“Assessing the Net Climate Benefits of Improved Grazing Intensity in Global Rangelands”
Improving how the world’s rangelands are grazed could store about 2.2 billion tons of CO2 equivalent a year, roughly 4% of human emissions. But the first global accounting to add livestock and feed supply-chain emissions finds the net benefit is about 16% smaller, and far smaller where feed drives deforestation. Most existing grazing carbon-credit projects sit in exactly those regions, so the climate value of improved grazing is consistently overstated when measured on soil carbon alone.
This is the most comprehensive global assessment to date of whether improving how livestock graze the world’s rangelands can deliver net climate benefits. It pairs 4,257 carbon measurements from 210 studies across 333 sites with data on livestock diets, feed supply chains, international trade, and animal methane and nitrous oxide, building a full systems-level emissions model rather than a soil-carbon estimate alone.
- Large biophysical potential. Preventing overgrazing so plants regrow and capture more carbon could sequester about 2.2 billion tons of CO2 equivalent per year in the near term.
- Supply-chain emissions shrink it. Once emissions from supplemental feed, the animals themselves, and feed-related land-use change are counted, the net benefit falls by about 16% on average (a range of 2 to 31%, and up to 40% under more conservative soil-carbon models) to roughly 1.8 billion tons per year. Feed is the single largest offset, and its carbon cost depends on where it is grown, from deforestation-heavy sourcing in parts of Brazil to long-converted cropland in the US Midwest.
- Carbon-credit projects are exposed. Across 56 grazing carbon-credit projects in the Verified Carbon Standard registry, 60% lie in regions where real net mitigation is lower than the soil-carbon basis they are credited on, by an average of 36%, and some shift to net emitting. New projects are skewed toward these same over-crediting regions.
The findings complicate the popular argument that better grazing or regenerative livestock management can be relied on as a carbon solution. The soil carbon is real but modest against total emissions, and it can be substantially offset, or in places erased, once feed and its land-use footprint are counted, so carbon claims and credits resting on soil-carbon gains alone are likely overstated. For policymakers, agribusinesses, and crediting bodies, grazing improvements have to be judged at the level of the whole production system and its supply chains, with feed sourcing and land-use change central to whether a net benefit results.
The authors call their results a snapshot of current conditions, not a forecast, and note that climate change will alter plant productivity and that shifting trade and input markets could move the numbers; soil-carbon gains are also expected to saturate over time, while feed and livestock emissions persist. Regional variation is wide, so global averages mask large differences that need case-by-case assessment.
Related report: The S3F coalition’s Livestock’s Lengthening Shadow (2026) documents the continued expansion of livestock’s environmental footprint. Its proposed solutions center on regenerative and pasture-based animal production, a framing this study complicates: the net climate benefit of improved grazing shrinks once feed and land-use emissions are counted, and is over-credited across most existing projects.
“The 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans Are Associated with Higher Land, Water and Nitrogen Use, and Greenhouse Gas Emissions”
Cutting ultra-processed foods is not enough if the guidance also pushes more animal protein. Modeled against the current American diet, adherence to the new US Dietary Guidelines raises land use, nitrogen fertilizer use, and greenhouse gas emissions by up to 32%, because the higher-protein, animal-heavy pattern more than cancels the gains from removing ultra-processed foods. A high-protein diet built on plant sources avoids the penalty, making protein source, not quantity, the decisive lever for aligning dietary policy with climate and nature goals.
This modeling study quantifies the environmental footprint of following the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, released in early 2026, which advise avoiding ultra-processed foods while recommending higher protein intake, chiefly from animal sources. The researchers built isocaloric 2,500 kcal diets with all ultra-processed foods removed at three protein levels (0.8, 1.2, and 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight), plus two high-protein diets contrasting plant and animal sources, and compared each against the current Mean American Diet. Land use, nitrogen fertilizer use, freshwater use, and greenhouse gas emissions were estimated using the published Dietary Impacts on Environmental Measures dataset.
- Removing ultra-processed foods helps, but the protein push cancels it. Ultra-processed foods account for 40 to 58% of the current diet’s environmental impact, so removing them lowers footprints. Raising protein to the guidelines’ levels reverses that, increasing land use, nitrogen use, and greenhouse gas emissions by up to 32% relative to the current diet.
- Water is the one exception. Freshwater use fell 7 to 19% across the modeled diets, and the benefit would be larger with lower protein and more plant-sourced protein.
- Protein source decides the outcome. At the same high protein level, the animal-based diet had a greater environmental impact than the plant-based diet across metrics, with the plant-based high-protein diet substantially lower overall.
- Grass-fed is not a way out. Current pastureland grass resource can support only 27% of the current beef supply (27 million cattle), an amount 30% smaller than prior estimates (Hayek & Garret, 2018), so current or higher intake at that standard is not feasible.
Dietary guidelines are the backbone of US federal food policy, shaping school meals, food assistance, and government, military, and hospital procurement, so their environmental footprint scales far beyond individual plates. This analysis shows that the headline move against ultra-processed foods, sound on its own, is outweighed when paired with a higher-protein recommendation that in practice means more meat. Framing the guidelines as a return to natural, less-processed foods also risks steering consumers toward more red meat, including grass-fed beef that the land base cannot supply at current consumption levels. The finding reframes the question from how much protein to which protein, and the authors conclude that the guidelines should be revised to prioritize plant-based over animal foods to meet health and environmental goals together.
As a modeling study, the results depend on the environmental impact coefficients used and on the assumption that higher protein recommendations translate into higher animal-protein intake, which reflects current US consumption patterns rather than a certainty. The analysis covers four environmental measures and does not model health outcomes, cost, or the biodiversity and land-use-change effects that would further separate plant from animal sources. It is US-specific, tied to the Mean American Diet and domestic production, though the underlying pattern that animal protein carries a heavier footprint per unit is well established across the wider literature. The code is openly available, supporting reproducibility and adaptation to other national contexts.
“Landscape Efficiency Frontiers for Biodiversity, Climate Mitigation, and Net Economic Value”
The long-assumed conflict between a productive food and forestry economy and a healthy planet is largely false. Across 146 countries, smarter decisions about where and how land is farmed, grazed, and restored could expand biodiversity, climate mitigation, and the economic value of crop, livestock, and forestry production at the same time.
This Science study builds sustainable landscape efficiency frontiers for 146 countries: the best achievable combinations of biodiversity conservation, land-based climate mitigation, and net economic value from crops, livestock, and forestry, three goals usually treated as competing. Using high-resolution land-cover and economic data, the team optimized across 13 land-use and land-management options per location, counting the cost of switching land use, to find points where no goal could improve without another getting worse.
- Most countries can gain on all three goals at once. Almost every country sits well inside its frontier, meaning simultaneous improvements in biodiversity, climate, and economic value are possible even after accounting for transition costs.
- Climate mitigation could rise 23%. From 1035 to 1268 billion metric tons of CO2 equivalents with no loss to economic value or biodiversity in any country, enough to offset roughly four years of total global emissions at 2019 levels.
- Economic value could rise 83%. From US$443.9 billion to US$811.6 billion annually without sacrificing biodiversity or climate, mainly by closing crop yield gaps in lower-income countries alongside selective restoration.
- Concentrated action captures most of the benefit. In Paraguay, the top 30% of land-use changes delivered 65% of the economic gain and 61% of the climate gain, so a focused set of well-chosen changes does most of the work.
The finding undercuts the most common objection to ambitious land and food policy, that protecting nature and growing the economy are a zero-sum trade, giving agriculture ministries, development banks, and finance institutions a quantified case for redirecting land-use decisions rather than defending the status quo. The authors point to payments for ecosystem services, already used in Costa Rica, China, and the US Conservation Reserve Program, as a practical way to reward landowners for public benefits the market ignores, and reframe the land-sparing versus land-sharing debate as a false choice in which the largest gains come from combining restoration with higher yields on the most suitable land.
The economic figures are a ceiling, not a forecast: prices are held fixed, so the authors note real-world price responses would shrink the win-win zone, and harms such as water-quality damage from intensification go uncounted. The model covers crop, livestock, and forestry but not human nutrition, food security, or dietary demand, all flagged as future work, so it speaks to how land is allocated rather than what is produced and for whom.
“Environmental Damages of the Top Ten Percent Consumers Exceed Global Climate and Biodiversity Funding Gaps”
The wealthiest 10% of consumers cause an estimated 1.7 to 5.7 trillion US dollars in environmental damage each year, more than the world’s climate and biodiversity financing gaps combined. Biodiversity loss is the single largest component of that bill, and the footprint data behind it identify food, especially animal-based food, as the leading sectoral lever for reducing most of the pressures being priced.
This study monetises the environmental damage caused by the world’s top 10% of consumers across four planetary boundaries: climate change, biosphere integrity, biogeochemical cycles (nitrogen and phosphorus), and freshwater use. It applies environmental prices from the Environmental Prices Handbook 2024 to consumption-based footprints drawn from Tian et al. (2024, Nature), and reports results for the world and for six major economies (Brazil, China, Egypt, Germany, India, and the United States). It was published open access in Communications Sustainability, a Nature Portfolio journal.
- The damage exceeds the funding the world says it lacks. The top 10% cause 1.7 to 5.7 trillion US dollars in annual environmental damage, or 2,300 to 7,500 dollars per person. The lower global estimate alone matches the combined international climate and biodiversity financing targets; the lower United States or Chinese estimate each covers the 675 billion dollar biodiversity financing gap, and the central United States estimate exceeds the 993 billion dollar annual climate-finance figure agreed at COP30.
- Biodiversity dominates the bill. Biodiversity loss accounts for 47 to 56% of the total damage and climate change 36 to 45%, with nitrogen at 6 to 8% and water and phosphorus each under 2%.
- The burden is steeply unequal and concentrated. The United States top 10% owe 19,000 to 63,000 dollars per person, equal to 6 to 20% of their income, while India’s top 10% owe 410 to 1,400 dollars, equal to 0.8 to 2.8% of income. More than 60% of the global top 10% live in the United States and the European Union.
- Food is the leading lever on the priced pressures. The footprints come from Tian et al. (2024, Nature), whose analysis finds food, especially animal-based food, is the dominant driver of the land, nitrogen, phosphorus, and water footprints across all consumption groups, and the leading sectoral lever for reducing five of six environmental pressures. In that study, action on the food and services consumption of the top 20% alone is enough to bring land-system change and biodiversity loss back within their planetary boundaries.
Monetisation reframes elite consumption damage as a priced, taxable liability that exceeds the very funding gaps the world says block climate and nature action, sharpening the polluter-pays case and the argument for progressive and luxury-focused environmental taxation. The food-systems relevance runs through the composition of that bill. Food production is a leading driver of biodiversity loss, the largest single component priced here, and the source footprints identify food as the top reducible lever for most of the pressures included. The most cost-effective entry point into this liability therefore runs substantially through the food system, through fiscal instruments, public procurement, and provisioning defaults rather than awareness alone. The figure also sits alongside a companion true-cost estimate (Yang et al., Science, 2026\) that puts the hidden costs of the global food system at roughly 20 trillion dollars a year, more than double the value of the food consumed.
The figures rest on willingness-to-pay-based environmental prices, which carry wide uncertainty, especially for biodiversity, where the authors flag that valuations converted from European ecosystems do not transfer cleanly. The bill is a floor: it excludes five planetary boundaries that could not be priced, including land-system change, so the true total is higher. Most important for food systems, the study prices total consumption and does not break damage down by sector, so it cannot by itself isolate the food or dietary share of the bill. That attribution requires pairing with the sectoral footprint data in Tian et al. (2024). Modelling the dietary share explicitly, and pricing the omitted boundaries, are the natural next steps.
“Plant-Based Protein Foods Are Less Sensitive to Price Changes Than Animal-Based Ones, with Differences Across Income and Education Levels”
Cutting the price of plant-based foods is a reliable, equity-friendly way to shift protein purchasing. In both Finland and Canada, responsiveness to plant-based prices held steady across income groups, while the gap between richer and poorer shoppers was far wider for meat and dairy. Lowering plant-based prices through parity pricing, subsidies, or promotions can broaden uptake without leaving lower-income shoppers behind.
Researchers used grocery loyalty-card records to measure how actual purchasing responds to price, rather than relying on surveys or stated intentions. The main analysis tracked 29,131 Finnish shoppers across 2017 and 2018, with a separate robustness check on 58,267 Canadian shoppers in Quebec. Using mixed-effects regression, they estimated price sensitivity for seven plant-based and fourteen animal-based protein subcategories, and tested whether socioeconomic status, measured both from individual surveys and from neighbourhood census data, changed the picture.
- Plant-based proteins were less price-sensitive than animal proteins. The pattern held in both countries. Demand for nearly every category still fell when prices rose, so price remains a real barrier across the board; the difference is one of degree, not direction.
- Socioeconomic gaps were over three times wider for animal proteins. The difference in price sensitivity between lower- and higher-income shoppers was much larger for meat and dairy than for plant-based foods, where the gap, though present, was small.
- Income did most of the work. Income, more than education, drove differences in price sensitivity, while education played a larger role specifically for animal products. Lower-income shoppers were the most price-sensitive group overall.
Because plant-based price sensitivity is broadly consistent across income groups, price interventions that lower plant-based costs, such as price-parity trials, targeted discounts, or subsidies, can lift purchasing across the population while narrowing rather than widening equity gaps. The shoppers who currently buy the least stand to gain the most. The study also shows that neighbourhood-level census data can stand in for harder-to-collect individual data, opening a practical route to monitoring dietary transitions where detailed survey data are scarce.
The analysis is observational and cannot establish cause and effect, and it draws on data from 2017 to 2018, predating the more crowded plant-based market of today. It covers two high-income countries, one retailer each, and captures only in-store grocery purchases, not eating out. The authors also caution that their elasticity magnitudes should be read as comparisons between categories rather than precise figures, because purchasing was measured by weight. Updated data, supply-side dynamics, and lower- and middle-income settings are the clear priorities for future work.
“Defaults Harmonize Our Food Choices – A Systematic Data Review of Default Effects Across Socio-Demographic Groups”
Default nudges, such as making the healthier or plant-rich option the pre-selected choice, work about equally well across age, gender, and education. Unlike information campaigns, which tend to favour higher-income and more-educated groups, and food taxes, which fall hardest on lower-income households, defaults shift behaviour without adding cognitive or financial cost, making them a rare food-environment tool that is both effective and equitable.
This systematic data review pairs a preregistered PRISMA search with re-analysis of the raw participant data shared by the original study authors. It pools 12 food-choice experiments (N \= 10,788), from cafeterias and coffee shops to university dining halls and online supermarkets, to test whether the effect of a default option, versus requiring an active choice, varies by age, gender, or education.
- No consistent moderation by demographics: Across 40 interaction tests, the influence of age, gender, and education on default effectiveness was close to zero (pooled Cohen’s d of -0.006 for gender, -0.028 for education, and -0.017 for age). Equivalence testing confirmed the gender and education effects as statistically equivalent to zero.
- Defaults are equity-efficient: Because they do not rely on time, attention, or deliberation, defaults avoid the socio-economic skew of information and labelling interventions, which prior research shows tend to benefit already-advantaged groups.
- A caution on harmful defaults: A non-significant trend suggested harmful defaults, such as preselected high-sugar or high-meat options, may affect less-educated consumers more strongly. Based on only three studies it is not robust, but it supports scrutiny of manipulative commercial defaults.
The equity-across-groups finding here sits alongside a live methodological question about the size of default effects themselves. Green, Smith & Mathur (2025) meta-analysed 41 randomised trials of interventions to reduce meat and animal-product consumption and found a pooled effect of just SMD 0.07 – roughly one-third the size of what behavioural scientists conventionally call a “small effect” – once outcomes were measured beyond a single decision point, concluding the problem remains “unsolved”. Lemken addresses distributional heterogeneity but not overall magnitude, so this paper strengthens the case for defaults being equitable if they work, without settling whether their real-world dietary impact is large or modest.
Defaults can scale across school meal programmes, public procurement, and institutional catering without disadvantaging specific groups. The same logic cuts the other way commercially: where high-meat or high-sugar options are the default, that architecture may pull hardest on the most vulnerable, strengthening the case for transparency audits of delivery platforms, retail layouts, and menus. The authors frame defaults as a complement to, not a substitute for, structural measures on price and availability.
The conclusions rest on an absence of detected moderation rather than proof that none exists; a few pooled studies were underpowered, and the age result was the least conclusive of the three. Only one study measured income, leaving financial vulnerability largely untested, and the evidence skews toward higher-income settings such as university canteens. Most studies measured immediate choices rather than sustained consumption, leaving open whether equitable short-term effects translate into durable dietary change.
“Fostering Legume Purchases with Behavioural Interventions: Evidence from Field Experiments in Online and Offline Supermarkets”
In one of the first trials to test this in real supermarkets, moving legumes into the vegetable aisle lifted purchases by more than half, but the identical move in the meat aisle did nothing. Choice architecture can steer diets toward plants, but only when it works with how shoppers navigate a store, and the gains are too small for voluntary tweaks alone.
Two field experiments and a consumer survey in Denmark, where animal-based proteins dominate the diet and average legume intake (2 to 5 grams per day) sits far below the 100 gram national guideline. A randomised controlled trial in a real online supermarket tested a highlighted row of six legume products placed on the first page in the vegetable section, then the meat section. A separate difference-in-differences study in nine physical stores (13 matched controls) tested a recipe-inspiration poster with a bundled display of the ingredients. Outcomes were purchase and sales data, not self-reported intentions.
- Vegetable-section placement worked: the share of transactions containing legumes rose from 1.93% to 2.98%, which the authors report as a 57% increase in legume sales (odds ratio 1.56), with no price discount applied.
- Meat-section placement did not: the identical intervention produced no significant change (2.67% in control versus 2.57% in treatment), indicating that the placement tactic shown to work for highly processed meat substitutes does not transfer to whole legumes.
- In-store displays helped modestly: the recipe poster plus bundled ingredients raised chickpea sales by about 3.75 cans per store per day (p \= 0.005), a comparable lift of roughly 1.5 times.
- Meat purchases were unchanged across all conditions, which these small-scale interventions were not expected to shift.
Placement is a low-cost, scalable way to steer shoppers toward legumes, but only when it matches how people move through a store: shoppers read legumes as a vegetable-aisle product, not a meat alternative, so the trick that lifts meat substitutes falls flat for them. The gains are small, and retailers’ commercial incentives cap how far voluntary placement goes. That points beyond nudges toward policy that can make legumes a default rather than a discovery: placement and promotion standards like the UK’s 2021 food placement regulation, fiscal incentives, and public-private partnerships such as Denmark’s Whole Grain Partnership. The meat-aisle null echoes findings for plant-based meat substitutes (Wolfswinkel et al., 2025), while the structural ceiling on voluntary placement aligns with the value-chain barriers documented across European legume producers (Rønn et al., 2026).
The studies measure purchases, not consumption, so cannot confirm that extra cans bought become meals eaten. They cover a single country and few stores, and the one-week in-store window cannot show whether effects last. The interventions targeted ease and visibility, not taste, habit, or the cultural centrality of meat, which the authors call the harder constraints. Longer, multi-retailer trials combining placement with pricing would test the ceiling.
“Becoming Part of the Family: Greenwashing, Animal Agriculture, and the Strategic Capture of Climate Research”
The beef industry’s response to scientific consensus on livestock and climate has not been to reduce emissions but to shape the researchers who measure them. A Canadian case study shows how an industry-funded mentorship programme systematically rewards early-career climate researchers who frame beef production as sustainable, conferring funding, access, and career advantages that determine which questions get asked and which do not.
This institutional case study examines a mentorship programme for early-career climate researchers funded by the Canadian Beef Cattle Research Council (BCRC), a body financed by mandatory levies on all cattle sales in Canada. The programme pairs researchers studying greenhouse gas emissions from cattle farming with operators of large-scale industrial feedlots and industry consultants. Drawing on publicly available programme materials, cohort descriptions, and researcher outputs spanning 2014 to 2023, the author documents how the programme shapes the research landscape not by directing individual findings but by determining which researchers gain resources and which questions prove professionally viable.
- Reversed mentorship structure: Industry operators mentor scientists on research questions and methodological framing, not the reverse. The BCRC states openly on its programme website that the goal is to “align research interests with those that are practical and beneficial to Canada’s beef industry.”
- Documented outputs depart from scientific consensus: Across three detailed case studies from cohorts between 2016 and 2021, post-mentorship publications and public communications consistently omit demand reduction and dietary transition as mitigation strategies, frame declining emissions per kilogram of beef as evidence of sustainability while total emissions from Canadian cattle production rose approximately 21% since 1981, and in several cases advance claims that large-scale feedlots are environmentally sustainable or that Canada should increase cattle production.
- No mentored researcher questioned herd size: Across all cohorts identified, not one researcher produced work arguing that Canada’s total farmed cattle population is inherently unsustainable or should be limited, despite a body of peer-reviewed Canadian literature making precisely this claim.
- Career capture, not content capture: The programme’s mechanism operates through competitive advantage. Researchers who already work in directions the industry prefers receive funding, facility access, conference participation, and informal professional connections that improve their CVs and hiring prospects. The programme’s executive director has stated that participants get “a really big leg up” and that “when they are applying we see it in their proposals.”
This case illustrates how greenwashing in animal agriculture operates at the level of research infrastructure, not only in public communications. The industry does not need to suppress unfavorable findings; it funds the conditions under which unfavorable questions are less likely to be asked. The emissions-intensity framing documented here (declining greenhouse gases per kilogram of beef, rising total emissions) is not unique to Canada: it is the same mechanism independently identified in analyses of corporate sustainability reporting across the global meat and dairy sector. The case also highlights the role of checkoff programmes, government-mandated levies directed to private industry bodies, as a channel through which public resources subsidize research agenda capture. For science policy and research ethics, the question this programme raises is whether the same institutional safeguards applied to pharmaceutical or fossil fuel industry engagement with researchers should apply to animal agriculture.
This is a qualitative case study based on publicly available materials from a single programme in one country; the three researcher cases analyzed are not a random sample and cannot support claims about the scale of the effect on the Canadian research literature as a whole. The author cannot rule out that individual research projects were unaffected by mentorship, and the causal argument runs through career incentives and landscape effects rather than documented interference with findings. Future work should examine analogous programmes in other major beef-producing countries, assess how industry-aligned research enters agricultural school curricula, and compare the BCRC model against industry engagement programmes in sectors where conflicts of interest are more tightly regulated.
“Regenerative Agriculture: Moving from Ambition to Credibility”
Corporate regenerative agriculture is spreading faster than it is maturing. Across 78 major agri-food companies worth a combined US$3.3 trillion, FAIRR finds ambition rising while the markers of credibility, quantified and outcome-based targets, pesticide reduction, and coverage of the feed-dependent pork and poultry sectors, are flat or falling. The investor network concludes that regenerative agriculture cannot substitute for demand-side change and protein diversification.
This investor-network report tracks how regenerative agriculture commitments among 78 publicly listed agri-food companies have evolved since FAIRR’s 2023 baseline. It assesses public disclosures across five areas: the outcomes companies seek, their targets, strategy, pilot initiatives, and how they collect and report data. The central question is whether corporate programmes are becoming more credible, judged against indicators such as quantified targets, outcome measurement, financial support for farmers, and coverage across commodities.
- Ambition is rising but targets are falling. 64% of companies now reference regenerative agriculture, yet only 28% have quantified targets, down from 35% in 2023. Just 4% have set outcome-based targets, even though 54% now say they measure outcomes, up from 16% in 2023.
- A pesticide contradiction sits at the core. 52% of companies name reducing agrochemical inputs as a goal, but the two most common practices, cover crops (68%) and reduced or no-till farming (58%), often rely on herbicides. No company has set a target to reduce pesticide use, and only four, Conagra, Danone, Nestle, and Sysco, measure herbicide use at all.
- Pork and poultry are left out. 70% of companies extend regenerative programmes to vegetables, fruit, and other crops, but just 10% cover pork and poultry, despite these sectors’ near-total reliance on feed crops. Where farmers receive financial support, from 40% of companies, it amounts to only 0.01% to 0.05% of revenue.
- Some companies are quietly retreating. Compass, JBS, and Walmart dropped or significantly revised previously disclosed targets, and six companies, including Sodexo and Yum Brands, no longer mention regenerative agriculture in their public disclosures at all.
The report’s central message, delivered from within an investor network, is that regenerative agriculture cannot be relied upon in isolation. FAIRR argues it must be paired with demand-side solutions and protein diversification to meaningfully cut emissions and nature loss, citing analysis that shifting away from animal protein and reducing food loss and waste carry greater abatement potential than on-farm practice change alone. For companies, the gap between claim and practice is becoming a regulatory exposure: the EU Green Claims Directive and updated UK advertising rules now require environmental claims to be substantiated, with EU penalties reaching up to 4% of turnover. With pork and poultry, the most feed-dependent animal sectors, largely untouched, the programmes leave the highest-impact emissions sources aside.
The assessment covers public disclosures only, so it captures what companies report rather than what they do on the ground, and those claims are not independently verified. The full company-level dataset sits behind FAIRR’s member access, limiting scrutiny of individual company scores. The analysis catalogues practices but does not quantify their emissions or biodiversity outcomes, and the continued absence of an agreed definition of regenerative agriculture means cross-company comparisons carry uncertainty. Tracking whether the incoming EU and UK rules push companies from deployment-based to outcome-based targets would be the most informative next step.
“The Bank Takes the Lead? Making Sense of the World Bank Group’s Role Supporting Livestock Projects in the Green Revolution in Africa, with a Focus on East and Southern Africa”
The World Bank Group has quietly become the principal driver of industrial livestock expansion across sub-Saharan Africa, committing approximately $12 billion to livestock projects in 29 countries since 2014 as USAID collapsed and the Gates Foundation retreated. The model it is advancing, orienting smallholder farmers toward industrial supply chains and export markets, mirrors the Green Revolution playbook that has widened inequality and deepened import dependence elsewhere.
This report, prepared for the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) and the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA), maps the World Bank Group’s investments in livestock agriculture across sub-Saharan Africa from 2014 to 2025. Drawing on WBG annual reports, individual project records, and IFC and MIGA investment disclosures, the authors track disbursements, commitments, and project themes across the World Bank (IDA), the International Finance Corporation, and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency. The analysis focuses on East and Southern Africa while providing continent-wide coverage.
- Scale and acceleration: WBG annual disbursements to African agriculture nearly tripled, from roughly $1 billion per year (2015 to 2020\) to nearly $3 billion per year (2021 to 2024). Over the full period, the WBG committed approximately $12 billion to livestock projects across 29 sub-Saharan African countries.
- A leadership vacuum filled: USAID, which had obligated $684 million in sub-Saharan African agricultural assistance as recently as 2022, recorded net negative disbursements in early 2026 as the U.S. State Department clawed back its promises. European bilateral development agencies have similarly contracted. The report argues the WBG has stepped into the resulting gap as the continent’s dominant agricultural financier.
- Industrialization as the organizing logic: The WBG’s AgriConnect initiative, announced in late 2025, plans to commit $9 billion annually to agriculture by 2030, with the IFC organizing an additional $5 billion from partner development finance institutions. The program frames AI and networked technology as the new tools of an essentially unchanged model: integrating smallholder farmers into industrial supply chains, reducing the number of people working in agriculture, and connecting rural production to urban and export markets.
- The Zambeef case: The IFC has made multiple rounds of financing to Zambeef, Zambia’s largest vertically integrated meat producer, which operates across beef, pork, poultry, dairy, eggs, animal feed, and retail. As of 2025, approximately 10,000 smallholders service Zambeef’s cattle operations alone, illustrating how DFI capital reaches farmers through the intermediary of agribusiness rather than directly.
The WBG’s trajectory matters for food systems because development finance institutions do not just fund projects; they set the terms of what is investable. When the leading multilateral financier channels $12 billion into livestock infrastructure and frames industrial animal agriculture as the pathway to rural prosperity, it shapes what African governments prioritize, what private investors follow, and what supply chain infrastructure gets built for the next several decades. A continent that installs industrial poultry, dairy, and beef processing capacity in 2025 will still be operating it in 2055. The report documents this lock-in dynamic but does not examine its inverse: redirecting even a portion of WBG agricultural finance toward legume processing infrastructure, diverse food crop value chains, and plant-forward institutional food procurement could deliver the nutrition, income, and climate outcomes the WBG claims to pursue, without the long-term liabilities of industrial animal agriculture expansion.
The methodology for attributing the livestock share of multi-purpose project budgets relies on authors’ judgment calls not fully documented in the report, so the $12 billion figure should be treated as an informed estimate rather than a precise accounting. The report does not compare WBG livestock investment against WBG investment in plant-based food crops or legume value chains, which would be necessary to assess the relative allocation. The political economy critique, while documented through case studies, relies on selected examples rather than systematic evidence. Future work should map the ratio of WBG development finance to animal products versus direct plant food production across the same countries, and examine what governance mechanisms would be required to shift WBG agricultural strategy toward food sovereignty and agroecological alternatives.
“OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2026-2035”
The OECD-FAO baseline projects global meat production up 12% by 2035, direct on-farm emissions up 6.5% with livestock 76.6% of the increase, and Brazil absorbing 90% of soybean production growth. The modeling, however, excludes upstream fertiliser emissions, land-use change, dietary shift, alternative proteins, and price volatility – critical omissions.
The joint annual ten-year projection of the OECD and UN FAO uses the Aglink-Cosimo partial equilibrium model with a 2023-2025 base period. Consumption throughout is apparent consumption (production plus imports minus exports, per capita), so retail loss, food service and household waste, and pet food are bundled inside it. Direct on-farm greenhouse gases are the only emissions in scope and critically miss all scope 3 emissions. Upstream fertiliser production, land-use change, processing, distribution, and retail are excluded.
- Meat, dairy, and emissions climb on the baseline. Global meat production rises 12% (to 412 Mt carcass weight equivalent by 2035\) with poultry driving two-thirds of the increase. Milk grows 2%, India accounting for more than half. Direct on-farm GHG emissions rise 6.5% (livestock 76.6%, synthetic fertiliser 22.7%). The report concedes including upstream fertiliser production would roughly double its fertiliser footprint.
- Feed-crop concentration deepens. Brazil takes ~90% of global soybean production growth to 2035 (165 to 186 Mt). Together, Brazil, the U.S. , and Argentina hold roughly 85% of world soybean production by 2035. Global agricultural trade has plateaued at 22-23% of production since 2019 and is projected flat through 2035.
- Deficit regions absorb the offset; India dairy load-bearing but contested. Sub-Saharan Africa net food imports are projected to rise 55% by 2035 and MENA by 34%. India’s fresh dairy per-capita consumption is projected to rise from 100.6 to 150 kg/capita, driving more than half of global dairy expansion, but the projection is model-implied from production plus demographics vs. measured intake – it diverges from Indian NSSO household surveys.
- Alternative proteins are excluded from the baseline. The modelling has no finished-product demand blocks for plant-based, precision fermentation, or cultivated products. The meat chapter characterises recent HIC declines as “driven primarily by price fluctuations rather than lasting changes in consumer preferences,” while the dairy chapter concedes plant-based dairy uptake could run “considerably faster than included here.”
The Outlook is the reference base national ministries, development banks, and private investors use to plan protein strategy, feed procurement, and land allocation, which is what makes its methodological choices consequential. Excluding upstream fertiliser emissions, land-use change, dietary shift, and alternative proteins is not a neutral projection, it assumes those variables do not meaningfully move, and anchors planners to a trajectory the same institutions describe elsewhere as unsustainable.
- Kortleve et al. (January) on stranded EU agricultural assets. The €61-255B stranded-asset exposure is triggered by exactly the dietary transition the Outlook baseline excludes, sharpening the case that Outlook-anchored planning underprices transition risk.
- Foodrise CAP analysis (February) on subsidy allocation. 77% of the 2020 CAP budget flowed to animal-sourced foods. The Outlook projects continued expansion of the sectors those subsidies support.
- FAIRR “Regenerative Agriculture: Moving from Ambition to Credibility” (this issue). FAIRR concludes corporate regenerative agriculture cannot substitute for demand-side change and protein diversification. The Outlook excludes both.
The exclusions are the substantive gaps: upstream fertiliser production, land-use change, dietary shift, alternative proteins, price volatility bands, and climate feedback loops all sit outside the central numbers. The EU Protein Action Plan and Livestock Strategy (July 2026\) are not reflected in the baseline, and the implied gap flows through to overstated Brazilian soybean export projections.
- Supreme Court shields Bayer on Roundup warnings. In a 7 to 2 decision (Monsanto v. Durnell, June 25th), the Court held that federal pesticide law preempts state failure-to-warn claims, a ruling expected to block thousands of Roundup cancer lawsuits and limiting state authority over product warnings.
- A new biofuel carbon-scoring market takes shape. Trump signs Executive Order to “unlock billions for farmers” to capture new value from regenerative agricultural practices through biofuel markets, but the tax credit is paid to the ethanol plant, not farmers.
- Civil society presses for a livestock methane strategy. A coalition letter of 33 organizations calls on EU policymakers to address methane from industrially farmed animals to help slow global warming and build farm resilience
- Farm Bill 2.0 moves in the Senate. The Senate takes up a second farm-bill package aimed at addressing missing titles and funding gaps, making updates to conservation, rural development and farm credit programs.
- Review names why healthcare climate goals stall on food, and the fix – Heart et al. (Health Policy) find plant-based eating is treated as a vague aspiration rather than a measurable lever, and point to default plant-based menus and binding procurement standards, led by the UK NHS, as what actually moves emissions.
- Bipartisan bill to revive regional food programs. A bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation to restore regional food-program funding, as regional food procurement has driven state solutions to critical food system challenges.
- Permanent School Meal Nutrition Standards Advisory Council established in Massachusetts, building upon the state’s Universal Free School Meals program and the 2023 School Meal Nutrition Standards Commission.
- FAO Food Price Index, June. The index averaged 130.3 points, down 0.3% on May but 2.2% higher year on year, with vegetable oils rising while maize and sugar prices fell.
- Canadian chicken prices climb. A protein craze and high beef costs are pushing consumers toward chicken faster than Canada’s supply-managed sector can respond, lifting retail and wholesale prices; a reminder that beef-to-chicken substitution is not a plant-forward shift.
- Food majors pledge regenerative agriculture. Mondelez, Unilever, and FrieslandCampina committed to expand regenerative-agriculture programmes, a pledge to read against the FAIRR credibility findings in this issue.
- Consolidation reaches the local meat counter. A Sentient report examines how JBS ownership extends into markets that present as local.
- A new route to mushroom protein. Cornell researchers reported a method to grow mushroom-based protein, extending the fermentation alternative-protein pipeline.
- EU moves to block Brazilian animal imports over antibiotics. The EU pledged to bar animal-sourced food imports from Brazil linked to antibiotic use.
- Meat dominates food-safety recalls. Reporting finds meat products behind roughly 40% of USDA food-safety warnings.
- Drug-resistant Salmonella in backyard flocks. An outbreak of drug-resistant Salmonella tied to backyard poultry raises antimicrobial-resistance concerns.
- When antibiotics fail. An explainer on how intensive animal agriculture drives antimicrobial resistance.
- Whole-system trust in science, medicine, and public health. National Academy of Medicine leaders argue in JAMA that rebuilding trust requires a whole-system approach across institutions, communication, and community engagement, noting 2025 polling shows US adults trust their physician (85%) far more than the CDC (61%) or NIH (66%).
- Major global breadbasket risk. An analysis of the systemic danger of the world’s major breadbaskets failing at the same time under climate stress.
- Hormuz closure’s devastating impacts on developing countries. IFPRI economic modeling shows ~20 million more people in poverty and 2.5 million more facing undernourishment, with agriculture and supply chains facing stronger pressures.