represent them.

Policy experts say the farming system needs to become more sustainable to safeguard food production and address climate impacts. Intensive, industrial farming from larger operations currently drives much of the sector’s emissions, as well as harming soils and causing a vertiginous fall in populations of bees, birds and butterflies.

Copa-Cogeca’s recent demands have included the rollback of an important environmental provision in the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) – the subsidy scheme which supports European producers. The provision would require farmers to leave four percent of their land free for nature in order to protect and rebuild biodiversity.

This week, the EU announced it would postpone the incoming CAP biodiversity clause, in concession to protests across the bloc.

On Friday, the French government pledged to halt a measure to halve pesticide use by 2030, following sustained lobbying from industry-aligned union FNSEA on the measure over the last several years.

Tuesday’s decision by the EU commission to drop a bloc-wide measure aimed at slashing pesticide use was met with praise from a triumphant Copa-Cogeca, which, in a post on X (formerly Twitter) called the regulation a “top-down proposal” that was “poorly designed,” but with dismay from environmentalists who said the move would hurt farmers in the longer term.

Wage Worries

It was clear on the ground in Brussels on Thursday that the CAP debate was on farmer’s minds. Copa-Cogeca affiliates and independent farmers both expressed frustrations.

“We don’t have enough money to compensate for this four percent of the surface where we can’t produce,” said Mélanie Favereaux, from the Féderation des Jeunes Agriculteurs (FJA), which represents young farmers in Belgium and was responsible for some of the blockades last week. She stressed that her worries did not stem from anti-environment sentiment but from income pressures.

A representative from a powerful Italian regional group affiliated with Copa-Cogeca, Coldiretti, which has recently been accused by smaller Italian farmers of betraying their interests, said her group would be pushing for the CAP measure to be withdrawn by the EU and not just postponed.

Ody, from Via Campesina, told DeSmog that small farmers also believe the CAP system should be reformed – but in a different way. She argues that the EU should bring in market regulation to ensure a minimum price and stable income for farmers, as was the case under the CAP until the subsidy system was reformed in 1992.

Via Campesina also argues that, rather than eliminate green rules, CAP grants should be redistributed better to the benefit of smaller, family-owned farms, which perform better on biodiversity and productivity than larger operations, according to a 2021 global study.

Under current rules, the amount of CAP subsidies a farm receives is tied to its size. This means that the lion’s share of EU’s financial support goes to larger farms and landowners, with the biggest 20 percent of farms absorbing 80 percent of the CAP, a sum equal to around a third of the EU’s annual budget.

Ody shares the income worries of Coldiretti and young farmer’s group the FJA. But she insists that the CAP should be used to incentivise the transition to more climate friendly farming.

“We are put into an impossible situation,” said Ody, because “to produce in an ecological way does come with a cost.”

Trade Trouble 

The EU’s free trade agreements were another key concern in Brussels, highlighted by small and large-scale farmers alike, who feel European producers are forced to compete with cheap imports.

“It’s right to talk about the climate,” said a local producer from the Belgian municipality of Ath, who gave his name only as Jean. “But they shouldn’t be targeting us, they should be looking at industry – and products that come in from abroad.”

His concern about green measures principally stemmed from a sense of unfairness and double standards. “Importing from Australia, I don’t believe that can be as sustainable as they say,” he said.

Mélanie Favereaux also brought up trade, arguing: “We are not against protecting the environment, but we think it’s not fair if we import products from outside Europe and then they don’t respect the environment like we do, for example by using pesticides we are not allowed to. It’s difficult for us to survive in this environment.”

Belgian farmers’ view that green reforms will make Europe dependent on imports that are produced to lower standards is an argument that has been consistently pushed by the agribusiness lobby.

Pro-Green and Pro-Worker

Ody said trade issues cut to the heart of the debate around the current crisis, but that it was not a reason to roll back green policies.

“There is a contradiction between producing cheaply to be competitive on international markets on one side, and being asked to produce in an environmentally friendly way,” she said.

“In Copa-Cogeca, faced with this choice, they say okay, let’s get rid of the environmental measures so that we can be competitive. And some farmers think okay, if we are obliged to compete in global competition, we can’t have these rules.

“But we at Via Campesina say – why do we continue to be obliged to compete at a global level? And that is the big divide between farmers’ organisations currently in Europe.”

We are not against protecting the environment, but we think it’s not fair if we import products from outside Europe and then they don’t respect the environment like we do.

