Some of the country’s biggest food companies are making a small dent in their greenhouse gas emissions, but most are failing to make substantial and critical reductions, even as consumers and government regulators are pushing harder for them to do so.

The investor advocacy group Ceres has tracked whether the 50 largest North American food and agriculture companies have set targets for disclosing and lowering their emissions. In a new report released this week, Ceres analyzed whether setting those targets actually resulted in lower emissions.

“This is the first time we, or really any organization that we know of, has assessed whether company emissions in this sector are actually decreasing,” said Meryl Richards, a program director at Ceres who works with food and beverage companies. 

Ceres’ analysis says the answer is yes—sort of.

Greenhouse gas emissions emitted by companies or other entities are grouped into categories known as scopes. Scope 1 emissions come from a company’s direct operations, Scope 2 from its energy use. But most of the greenhouse gas emissions connected to food and beverage companies come from their supply chains, or Scope 3 emissions—from the farmers who grow crops or raise livestock that the companies rely on for their final products. If a company’s suppliers raise crops or cattle on deforested land, for example, their emissions will be higher because of the huge amount of carbon released when forests are cut. That’s part of the reason the global food system is responsible for up to 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. 

In the food industry, this Scope 3 category represents about 90 percent of a company’s overall emissions.

“The takeaway is that there is progress being made on Scope 1 and 2—operational emissions and emissions from electricity use, but lack of progress on Scope 3,” Richards said. “Those supply and value chain emissions [are] holding companies back from making progress on overall emissions reductions.”

“If you don’t have a target and don’t know what you’re aiming for, you’re much less likely to be heading in the right direction.”

— Meryl Richards, a Ceres program director

Ceres found that of the 50 food companies it tracks, 23 reduced their Scope 1 and 2 emissions over the past two years, but only 12 had reduced their Scope 3 emissions. Companies have more control over their Scope 1 and 2 emissions and can reduce them by taking steps like switching to renewable energy or more energy-efficient production processes, but emissions from their supply chains are more difficult to tackle.

The companies that were able to lower their Scope 3 emissions were those that set goals. 

“If you don’t have a target and don’t know what you’re aiming for, you’re much less likely to be heading in the right direction,” Richards said. “There aren’t really major differences between the types of companies. What we do find is that the companies that are making progress are the ones that have prioritized making progress.”

Ceres highlighted a handful of companies that have set targets to reduce Scope 3 emissions, including Kraft Heinz, McDonald’s, Hershey, General Mills and Starbucks, and one that had actually reduced them—grain trading giant ADM. But Ceres would not share individualized data on each of the companies it analyzed or provide a full list of the companies that reduced emissions.

The findings suggest that reducing Scope 3 emissions is especially challenging for companies that depend on supply chains linked to carbon-intensive commodities, like meat, or crops linked to deforestation or land-use change, both of which release greenhouse gases. The challenge extends to the banks and financial institutions that invest in global agriculture. 

In March, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commision finalized rules requiring companies to disclose their climate risk to regulators. The requirements, which follow a similar reporting mandate that took effect in the European Union in 2023, will force companies to disclose emissions and transition plans for lowering them. New rules will put yet more pressure on food and agriculture-based companies to shrink their carbon footprints.

At the same time, because the commodities they rely on are so weather-dependent, food and agricultural companies are uniquely vulnerable to the climate change-induced weather extremes that are increasingly battering farm and livestock systems.

“We have to reduce emissions from this sector if we’re going to have any chance of limiting warming to 1.5, or even 2 or even 2.5 or 3 degrees, and at the same time the sector is so exposed,” Richards said. “It’s also part of the solution. So if none of these companies are addressing these emissions, they’re essentially digging their own grave.”