Farmers are key to fighting climate change – it’s time we gave them the support they deserve

Five years ago, sitting in Glasgow for COP26, I was disheartened to realize that food systems, farmers, or soil health appeared in none of the formal text of the negotiations. Farmers were often not included in discussions, and their incredible work as agents of change in the very aspirations that the COP espoused to achieve, I felt, was largely unrecognized.

So, this year was perhaps the most important year since the dawn of agricultural productivity some 10,000 years ago for the support of farmers, and the understanding of the outsized role they can play in tackling climate change.

Not only did COP30 take place in Brazil and the G20 in South Africa – two critical global bread baskets, and homes to fragile natural ecosystems that need protecting – they formally extended a seat at the table to food systems and those who steward them: farmers.

Significantly, this helped bring agriculture into the foreground and spark new environmental conversations among key stakeholders. But we’ve still got a long way to go, and the real work begins now.

Decision-makers need to embrace new and innovative ways to reduce climate emissions – especially in the Global South, where smallholder farmers form the backbone of global food security.

Food systems featured prominently at COP at Belém, yet conversations about sustainable farming tended to centre on voluntary pledges and partnerships.

At the same time, many of the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases (GHG) are falling short on nationally determined contributions, which were launched in line with the Paris Agreement.

And with rollbacks on sustainability initiatives observable in many global industries, it’s now more important that world leaders make agriculture a mission-critical priority in their green agendas and make significant headway on climate change.

So, as leaders meet at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting 2026 in Davos, I’m hoping to leverage the Forum’s network to evolve these discussions into tangible actions.

The snowy streets of Davos seem a world away from a remote bean field, sprouting with green shoots for next year’s harvest. But they’re more closely linked than you might think as the World Economic Forum has included food systems in sustainable development conversations for years.

Agricultural activity accounts for about a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, but less than 3% of all public climate finance goes towards food systems. Funding is important, but it isn’t the main problem – these statistics instead reveal how farmers’ role in reducing greenhouse emissions is largely overlooked in global climate action.

Carbon sequestration could significantly reduce carbon emissions. Through techniques like no-till farming, agroforestry and enhanced rock weathering, farmers can turn soils into massive carbon sinks, drawing down carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere.

To put this into perspective, if farmers implemented sustainable practices across 2.6 billion hectares of agricultural land, they could remove more than 3 billion tons of CO₂ annually – equivalent to the emissions of all the world's cars.

And that’s not it. Far beyond GHG sequestration, it’s clear that farmers can be part of the toolkit of solutions elsewhere, too. Take water: about 8,000 trillion litres of freshwater could be conserved if biological and nature-based agricultural practices were adopted at scale, while rice paddies alone could reduce methane emissions by 70% through sustainable practices. These methods work – but farmers can’t just adopt these practices overnight.

I’ve spoken to farmers in plantations, fields and orchards for over 30 years. And it’s helped me realize exactly where farmers need support. Of course, financing is a part of the picture, but farmers also need training, greater access to sustainable markets and incentives that make it pay for them to change their current agricultural methods.

At COP30, UPL launched the #AFarmerCan campaign, which aims to ensure that farmers’ needs are captured in an actionable framework, and to give decision-makers a lexicon of actionable solutions to drive this change.

And crucially, we wanted to support other businesses and decision-makers, and guide them towards actioning farmer-first environmental policies and incentives. The framework is captured by four pillars:

These solutions are already working. For example, in the EU, at least 25% of a member state's direct payments budget under the Common Agricultural Policy must be allocated to eco-schemes.

And just this year, we brought together a group of stakeholders in Guyana to create a parametric weather-risk insurance for all 6,000 of Guyana's rice farmers. It pays out automatically when rainfall, river levels or wind speeds cross predefined thresholds. This eliminates the need for on-ground assessment of losses and enables enrolled farmers to get immediate assistance to recover and rebuild.

These initiatives ultimately mark a much-needed paradigm shift, where farmers are empowered to change their agricultural methods, rather than adopting what governments think is best for them.

Alongside governments, businesses can implement the framework, too. In Andhra Pradesh, India, we’ve worked towards the ‘promote’ pillar by educating farmers on practices that protect and increase yields, while reducing emissions.

One farmer adopted "alternate wetting and drying", a practice that allows his rice fields to dry between irrigations. As a result, he used almost 30% less water, sharply reduced methane emissions and improved the productivity of the soil.

But despite early signs of progress, the framework needs scaling, where the need is greatest, with a particular focus on the Global South. Farmers in such regions as sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia lack the resources they need to change their practices, while often bearing the brunt of extreme weather conditions like droughts and typhoons.

This takes us from the farmer’s field back to Davos, where I’ll meet fellow members of the World Economic Forum’s Food Innovators Network. It’s a consortium of businesses, governments and other stakeholders and we exchange knowledge and collaborate on frontier food innovations, which, importantly, drives collective action and investment.

We don’t just need a unified global consensus on sustainable agriculture more than ever before; we need a toolkit to deliver the transformation. Davos caps off the most important year in history for global climate talks, and I’m determined to drive discussions towards meaningful changes.

With a four-pillar framework, key stakeholders can help transition to sustainable practices and begin to turn the tide on climate change, and show that a farmer can play the biggest role yet in the delivery of a sustainable, resilient future.