Most food-system emissions start before the factory gate

Most food-system emissions start before a product reaches the factory gate.

Where the emissions sit

Crippa et al. (2021) estimate global food-system emissions at 18 Gt CO2e in 2015, 34% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Of that total, 71% came from agriculture and land use. The remaining 29% came from everything after the farm: processing, transport, packaging, retail, consumption and waste.

For a food brand, that split is important. The parts of the system a brand controls most directly, its own factories, logistics and packaging decisions, sit in the smaller share. The larger share sits on farms and in land use, usually several tiers up the supply chain.

What FLAG asks for

The Science Based Targets initiative's Forest, Land and Agriculture (FLAG) guidance, version 1.2 from March 2026, makes this explicit. It requires a FLAG target from companies in designated food, forestry and tobacco sectors, or from companies whose FLAG emissions are 20% or more of their total. It also requires a no-deforestation commitment with a target date no later than 2030.

In practice, a FLAG target for a food brand points straight to supplier farms. Meeting it depends on what happens in fields, herds and land management that the brand does not own.

From target to reductions

That is where co-funding comes in. Farm-level practice changes often carry an upfront cost or a period of risk for the farmer. A brand that shares that cost has a direct route to reductions in the part of its footprint that matters most.

Co-funded, verified farm-level reductions can be recorded as inset credits. The credit records the verified reduction and which party holds it, so the brand and its supplier work from the same record rather than separate estimates.

Insetting funds reductions inside the value chain; it is not offsetting. The reductions happen in the brand's own sourcing base, on farms it already buys from.

Claim treatment depends on the applicable reporting framework.

The point for food brands

The numbers make the priority clear. If most of the footprint starts before the factory gate, most of the reduction work has to start there too, and FLAG targets give that work a deadline.