 

– Mélanie Favereaux, Féderation des Jeunes Agriculteurs

The EU is continuing to pursue trade agreements. It’s currently in the final negotiating stages of a major new deal with Latin American countries such as Brazil.

Ody says the trade system is ripe for reform. She points to an ongoing crisis at the WTO, the trade body that regulates trade agreements, which currently lacks sufficient judges to monitor its dispute settlement circuit due to the U.S.’ refusal to nominate one under both Trump and Biden.

Researchers have pointed to this deadlock as a key development. They say it could usher in wider changes to how trade agreements work, and move the WTO away from the current liberalised regime that has reigned over many decades.

Via Campesina is particularly concerned about EU-Mercosur, which Greenpeace Europe has called “nightmare for nature”. Many smallholder farmers on both sides of the Atlantic oppose the deal, which was also brought up by farmers in Brussels last week. Favereaux told DeSmog she saw it as unfair and “dangerous” for her business.

‘Far-Right’ Farmers?

Much of the reporting on farmers protests across the EU has focussed on the actions of the far-right, which has tried to weaponise the protest.

As protests in Germany kicked off in January, Deutsche Welle reported on “deliberate attempts by right-wing extremists to use farmers’ anger for their own ends,” while others such as Politico and the Guardian have noted the same trend.

In Brussels, far-right activists were assembled alongside the farmers. There is some evidence that a thinktank linked to Hungary’s authoritarian leader Victor Orban has helped to orchestrate, and possibly finance, some of the action.

Elsewhere in Europe, in the Netherlands, far-right parties have capitalised on farmers’ discontent to make electoral gains.

While Ody agreed there was a real “danger” to the far-right co-opting farmers, she also emphasised that farmers were a very mixed group.

“The farming sector is like the rest of the society,” she said. “You’ve got 99 percent of the people who are working, trying to make a living, and they can be right-wing, left-wing, whatever,” she said.

Ody’s view was shared by Felipe van Keirsbilck, Secretary General of the Belgian workers’ union CNE, who attended the protest to show workers’ solidarity with small food producers. He called the crowd “really divided, really mixed.”

Business Opportunists 

The far right are not the only interests weighing in and capitalising on the unrest. A 2023 investigation by DeSmog showed how companies with a commercial interest in slowing moves to more nature-friendly farming have actively sought to win over key politicians deciding on green reforms in recent years.

DeSmog found the industrial farming industry overall had an average of two meetings a week with key decision-makers in Europe’s ruling party, the European People’s Party (EPP), since 2020, as the EU negotiated flagship reforms to protect nature and climate.

Industry tactics, including from farmers’ unions, have also taken more novel approaches, including organising Alpine hikes for key decision-makers on green reforms, and renting free office space.

One group that has targeted EU decision-makers is French union FNSEA. The group has also become dominant in debates around the farmers’ protests, and has been accused of co-opting smaller farmers’ concerns.

In recent weeks its president, Arnaud Rousseau – who also is the boss of the major agricultural commodities trader Avril Grouphas – met with disapproval after pushing the group’s talking points on TV even when speaking about protests organised by non-affiliated FNSEA farmers who have a different agenda.

FNSEA is a regional affiliate and key ally of Copa-Cogeca. The group has been accused by campaigners at groups such as Corporate Europe Observatory of representing the interests of large businesses’ interests over those smaller producers.

Like Copa-Cogeca the group has been an aggressive lobbyist against Europe’s green measures, referring to the Farm to Fork as a “degrowth strategy.”

Environmentalists have also pointed to the fraught relations between farmers groups in Italy as signs of a much more fractured movement than is often acknowledged. Several groups – including one named the “Betrayed Farmers” have taken a stance against Coldiretti – a Copa-Cogeca affiliate, saying they don’t feel represented by its positions.

Ody sums up: “The farmers’ protests and anger is legitimate. But they have been using this in order to protect their own interests as big businessmen.”

Editing by Hazel Healy.

This article appeared originally in DeSmog, and is republished under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here. 

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But this rethinking of agriculture needs to go bigger and bolder, fast, according to a new study, released last week by the Food System Economics Commission (FSEC), which spells out in sobering detail the social, economic and environmental costs of the current global food system – and the potential savings of a radical food systems overhaul. 

“In short, our food systems are destroying more value than they create,” says the report, the result of a four-year investigation led by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Cornell University and the Brookings Institution’s Africa Growth Initiative. 

Food innovation has pulled off a remarkable feat, working to feed a global population that has doubled since 1970. But there are also a litany of “unaccounted costs” that fuel some of the greatest challenges we live with, from climate change to hunger, disease and inequality.  

The current cost of these unintended harms on people and the planet amount to a staggering US$15 trillion a year, or the equivalent of 12% of the global gross domestic product in 2020, the researchers found. The commission estimates that $11 trillion of that cost is attached to health, measured through the negative effect that diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and cancer – which can be linked to food – have on labour productivity. Another $3 trillion a year is tied to the impact of agricultural-land-use and food-production practices on ecosystems and climate. These practices account for one-third of global greenhouse emissions, including deforestation that makes way for crops and livestock.  

The report authors analyzed a model of food-system transformation that they contend is a “uniquely powerful means of addressing the global climate, nature and health emergencies while offering a better life to hundreds of millions of people.” It includes a call to shift our diets to ones that are more plant-based, and limit consumption of sugars, meat and dairy. They say it is a path that would eliminate undernutrition by 2050 and prevent the premature death of 174 million people. Farmers would earn a better living, forests and biodiversity would be protected, and demand for irrigation water would plummet. The net benefits on incomes and reduced costs of this transformation amounts to US$5 to $10 trillion a year, they report.  

“The economic and planetary case for transforming our food systems is compelling,” the authors note. “But negotiating change across a multitude of diverse stakeholders with unequal power and varying prospects from the transformation is an enormous challenge.” 

Another study released last week, by the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary, shows that Canada, in particular, is failing to invest enough in sustainable agriculture. The report calls on the federal government to allocate more funds to research, on the private sector to push for more favourable investment opportunities, and for a shift in intellectual property rights that could also spur more investment. The report notes that spending on agricultural innovation in Canada has declined 70% since 1986 and urges lawmakers to see that spending rise to 0.10% of GDP.  

In short, our food systems are destroying more value than they create.

 

– Food System Economics Commission

If nothing changes by 2050, food insecurity and undernutrition will continue to be major problems that leave 640 million people hungry worldwide, including 121 million children, according to the FSEC. India, sub-Saharan Africa and Asia will be hit especially hard.  

Climate change, which is already wreaking havoc on food production, will pack even more of a punch as extreme weather events become more frequent. This will create a domino effect in rising food prices that increasingly stretch the middle and lower classes, the report says, noting also that the current food system exposes workers to particularly low wages.  

Changing our food systems will require a global investment of between US$200 billion and $500 billion a year until 2050, a number the report says is “low compared to its economic benefits.” Much of that covers investments in rural infrastructure, including roads, irrigation expansion and access to energy; the protection and restoration of forests; reducing food waste; and supporting a dietary shift. Working in tandem with a low-carbon energy system, the food revolution “can ensure that global warming stays well below 1.5 degrees C at the end of this century,” the report states.  

The FSEC report calls on governments to shift incentives in agriculture production away from a focus on big producers that often are linked to harmful environmental practices. Taxing carbon and nitrogen pollution are two ways to turn food systems into net carbon sinks, it argues. The new revenues from those taxes should be directed into benefits for poorer households that might be struggling to eat, which in turn will drum up political support for the systemic transformations that need to happen.  

There is also more that national and international organizations can do to incentivize food innovation, especially in low- and middle-income countries, such as supporting low-emission farming systems or developing digital technologies that are useful to small-scale farmers. And, finally, government social safety nets need to keep the poorest in mind. Cash transfers distributed by governments through digital payment systems can target vulnerable populations – and children should be at the centre of these strategies, the report notes.   

For the experts at the FSEC, the biggest piece of the puzzle is changing what we eat. The impact of choosing healthier diets on well-being and land use accounts for 70% of the benefits of transforming food systems. On the other hand, what we eat – diets that are high in fats, sugars, salt and ultra-processed foods – will increase obesity by 70%, and 1.5 billion will struggle with obesity by 2050. The authors project that the cost of treating obesity will skyrocket to US$3 trillion by 2030.  

The report warns authorities to be mindful of the ripple effects of transformation, so as not to pit the winners and losers of the immediate change against one another. Fears over food affordability can get in the way of taking action, while transformation may affect the jobs that a community is used to relying on. That’s why developing downstream industries that complement the shift, especially in low-income countries, is crucial.   

