The Meat Agenda

The report argues that Brazil's agribusiness sector, dominated by giants like JBS, MBRF, and Minerva, exerts systemic control over political and public narratives to avoid climate regulation. It highlights a critical 'blind spot' in Brazil's updated NDC, which omits agricultural methane emissions despite the sector accounting for 75.6% of the country's total methane. The document details how the 'ruralist caucus' (FPA) controls Congress and pushes for controversial methane metrics like GWP* to downplay warming impacts. It also exposes the 'AgriZone' and other industry-led events surrounding COP30 as tools for greenwashing, while noting that structural weaknesses in the Climate Plan, Tax Reform, and Forest Code continue to favour industrial agriculture over sustainable agroecological farming.

• Brazil's agricultural sector is the country's largest climate polluter, accounting for 74% of total emissions, with methane emissions increasing by 6% between 2020 and 2023.
• Brazil's updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) contains a significant omission by failing to mention or set targets for reducing methane emissions from the meat and dairy sectors, despite Brazil being a signatory to the Global Methane Pledge.
• The agribusiness sector exerts dominant political control through the Frente Parlamentar da Agropecuária (FPA), which holds a majority in both the Chamber of Deputies (59%) and the Senate (62%).
• Industry lobbyists are pushing for the adoption of the GWP* methane metric, which the IPCC has rejected for national accounting, because it would allow Brazil to claim climate neutrality while maintaining its livestock sector.
• The 'AgriZone', an official part of the COP30 agenda, is described as a platform designed to burnish the image of agribusiness and showcase 'sustainable tropical agriculture' rather than driving substantive reform.
• Brazil's 2023 Tax Reform and the ABC+ Plan are identified as flawed; the former provides fiscal privileges for pesticides and animal protein, while the latter has seen 75% of degraded areas in key projects remain unchanged four years after funding.
• The Brazilian Emissions Trading System (SBCE) is undermined by the exclusion of agricultural emissions, meaning it only regulates approximately 30% of national emissions.
• The Rural Environmental Registry (CAR) faces severe enforcement issues, with 33% of undesignated public forests in the Amazon being illegally registered as of 2022.
• There is a stark disparity between the industrial agribusiness model and agroecological farming; small farmers produce over two-thirds of the food consumed domestically but control only a quarter of the farmland.

APA

Changing Markets Foundation (2025). The Meat Agenda. https://changingmarkets.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/The-Meat-Agenda-web.pdf

Chicago

Changing Markets Foundation. The Meat Agenda. 2025. https://changingmarkets.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/The-Meat-Agenda-web.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Changing Markets Foundation |title=The Meat Agenda |date=2025 |url=https://changingmarkets.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/The-Meat-Agenda-web.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{changingmarketsfoundation2025meat, author = {{Changing Markets Foundation}}, title = {{The Meat Agenda}}, institution = {Changing Markets Foundation}, year = {2025}, url = {https://changingmarkets.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/The-Meat-Agenda-web.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }