A US-led sustainable farming initiative, which aims to raise billions of dollars to tackle climate change, has been criticized for favouring big business and promoting uncertain techno-fixes ahead of U.N. climate talks in Egypt in November.

Launched at the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow last year by the U.S. and United Arab Emirates governments, the AIM for Climate (Aim4C) coalition pledged to accelerate innovation in agriculture and food systems to support climate action.

Alongside 40 states, partners include major agribusinesses, such as Brazilian meat giant JBS, and agricultural trade groups such as CropLife International, as well as research centres such as the University of Edinburgh’s Climate Change Institute. Multi-billion-dollar nonprofits the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and The Nature Conservancy are also taking part.

Backers say the coalition aims to unlock new technologies that can help reduce the sector’s major contribution to climate change and make harvests more resilient. But food and farming groups have publicly criticized Aim4C, accusing it of championing industry-friendly and unproven climate “solutions” instead of spurring a transformative embrace of diverse, regenerative agriculture.

“When the voice of African farmers and communities is not brought to the negotiating table, we end up with flawed initiatives like Aim4C,” said Anne Maina, from the Biodiversity and Biosafety Association of Kenya. “A focus on ag-tech is often hinged on profits for multinational corporations and not sustainable. Africa has workable alternatives right here at home, for resilient agriculture that works with nature.”

Aim4C’s participants skew heavily towards the Global North. Analysis by DeSmog found that more than two thirds of some 300 partners are located in the United States or Europe. Just seven percent are based in Africa, and not a single group representing Indigenous communities is listed among Aim4C’s “knowledge partners”.

African farmers face critical challenges. Farming on the continent is plagued by under investment and smallholders are already in the grip of the climate crisis, hit by floods, droughts and depleted soils. Hunger is rising, with Africa due to become home to the largest number of undernourished people by 2030. 

But according to Professor Molly Anderson from IPES-Food, an international panel of experts on sustainable food systems, the innovations pursued by Aim4C are not the kinds of technology that will benefit small-scale farmers in Africa. 

Anderson described as “inexcusable” the omission of both groups that support agroecology — a clean, green alternative to industrial farming — and those representing smallholders or Indigenous peoples. “It’s painfully clear Aim4C is going in the wrong direction,” she said. 

The Egypt climate conference, known as COP27, is shaping up to be a battleground for two visions of the future of farming — a movement for regenerative agriculture that aims to diversify what we eat and how we farm, versus a resource-intensive industrial system that pushes planetary boundaries beyond their limits. 

Aim4C will have a presence at the summit and is expected to hold a reception, run events in the U.S. pavilion, and attempt to attract more funds and support for its “technology-first vision.”

Jim Thomas, co-executive director of Canadian non-profit ETC Group said Aim4C is part of a makeover by the agriculture industry. “It’s a narrative push from agribusiness to retell its story, where it gets rebranded from being a major climate problem (which it is) to being seen as the solution or the saviour,” he said.

Meat and dairy production accounts for 14.5 percent of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions — and more than half of agriculture’s total share of emissions. Planet-warming gases are emitted across the supply chain, from the carbon dioxide (CO2) produced by clearing forests for pastures and feed crops, and burning petrol and diesel to transport animals and meat, to the methane emitted from animals and their manure. 

Climate scientists say that unsustainable meat and dairy consumption poses one of the biggest threats to the world’s hopes of meeting the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Aim4C argues that technology can increase productivity, help farmers adapt to the climate crisis, and cut emissions. The coalition aims to raise $8 billion in public and private finance for research and development, hinged around what it calls “climate-smart” solutions.

However, the term “climate-smart” has no widely agreed definition, and its use to promote contested practices including the use of pesticides and big data in farming have led to concerns that the concept could be used to “greenwash” polluting forms of agriculture. 

Campaigners said Aim4C’s focus on high-tech solutions is a diversion from established scientific findings, including by the UN’s leading climate science body, that the world must cut back the production and consumption of animal products.

“It’s very much been tiptoeing around the elephant in the room,” said Allison Mollinaro from Compassion in World Farming, which has been a participant in Aim4C since early this year.  

“If we just say more research is needed, industrial animal agriculture keeps proliferating — and we’re not going to hit our 2030 targets for greenhouse gas emissions reductions,” she said. 

READ MORE:

https://www.desmog.com/2022/10/06/aim4c-under-fire/

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