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I want to share a quote from yesterday’s discussions here at COP29 that’s underlined in my notebook:
“The worst mistake you can do is to have a middleman who gets the resources while the farmers only get a little bit that trickles down to them,” Jose Mai, the Belize Minister of Agriculture, told me during our fireside chat at the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) Pavilion.
“The small farmers of the Americas want, desire, hope to help improve the environment. But we must help the farmer to help,” he said.
It was a privilege to talk with Minister Mai and other experts including renowned soil scientist Dr. Rattan Lal about supporting farmers in the Global South—and their perspectives stuck with me. We expect so much from farmers, and they’re so central to a climate-smart future for the food system and for the planet.
A question I’ve been reflecting on, and one that I hope we all can continue to keep in mind this week, is this: For those of us who are not farmers, what can we do to help farmers help the world?
As I’ve mentioned, a major solution being discussed here in Baku is financing, and we saw even more progress toward investment yesterday. For example, AIM for Scale’s Innovation Package, supported by global partnerships and banks, announced it’ll channel more than US$1 billion to weather support and adaptation services for farmers in Asia, Latin America and Africa. In a recent letter during COP29, a group of conflict-affected countries in the Global South made a powerful case for the existential need for significant climate funding.
And we have to remember who bears responsibility: “Those who created the problem in the first place should be those who are charged. They should be lowering their emissions and paying the way” for countries that are disproportionately affected, as Lasse Bruun, Director of Climate and Food at the UN Foundation, told us yesterday at a UNFCCC Side Event. But real change is about more than just money. These financial investments are necessary, of course, and we also have to accompany them with stronger policies and other resources that farmers rely on to help protect the environment.
We need to integrate soil health into international negotiations like the ones being discussed here at COP29. As countries negotiate and announce their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), or environmental action plans, they must meaningfully uplift agroecological and regenerative approaches, not just pay lip service.
We need to tell the right stories and ask the right questions, as we discussed during our roundtable at the Action on Food Hub Pavilion that fostered conversation between journalists, producers, and other food system leaders.
And we need to work locally!
I’ve been concerned to see several countries withdraw or not fully participate in climate discussions here in Baku.
And interestingly, several international experts—including former high-level United Nations leaders like Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon—wrote an open letter yesterday calling for an overhaul of the way climate negotiations like COP take place. What we need, they said, is to “shift away from negotiations to the delivery of concrete action” with more frequent meetings and stronger accountability.
During my conversation with Jose Mai, the Belize Ag Minister, he said something else that I also cannot forget.
After COP29, he said, he can go back to Belize and say “that there is hope. We can no longer take food for granted. We can no longer clear all the trees, cannot allow our soils to degrade, cannot fertilize without care.”
We need global action, to be sure. We need significant financing and sustainable resources, especially in the Global South, and we need every country to be on board. But farmers are, by their very nature, local—and so our solutions need to be locally rooted, too.
To help farmers help the planet, we can’t exclusively wait for global negotiations like COP to fix everything. To recover and rebuild from a climate in crisis, we need to start in our own communities, too!
Add These to Your Calendar:
9:00AM–10:00AM @ the IICA Pavilion: “Science & AgTech” daily morning coffee series, with food/agriculture ministers and experts. Speakers include: Margaret Zeigler, IICA; Carol Franco, Agricultural Negotiator for the Dominican Republic; Kathya Fajardo, IICA; Laurie Goodwin, CropLife International
10:30AM–12:00PM @ the IICA Pavilion: “Dialogue For Climate Action: Can Livestock Go Green?” Register HERE. Speakers include: Margaret Zeigler, IICA; Dr. Muhammad Ibrahim, IICA; Amanda Soares Roza, CNA Brazil; Josefina Eisele, Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef; John Gilliland, Northern Irish Beef and Willow Farmer, UK Ag and Horticulture Development Board; Jack Bobo, University of Nottingham Food Systems Institute; Gilles Froment, International Dairy Federation; Eric Mittenthal, Protein PACT; and Krysta Harden, US Dairy Export Council.
12:00PM–1:30PM @ The Future Economy Forum’s Action on Food Pavilion: “Innovation & Technology In Service Of Agricultural Transition,” a daily roundtable luncheon discussion. Register HERE. Speakers include: Kate Warren, Devex; Dizzanne Billy, Climate Tracker; Alexandra Scott, Climate Diplomacy; Wei Qian Chua, Chinese Media Group; Jayashree Nandi, Hindustan Times; Ibrahim Khalil, Renew Earth News; Maximiliano Manzoni, Climate Tracker; Helmy Abouleish, SEKEM; Million Belay, AFSA; Merijn Dols, Future Economy Forum.
3:30PM–5:00PM @ Future Economy Forum’s Action on Food Pavilion: A daily dialogue series with pavilion and community leaders. Today’s topic: Water in Africa. Speakers include: Helmy Abouleish, SEKEM; Thoraya Seada, Heliopolis University; Kiralpati Ramakrishna, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; Sandeep Roy Choudhury, VNV Advisory Services; Daniël Povel, NOW Partners; and Ahmed Rushdy, Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA).
5:00PM–6:00PM @ The Sustainable Agriculture of the Americas Pavilion facilitated by IICA: Happy hour collaborative celebration with COP climate negotiators and experts. Register HERE. Speakers include: Margaret Zeigler, IICA; Paolo Pianez, Marfrig Global Foods.
News Stories/Reports I’m Reading Today:
- Public Climate Finance for Food Systems Transformation — This report from the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, an update of a 2022 report, shows that food-focused climate finance is slipping—underscoring an urgent need for action.
- Restoring the Colombian Amazon Biome as a global climate solution — An article by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations highlights powerful local stories of resilience and agroecological recovery.
- Denmark’s Groundbreaking Agriculture Climate Policy Sets Strong Example for the World — the country’s new law is the “world’s most comprehensive national effort to address the environmental challenges of agriculture,” writes a pair of analysts at the World Resources Institute.
- An Eye on Methane: Invisible But Not Unseen — A report from the UN Environment Programme takes stock of the state of methane reduction efforts and provides crucial data—but are we paying attention?
- Why We Need to Urgently Transform Our Food Systems: A Call to Action — At the IISD Sustainable Development Goals Knowledge Hub, a roadmap for tangible solutions at COP29 and beyond that can jumpstart food systems change.
Powerful Quotes From Recent Discussions
- “The soil health in a place determines the health of the people that live there. The soil health is a perfect mirror of the people. Where the people are suffering, they pass the suffering to the land.” — Dr. Rattan Lal, Distinguished Professor of Soil Science, The Ohio State University
- “Investing in young people and taking a systemic approach to food systems can transform our region. Solidarity in climate finance gives us the power to address food insecurity and enhance peace, security, and development.” — H.E. Sala Ahmed Jama, Deputy Prime Minister, Somalia (via Intergovernmental Authority on Development on X)
- “Food security goes beyond production. It’s about value addition, market access for small-scale farmers, and collective responsibility to eradicate hunger.” — Dr. Olatunji Yusuf, Senior Climate Change Specialist at the Islamic Development Bank (via Intergovernmental Authority on Development on X)
Ways To Take Action:
- Learn About Shifting Power via Global Alliance for the Future of Food: “Transitioning from fossil fuel dependency to hashtag#RenewableEnergy and adopting regenerative, agroecological farming isn’t just an environmental solution—it’s a transformative approach for:💰 Boosting affordability, 🍽️ Enhancing food security, 👩🌾 Creating jobs, 🍎 Improving health, 🍴 Alleviating hunger. World leaders, the time to act is NOW. We must transform our #FoodSystems to prevent catastrophic climate breakdown.” Explore more HERE.
- Sign the Food Systems Call To Action via Climate Champions – “Food systems transformation at the core of climate action. Resilient, sustainable, and equitable food systems can safeguard food and nutrition security, build resilience to climate impacts, help meet our climate mitigation needs, protect and restore nature, and create prosperous and inclusive societies and economies. Sign the Food Systems Call to Action and join the High Level Champions, and over 300 leaders, helping to keep food systems on the global agenda.”
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Photo courtesy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture
