Assessing the implementation of climate targets: Behind the Brands Agribusiness Companies

Multinational agricultural commodity producers have a key role to play in addressing the climate crisis with 21-37% of global greenhouse gas emissions coming from the global food systems. So how are the world’s largest agribusinesses measuring up to their climate commitments? Climate Focus’s recent evaluation highlights the need for urgent climate action in the agribusiness sector.  

In Oxfam’s recent 2023 “Moving the Middle” assessment of seven major agribusinesses, climate performance was not addressed due to: 

•  a need for an updated framework reflecting the current urgency of the climate crisis, and  
• the incorporation of recent reporting and disclosure developments relevant to the agricultural sector (including updates from the Science Based Targets Initiative and the United Nations High Level Expert Group on the Net-Zero Emissions Commitments of Non-State Entities). 

Climate Focus developed and applied a new, comprehensive, and ambitious framework which evaluates the strength of companies’ climate commitments as well as their reporting on progress. Our framework looks at how companies are reporting on their commitments, including: 

• Evidence of internal changes
• Budgeting for planned climate actions; 
• Reporting on progress against identified targets;  
• And monitoring impacts (particularly in relation to suppliers and small-scale farmers). 

Overall, while the assessment outcomes vary considerably across indicators, companies performed poorly across the board. All of our findings, methodology, and recommendations for progress can be found in the full report; an overview of how companies performed against our established criteria can be found in the Executive Summary or explored in our data table.  

This report was commissioned by Oxfam America under its ‘Behind the Brands’ Assessment series.

For further analysis on sustainable supply chains, read the Climate Focus report: “Progress toward Ethical, Deforestation-and-Conversion-free Supply Chains: An assessment of German companies.”