Reducing Greenhouse Gases with Incentives at the Farm: How companies are moving from setting climate targets to delivering on them

Over 70% of food-related GHG emissions are from agricultural practices. For companies that have set ambitious climate targets, there is a wide range of potential actions that can be taken to mitigate these emissions. However, these actions require financial capital, technical expertise, and culturally appropriate local adaptation. At the same time, farmers often operate with thin or negative profit margins, making their own investments into sustainability challenging. Appropriate programs and incentives designed to shift behavior on farms to mitigate GHG emissions will be critical.

After interviewing more than 90 experts from corporations, industry associations, and civil society groups, we developed a typology of incentives and examples of their use. This report provides a landscape analysis of on-farm incentive programs implemented by more than 20 companies across the industry.