- Food and farming greenhouse gas emissions are getting worse.
- EWG is launching a new agriculture and climate campaign to reduce them.
- Our two priorities are changing federal agriculture policy and encouraging more planet-friendly consumer choices.
Even if the U.S. stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow, rising greenhouse gas emissions from food and farming could make a climate catastrophe unavoidable.
The worst agriculture industry culprits are two growing sources of emissions – methane from farm animals and their manure, and nitrous oxide from synthetic fertilizer and animal manure.
To spotlight and curtail the hidden climate damage caused by our food and farming system, EWG is launching a new campaign that doubles down on our long-standing commitment to hold the agricultural sector accountable for its effect on our environment and human health.
The goals of the campaign are to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from food and farming and to encourage changes in the typical diet. Our efforts are centered on influencing federal policies and encouraging consumer choices that reduce the climate footprint of what we eat.
What EWG is doing
As part of this work, we are:
- Highlighting growing greenhouse gas emissions from food and farming, especially factory farms, via social and earned media, and outlining the steps policymakers, companies and consumers can take to reduce them.
- Identifying climate-smart practices farmers and ranchers can adopt, and encouraging funding for these practices as a Department of Agriculture priority.
- Advocating for reform of federal farm subsidy programs and the federal Crop Insurance Program to support crop choices and farming practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
- Promoting policy reforms that scale up the plant-based protein sector to help create jobs in rural communities and give consumers more choices.
- Supporting investments in renewable energy production on farms.
- Encouraging consumers to change the way they eat to reduce the carbon footprint of their food choices and helping them figure out how to do it.
Why EWG?
EWG has a long history of food and farm policy success. Among other significant results, our work has led to increased funding for USDA stewardship programs, reformed farm subsidies, improved food safety, clearer food labels, and the phasing out of risky food chemicals and pesticides. We’ve worked with local partners to map factory farms and their impact on rural communities, people of color and the environment. And we’ve worked with grassroots groups to call attention to long-standing USDA discrimination.
In addition, EWG has a long history of working with food companies that want to reformulate their products to address public health and the environment. EWG is known for its work helping consumers make choices that are healthier for people and the planet. Every year, millions of American consumers choose safer sunscreens, cosmetics, cleaners and foods after consulting EWG’s online guides.
How we will help
For many consumers, information about dietary changes to better protect the climate can seem overwhelming and confusing. EWG’s new climate and agriculture campaign will help consumers occasionally replace an animal protein with a plant-based option.
Our new campaign will also make it easier for farmers to implement climate-smart practices. Currently, because of misplaced spending priorities, the USDA turns away two-thirds of farmers interested in participating in federal agriculture conservation cost-share programs that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Why it matters
The challenge is clear: Unless the U.S. reduces nitrous oxide and methane emissions from agriculture, we will not make the greenhouse gas reductions needed to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis.
Today farms contribute at least 10 percent of the nation’s greenhouse emissions. If current trends continue – that is, if emissions from farming continue to increase, and those from other sectors continue to fall – greenhouse gas emissions from industrial agriculture could soon make up 30 percent or more of all U.S. emissions and more than half of them globally.
EWG’s campaign will spotlight the outsize impacts of farming on the climate while providing both farmers and consumers with tools they can use to improve American diets and help combat the climate crisis.
Clearly, the stakes are enormous. EWG is investing considerable resources in this campaign because doing nothing is not an option.
