Revealed November 10, 2025
By Lisa Tostado, Agrochemicals and Fossil Fuels Campaigner on the Middle for Worldwide Environmental Regulation.
This piece is a part of a multi-part CIEL weblog sequence unpacking the legislation, politics, and energy shaping COP30 — and what it’ll take to ship local weather justice.
As COP30 kicks off, fossil fuels — the first driver of world warming — have to be on the middle of local weather negotiations. It’s vital that one other matter, carefully linked, even be a part of the conversations — meals. Agrochemicals —fertilizers and pesticides produced largely from oil, gasoline, and coal — are the constructing blocks of a climate-wrecking meals system. If international locations are critical about assembly the Paris Settlement, they have to decide to eradicating agrochemicals and transitioning towards agroecology.
After many years of political stress, the local weather F-word — fossil fuels — lastly made its approach into the ultimate settlement at COP28 in 2023. However one other F-word should not escape the dialog if we’re to maintain 1.5° inside attain: meals.
International agri-food methods are chargeable for not less than one-third of human-caused world greenhouse emissions. The economic meals system, dominated by monocultures, intensive livestock manufacturing, and chemical inputs, can not exist with out fossil fuels. COP30 in Brazil, one of many world’s largest agricultural powerhouses, is a vital alternative to anchor local weather pledges with transitions away from high-emitting industrial agriculture.
Fossil Fuels are Embedded In Each Stage of the Meals System
Agribusiness has a monitor document of shifting duty onto the fossil gasoline sector, however from farm to fork, the 2 methods are inextricably linked. Oil, gasoline, and coal are the lifeblood for farm equipment, fertilizers, meals processing, refrigeration, world provide chains, and different agri-food-related actions. Roughly 15% of all fossil gasoline power use as we speak is tied to meals methods — and this share is rising, pushed partially by the rise of ultra-processed meals.
Agrochemicals are Fossil Fuels in Disguise
As the usage of nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides rises, the fossil-fuel lock-in begins properly earlier than the farm. Producing agrochemicals requires massive quantities of fossil gasoline, coal, or oil — each for feedstock and power. As different sectors decarbonize, the fossil gasoline trade is more and more turning to petrochemicals — of which agrochemicals account for roughly one-third — as a progress market. Nitrogen fertilizers alone account for 3-5% of world fossil gasoline use and greater than 2 % of world emissions — rivaling industrial aviation.
Agrochemicals Make the Industrial Meals System Doable
The direct local weather impacts of agrochemicals are vital, however they’re solely the tip of the iceberg. Agrochemicals have enabled and locked in an agricultural system based mostly on large-scale monocultures and industrial livestock operations, the place animals are raised off the land and feed is grown elsewhere. This mannequin drives deforestation, accelerates methane and nitrous oxide emissions, and deepens soil and biodiversity loss — making it basically unsustainable.
Agriculture is the most important human-made supply of two greenhouse gases which can be far more potent than carbon dioxide: methane and nitrous oxide, pushed largely by industrial livestock manufacturing and unregulated fertilizer use. The enlargement of the agricultural frontier accounts for 70-90% of world deforestation, not less than half of it as a result of manufacturing of just some commodities for export. On its present trajectory, the meals system alone would push the world past 1.5°C.
Tweaks Received’t Lower it, Our Meals System Wants an Overhaul
COP30 dangers being a repeat of what we’ve seen in earlier local weather talks: industrial agribusiness lobbyists selling alleged local weather options — like blue ammonia, precision farming, and controlled-release plastic coatings — that, in actuality, solely deepen dependence on fossil fuels and chemical inputs.
Blue ammonia just isn’t solely costly and closely sponsored, it additionally depends on fossil gasoline and carbon seize methods which have repeatedly did not carry out. Even when fertilizers may very well be produced extra sustainably, their local weather impacts wouldn’t disappear. Nearly all of fertilizer-related emissions happen on the sector. And whereas effectivity applied sciences could assist scale back nitrogen loss, they don’t tackle the core drawback: the meals system makes use of an excessive amount of artificial fertilizer and pesticide within the first place.
Large Ag Does Not Feed the World
The economic agricultural trade claims that regulating the usage of artificial fertilizers and pesticides will trigger starvation. However we already produce 1.5 instances extra meals than is required to feed our world inhabitants. Starvation is pushed by inequalities and entry — not an absence of manufacturing. In the meantime, overreliance on agrochemicals degrades soils and destroys biodiversity, undermining our means to develop meals sooner or later. And their local weather impacts deepen poverty and inequalities, the very circumstances that drive starvation.
Past the Local weather Risk
Agrochemicals don’t simply threaten the local weather; the economic meals system is the only largest driver of planetary boundary overshoot. The disruption of nitrogen and phosphorus cycles — pushed largely by the overuse of fertilizers — is inflicting cascading hurt to ecosystems and human well being.
Actual options exist: COP30 Should Assist Scale Them
To maintain 1.5°C inside attain, local weather negotiators should acknowledge meals methods — and the agrochemical dependence that underpins them — as central to the local weather agenda.
A couple of hundred organisations, together with CIEL, have signed a joint letter calling for local weather ambition to be grounded in reducing agricultural emissions and transitioning to agroecology. Brazilian civil society can be convening a Individuals’s Summit to advance an various imaginative and prescient for agriculture: one which facilities ecologically-minded smallholder farmers and their energy to nourish Brazil’s inhabitants.
To start out, this implies:
Explicitly acknowledging the function of agrochemicals and industrial agriculture in transgressing the planet’s protected limits, together with the local weather
Committing to Nationally Decided Contributions that scale back the usage of agrochemicals and transfer in direction of agroecology
Rejecting false options — together with blue ammonia, minor effectivity tweaks, coating in microplastics, and biofuel enlargement — that lock in fossil gasoline dependence and delay actual change
Supporting farmers with monetary and technical sources to undertake agroecological and low-input practices which can be resilient, productive, and climate-aligned
Introducing insurance policies, particularly in high-income international locations, that assist a dietary shift towards wholesome, ecological, plant-based meals and that implement binding agricultural emissions discount targets
Reworking meals methods just isn’t a peripheral difficulty — it’s a core situation for delivering the Paris Settlement. COP30 is the time to behave.
