Where Food and Agriculture Negotiations Landed at COP30: What Matters for Feed Innovation

COP30 in Belem, Brazil, brought food and agriculture closer to the centre of the climate debate than any previous COP. Held in the gateway to the Amazon, the Brazilian Presidency placed forests, land use, and rural livelihoods at the heart of its agenda. Food systems featured prominently in the COP30 Action Agenda and its associated Plans to Accelerate Solutions. For the first time, discussions on feed innovation cut across oceans, forests, and land-use agendas. Nevertheless, formal negotiations delivered limited progress on agriculture, and plans for feed, livestock, and aquaculture remain in voluntary initiatives rather than in binding agreements.  

In this blog, we unpack outcomes from COP30 for the feed sector on aquaculture and livestock feed, and identify what agribusiness leaders, investors, and policymakers should watch for over the coming years. 

Why Food and Agriculture Are Rising in the Climate Agenda

Food and agriculture have become a key priority at COP. Agrifood systems both drive and are disrupted by climate change. Agriculture generates nearly one-third of global emissions and accounts for most land-use change. How we produce food and feed shapes biodiversity, soil health, and water use. In parallel, climate impacts, including heat stress, volatile rainfall, rising pests and diseases, soil degradation, and extreme events, are already undermining crop yields, livestock productivity, aquaculture stability, and the reliability of global feed supply chains.

Recognising this, FAO stressed at COP30 that transforming agrifood systems is essential to meeting climate goals and sustaining food security. Science-based approaches, including resilient aquaculture and sustainable livestock systems, were both highlighted as critical pathways for reducing pressure on forests and oceans while increasing supply chain resilience. 

CFI welcomes the attention from FAO and UNFCCC leadership to food systems, particularly to feed. Feed ingredients are among the most powerful levers in making food systems more sustainable. Feed ingredients drive much of the environmental impact of livestock and aquaculture production. With the recent rise in extreme weather events and trade disruptions, we expect animal feed production to remain a priority at future COP conferences. 

What COP30 Delivered

Aquaculture & Algae Ingredients Gain Ground

This year, agrifood systems were more prominent than ever at a COP, with 'Transforming Food Systems and Agriculture' listed as one of the six axes of the COP30 Action Agenda.

Key objectives under the agriculture and food systems axis include: 

• Land restoration and sustainable agriculture

• More resilient, adaptive, and sustainable food systems

• Equitable access to adequate food and nutrition for all 

  
  

Aquatic Food Systems and Algae Aquaculture were a focus within the food and agriculture axis, with two major Plans to Accelerate Solutions launched at COP30 that put aquatic food systems and algae firmly on the climate agenda.  These Plans to Accelerate include Aquatic Food Systems as Climate Solutions and the Multiple Benefits of Algae Aquaculture, and they will be led by FAO’s Blue Transformation and the UN Global Seaweed Initiative, respectively.

The Plan to Accelerate Aquatic Food Systems as Climate Solutions recognises the existence of proven technologies, including ‘alternative feeds’ and ‘algae production as bio-inputs (e.g., feed supplements for ruminants)’, which could accelerate aquatic food systems as a climate solution. Notably, the plan also highlights the urgent need to expand investment in novel feed technologies to address the predicted decline in capture fisheries. 

The Plan to Accelerate Multiple Benefits of Algae Aquaculture emphasises the need to improve supply and demand to realise the multiple benefits of algae aquaculture. On the supply side, producers, particularly in developing countries, need better technical capacity and market access to participate in emerging sectors such as animal feed, pet food, and methane-reducing additives. On the demand side, global algae markets remain constrained by tariff structures and geopolitical uncertainties that shape trade flows.

Biofuels: What the Belém 4X Pledge Means for Feed

The Belém 4X pledge, aiming to quadruple sustainable fuel production by 2035, received a mixed response. While it states that expansion should be “environmentally and socially responsible,” it does not define what this means for biofuels. The only explicit reference to food systems is a call to promote sustainable agricultural practices across food, feed, and fuel production. For aquaculture and livestock feed, the implications are significant. With rising demand for biofuels, the food-versus-fuel competition may intensify, especially if sustainability safeguards remain vague. This heightens the need for feedstock diversification and strengthens the case for supporting the development of novel feed ingredients that do not have such dual uses in energy production.   

New Financial Instruments for Rainforest Protection

The most notable finance facility announced at COP30 is the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), backed by 53 countries and funded at over $125bn USD. TFFF’s model of long-term payments for keeping forests standing signals increasing financial value for avoided deforestation. Additionally, Brazil launched the Resilient Agriculture Investment for Net-Zero Land Degradation (RAIZ), an accelerator backed by multiple countries to help governments map degraded land, design restoration projects, and attract private investment. Taken together, these initiatives suggest that deforestation-linked feedstocks carry rising policy and financial risk.

No progress on binding agreements for food systems

Despite the positive momentum from these side initiatives, formal negotiations did not deliver meaningful, binding commitments on food and agricultural emissions.

The formal negotiations on agriculture and food systems under the UNFCCC, and the Joint work on the implementation of climate action on agriculture and food security (SJWA), ended with no substantive outcomes.  The negotiations at COP30 failed to define the key messages on “systemic and holistic approaches” to implementing climate action on food and agriculture, particularly for the livestock and aquaculture industries.

A key challenge was reaching consensus on which approaches should be used to guide national planning, finance, and implementation.  As a result, sectors central to food-system transformation, including livestock, aquaculture, and feed, were left without clear direction from COP30 on binding agreements.

Without mandates, countries lack incentives to include livestock, aquaculture, or feed in their NDCs. Further discussion has been postponed until mid-2026. Regarding adaptation measures, the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) was similarly limited.

What This Means for Aquaculture and Feed Innovation

Taken together, COP30’s outcomes signal that Feed is rising rapidly as a climate issue. The Plans to Accelerate Solutions explicitly highlighted the role of alternative and low-carbon feeds, acknowledging both their potential and the need for increased investment.  The Action Agenda’s focus on aquatic foods and algae aquaculture, as well as increased scrutiny on deforestation, means feed ingredients linked to land-use pressures or high emissions will face growing scrutiny in future COPs.

For aquaculture and livestock supply chains, market and policy attention is shifting toward diversified, low-impact ingredients, including algae, methane-reducing additives, and sustainable feeds. As countries implement Action Agenda commitments into national plans, agribusiness should anticipate increased scrutiny on traceability, land-use transparency, and climate performance across feed inputs. 

From CFI’s perspective, COP30 delivered mixed but meaningful signals for the future of feed innovation. While formal negotiations did not advance binding commitments on agriculture, the prominence of aquatic food systems, algae aquaculture, and low-carbon feed solutions in the Action Agenda shows that feed is now recognised as a key climate lever. At the same time, the lack of clarity in negotiated outcomes and the postponement of concrete guidance until 2026 mean that progress will continue to rely on voluntary initiatives and national leadership rather than a global agreement. Over the next few years, the most significant momentum is likely to come from restoration-linked finance, blue-food system initiatives, and the growing need for resilient, traceable, and low-impact feed ingredients.

CFI will continue to help shape this landscape by generating evidence, informing policy, and supporting investment into the next generation of sustainable animal feed solutions.  We will continue to play a catalytic role in advancing research on novel feed ingredients and advocating for investment in safe, scalable, and sustainable ones. 

If you are interested in exploring opportunities in novel feed ingredients, get in touch with us. We’d be happy to share more insights. You can also subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated with our latest research, publications, and upcoming events.