“Daunting as the challenges of transforming food systems may be, there are reasons to be hopeful,” the report states, pointing to successes in Latin America, for example, where groups lobbied to raise taxes on sugary beverages despite corporate opposition. “Addressing squarely the concerns that shape policymakers’ vision of what is possible offers a pathway to reap large benefits for people and planet.” 

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As my career progressed, I saw firsthand the stark contrasts that underpin our global economy. In resource-rich countries, I observed how enduring colonial legacies continue to influence lives and local economies, often resulting in widespread poverty. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where local populations have little access to the wealth generated beneath their feet, I led a community investment plan tied to a mining project. I was fully aware that despite the mining project’s scale, the benefit to the communities would be marginal. In India and Nepal, I worked with governments to determine how to modernize forest-management practices that were rooted in a history of cutting down trees to benefit the colonial regime, with little benefit to local economies or consideration of local knowledge, needs and trade objectives.

Again and again, I saw variations of the same story, which left me thinking, “What does it take to create companies that genuinely foster sustainable and equitable development?”

Last year, I concluded that advising companies on environmental, social and governance issues and equity, diversity and inclusion wasn’t sufficient to “raise our wounded world into a wondrous one,” as American poet and activist Amanda Gorman put it. It was time to leverage my expertise to show that it was possible to do more. I established No Women No Spice, a direct trade, certified organic spice company that sources from farmers in Zanzibar, an archipelago off Tanzania.

I had travelled to Tanzania and the island province of Zanzibar many times for work and to visit family and was acutely aware of the region’s innovative approaches to climate change, equity and agriculture. At the same time, I witnessed the lingering impacts of colonialism. These experiences were instrumental in shaping my company’s mission to “reboot the spice route.”

Zanzibar is unique because of its diverse array of crops originating from the African continent and from more distant regions, including India and the Mediterranean. On a single farm, it’s not uncommon to find more than a dozen varieties of fresh spices, including cardamom, black pepper and cinnamon. Despite Zanzibar’s agricultural richness, barriers such as lack of access to markets, destructive climate change and inadequate infrastructure have stymied its potential, reducing “Spice Island” to a mere moniker.

Slavery, women and spice

The quest for spices in the 15th century propelled European explorers to distant shores, spurring the rise of colonial empires. Spice production became a colonial monopoly, marked by severe labour exploitation and the marginalization of local economies. In Zanzibar, the spice trade and the slave trade were deeply intertwined, with Indigenous Africans forced into servitude on Portuguese-, German- and British-owned plantations.

Today’s farmers in Zanzibar face new challenges. They are grappling with climate change through prolonged dry periods, unpredictable rainfall and extreme weather, making crop cultivation increasingly challenging; rising sea levels have led to saltwater intrusion into low-lying fields. Though once a leading spice-trading hub, Zanzibar’s environmental and economic strains have driven many farmers to unsustainable mono-crop agriculture. Despite these shifts, traditional spice knowledge remains vibrant among local farmers. Initiatives like those by Community Forests International are helping communities revive “edible forests” by integrating reforestation efforts.

The spice industry is experiencing a revival driven by consumers’ demand for transparency about spice origins and methods of production. OpenText’s 2021 survey found that 88% of global consumers want to buy goods that are responsibly and sustainably produced; 83% would pay more for goods that are ethically produced. The trend is reshaping the global organic spice market, which is expected to grow from US$10.9 billion in 2023 to US$17 billion in 2033.

In the nascent days of corporate social responsibility, I saw firsthand that the focus was on corporate image with minimal benefit to communities.

Women Who Farm Africa, a social enterprise that provides programs to rural women, reports that women produce approximately 70% of Africa’s food but own less than 20% of the land. In Tanzania, agriculture is a cornerstone of the economy, providing more than two-thirds of employment and nearly one-third of the gross domestic product. The UN Development Programme reports that 67% of female workers in Tanzania are employed in agriculture, primarily as smallholder farmers. However, women remain vulnerable to economic and environmental shifts due to a lack of financial independence. Research suggests that if women had equal access to productive resources, such as financial services, training and land, farm yields could increase by 20% to 30% and reduce hunger by up to 17%. Moreover, women typically reinvest their profits into their households, which alleviates poverty from the bottom up.

In East Africa and South Asia, I’ve witnessed how education on modern farming techniques and access to high-quality seeds and land can significantly improve outcomes for female farmers, paving the way for their financial independence. Higher yields lead to surplus crops and increased incomes, which, in turn, “allows women to invest in their children’s education, improve living standards and further develop their farms,” explains Amina, a cinnamon farmer in Zanzibar.

The demand for spices, coupled with their high value relative to other crops, presents an economic incentive for spice cultivation, but farmers currently lack strong links to more profitable export markets. Sekela Mboya, a Tanzanian agronomist who works with farmers to develop agroforestry plans, stresses that “farmers also need assistance in improving agricultural production and accessing value-add enterprises.” At No Women No Spice, our goal is to increase access to stable and fair income sources for female farmers while supporting regenerative agriculture and agroforestry efforts to combat climate change.

Rebooting the spice trade

The spice industry is at a crossroads, facing the destructive impacts of global warming, growing awareness of unfair compensation for farmers, and increasing consumer demand for organic products. Climate change is already affecting spice yields and quality; forecasts predict a potential reduction in yields globally of up to 23% by 2050. This ancient trade must evolve to align with contemporary ethical and environmental standards.

Many might find it surprising that Tanzania has the sixth-highest number of certified organic farmers globally and is third in Africa. Historically, in an effort to modernize Tanzania’s agriculture sector, there was heavy reliance on chemical pesticides to increase yields of key cash crops: coffee, cotton and tea. In recent years, however, there has been a notable pivot influenced by global environmental movements and a deepening understanding of the long-term consequences of pesticide usage.

Tanzania is now witnessing a paradigm shift characterized by a steady movement toward integrated pest management, organic farming and biopesticides. Remarkably to me, but not Tanzanians, many farmers now practise organic or near-organic farming even without formal certification because it requires minimal external inputs, uses locally available materials and promotes a holistic, diverse and stress-resistant approach to farming. For the smallholder farmer, organic farming is the only viable option.

Tanzania’s organic agriculture sector has also been buttressed by systems and institutions that make sustainable farming more accessible. A network of organic farmers, civil society organizations and businesses further energizes this sector from within. The rise of organic farming in Tanzania represents an opportunity for entrepreneurs, groups and investors to contribute to the nation’s green economy by producing safe, sustainable food.

Grind the gap

Historically, a tiny fraction of a spice product’s final retail value went to the farmer, with the Fairtrade Foundation estimating this at 5% to 7%. This imbalance is even more acute for women, who form a substantial part of the agricultural workforce but typically receive lower wages and have restricted access to resources and land.

While established multinational spice companies have made progress in addressing these disparities, significant gaps persist. Despite a growing focus on sustainability and fair trade, the reality often does not align with corporate sustainability reports. Challenges include opaque supply chains, lack of transparency, and a lack of genuine empowerment of local communities. To cut through the mud, I’ve found that establishing direct relationships with Zanzibar’s sustainable farmers has been the most effective way of ensuring fair pricing that enables farmers to invest in their communities, improve living standards and foster economic independence.

Having spent my entire career working within companies to advance sustainability and equity, my hope is now that the triumphs of one small company can serve as a case study that inspires broader change.

Shilpa Tiwari is the founder and CEO of No Women No Spice and Isenzo Group, an ESG strategy and communications firm.

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Deforestation levels are down a dramatic 55.8% from 2022 to 2023, according to the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP). The largest declines occurred in the Brazilian-controlled part of the jungle, which dropped 59%, and in Colombia, which plunged 67%. Peru’s forest loss dropped 37%. “Compared to the peak year of 2020, forest loss has dropped by over two-thirds, or 67.7%,” MAAP said in a press release.

The political backdrop is impossible to ignore. President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, Brazil’s left-wing leader, has been rehabilitating the country’s environmental reputation after the tenure of Jair Bolsonaro, who created the conditions for open season on forest districts. Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, has also made the energy transition and environmental protection a cornerstone of his mandate.

The eight Amazon nations that gathered for a summit in Belém, Brazil, in August agreed to adopt more aggressive conservation methods, although they fell short of committing to stop deforestation altogether. Brazil has the largest share of the Amazon, with 60% stretching out across its territory.

An estimated 20% of the Amazon has already been cut down, driven largely by aggressive agricultural expansion, illegal mining, logging and fires. A record-setting drought this year has also primed the Amazon for forest fires, in particular in the swaths that have degraded and are in poorer health, which amounts to 40% of its surface.

Agriculture is a particular threat to the preservation of crucial carbon-capturing forest stocks around the world. In Brazil, the area occupied by agriculture grew 50% between 1985 and 2022, according to MapBiomas, gobbling up 95.1 million hectares. Much of that growth occurred in the Amazon. In its latest report card on corporate deforestation, the non-profit Ceres assessed 53 major companies, including Cargill and Procter & Gamble, facing “the greatest risks” from sourcing soy, timber and palm oil. “Most of them lack robust no-deforestation policies, despite recognizing the importance of deforestation action,” Ceres reports. Adidas and Amazon got failing grades.

U.S. food giant Cargill announced in November that it would speed up its promise to eliminate deforestation and land conversion from its supply chain of key crops, including soy, corn, wheat and cotton, in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. The company had already pledged to produce deforestation-free commodities and conversion-free soy across South America by 2030 but now says it will do so by 2025 in those three countries.

Mighty Earth, a global environmental advocacy organization, called Cargill’s announcement “important but incomplete,”  noting that it is one of the “top drivers of ecosystem destruction in Latin America.”

“Bolivia experienced a 32% increase in primary forest loss between 2021 and 2022 – four times the rate of Brazil. This is, in part, due to Cargill’s continued willingness to buy from suppliers engaged in deforestation,” Mighty Earth CEO Glenn Hurowitz wrote in November. “We’re calling on Cargill – along with the signatories of the COP27 Agribusiness Roadmap – to agree to a cut off date of 2020 to ensure this incomplete policy does not spark a ‘race to bulldoze’ in biomes such as the Grand Chaco and the Chiquitano ahead of 2025.”

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But agriculture’s overall use of fossil fuels is also an enormous problem, according to a recent analysis by the Global Alliance for the Future of Food. The report estimates that agriculture’s supply chain is responsible for at least 15% of the world’s fossil fuel use and for driving the equivalent annual carbon emissions of the European Union and Russia combined.  

This is thanks to the ways we produce, transport and store food. As is the case with many industries, fossil fuels are deeply entrenched in agricultural supply chains, from using combustion engine tractors to packaging foods in plastic wrapping. 

“Industrial food systems have a fossil fuel problem,” said Patty Fong, a program director at the Global Alliance for the Future of Food. “To prevent catastrophic climate breakdown, we need to urgently wean our food systems – alongside other economic sectors – off fossil fuels.” 

A 2021 study found that agriculture accounts for as much as a third of overall greenhouse gas emissions. These eyepopping estimates have led advocates of decarbonizing food systems to push for the issue to be central at December’s UN climate summit, COP28, in the United Arab Emirates. In a joint letter published in late October, in the run-up to the conference, 80 organizations and individuals (including the World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy and Environmental Defense Fund) called for action on food that goes beyond agricultural production (and includes the entire food supply chain).

“COP28 is a critical stepping stone in fixing our food systems and safeguarding food and nutrition security for people and humanity. Let’s seize this opportunity,” they wrote. 

And COP28 might emerge to be the most food-focused climate summit yet, as this year’s hosts have said they want to elevate the issue. But it remains to be seen whether governments will agree to the kind of transformational changes needed to make the way we eat more sustainable – especially given how ingrained fossil fuels are in food supply chains.  

Industrial food systems have a fossil fuel problem.

 

–Patty Fong, program director, Global Alliance for the Future of Food

And the fossil fuel industry wants to ensure that its piece of the agricultural pie continues to grow, according to the Global Alliance for the Future of Food. As the global energy transition picks up speed in transportation and heating, the alliance found that oil companies are “maneuvering to lock in” agriculture’s dependence on fossil fuels by investing in petrochemical products, such as plastic packaging for food and synthetic fertilizers. In 2018, the petrochemicals market accounted for 14% of oil production and 8% of natural gas production, and food-related fertilizers and plastics accounted for around 40% of these products, the alliance’s analysis says. The International Energy Agency projects the chemical sector will make up more than a third of oil demand by 2030.   

The alliance’s report maintains that untangling fossil fuels from food is an urgent task that will require a radical departure from the “continuing business-as-usual with incremental shifts” and a holistic look at every step of food production – from seed to fork.  

“Shifting away from fossil fuel dependency towards renewable energy and regenerative and agroecological farming would not only protect our planet, but make food more affordable, enhance food security, create jobs, improve health, and help tackle hunger,” Fong said. 

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