The State Of Food At Climate Week NYC 2025 – CleanTechnica

---

Support CleanTechnica’s work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe.

---

---

Climate Week NYC 2025 brought together a mix of existing and new leaders from the world of business, tech, politics, academia, and civil society. The event — 14 years and going strong — is part of the movement toward global sustainability. It has gained momentum over the past decade, driven by falling costs for technologies such as wind and solar, which in some regions have reached cost parity with fossil fuels.

Throughout the Climate Week NYC 2025 conversations, a clear mantra emerged: When environmental stewardship becomes a cultural value, climate-positive behaviors naturally follow.

Broader sustainability challenges such as food security added complexity to the Climate Week NYC 2025 discussions. As a result, the topic of food took on particular importance during the week, as food is the single largest lever we have to drive environmental and social progress. Changing how and what we produce will have an exponential impact on climate, nature, and health.

Nearly half of habitable land is agricultural, yet food systems drive biodiversity loss and 70% of freshwater withdrawals. Climate change will intensify challenges to productivity. Rising input costs and barriers to advanced technology adoption further constrain farmers, and sustainable practices remain critical as part of this equation.

Here are three strands of Climate Week NYC 2025 in which the intersection of food and sustainability took center stage.

Moving to Regenerative Agriculture Practices — A Deliberate Transition

Regeneratively grown foods are part of a new wave of consumer demand. Agriculture is ready to provide them, but the process to get there is complex — it introduces an entirely different way of farming.

Why is that? It’s because regenerative practices move away from empty calories and embrace a combination of healthier foods and environmental benefits. To make this transition at scale means farmers need options. Sustainability certifications in the food, forestry, and textile industries can be part of that process. It will also mean rethinking distinctions like organic and regenerative organic.

Farmers need technical assistance, financial assistance, and markets to help offset the short-term risks and upfront costs of transitioning to more regenerative practices, according to the Food Tank editorial team who were reporting from Climate Week NYC. Tapping into farmers’ local knowledge can support projects and innovations aiming to scale regenerative agriculture, as can working from a position of existing knowledge and scaffolding outward.

“Nobody knows what two degrees [Celsius] means. As a kid from Chicago, warming two degrees sounds great to me,” said Sam Kass, Partner at Acre Venture Partners. “The words ‘climate change’ are meaningless. But when you start understanding that coffee, wine, and chocolate are devastated now and [might no longer exist]…it connects with people’s lives and gives them a reason to care. It’s not political.”

Future Food: Making Connections among Food, Water, and Human Health

Sara Roversi, founder and president of the Future Food Institute (FFI), found that the in-person networking opportunities at Climate Week NYC 2025 were unrivaled.

With offices, living labs, innovation hubs, and ambassadors around the world, the Bologna, Italy-based non-profit organization and global ecosystem institute seeks to be part of the livable food solution through its three main pillars: education, community development, and innovation. Among the many projects that Future Food Institute presented at Climate Week NYC was one that examined the intersection of food, water, and human health.

“We’re looking at everything — creating the correlation with the soil to where the food comes from, as well as how much fresh food you’re eating, how much food in season you’re eating, and trying to understand what are those parameters that are at the end of the game impacting on our health,” Roversi told Jennifer Strailey at The Packer. This Future Food Institute project has a goal to analyze longevity to help policy and decision-makers to understand the health costs of its future citizens. With fruits and vegetables critical to the global food system, the incorporation of AI in agriculture may make “humans more creative, more conscious, more empathetic” — if used in appropriate ways.

Take, for example, the Mediterranean diet, which Roversi says is a planet-friendly diet that embraces a balanced and holistic way of life. It’s one method to empower human development  and start “rethinking the models, rethinking the KPIs, rethinking the system, rethinking the way we are building partnerships,” she says.

All Things Food at Climate Week NYC 2025

At Climate Week NYC 2025 there were several opportunities to learn more about how food can work intersectionally with tech, energy, artificial intelligence, and/or business. Climate Week NYC partnered with Tilt Collective, which strengthens food resilience through practical partnerships with farmers, researchers, and local organizations, for its food-related programming. Many of the topics centered around large-scale production and consumption as opposed to local operations like backyard gardens, co-ops, and farmers’ markets.

Yet there were also opportunities to serve the local communities here in New York City. For example, participants could sign up to work with City Harvest, where volunteers helped repack rescued food for redistribution. Hands-on engagement with food was important in a week that is all about reconsidering the human relationship with agriculture, reported Jaden Schapiro for the Hunter College Food Policy Center. Volunteer programs offered a chance for attendees and speakers to act and speak out about social change. Activities and events in Brooklyn and a hands-on urban agriculture demo on Governors Island brought food cultivation topics to life.

Some programs, like Tilt’s Food Day 2025, became mini educational events.

Final Thoughts

This year’s Climate Week NYC gave a sharp new focus to the powerful community of corporate businesses and governments that see climate action as the drive towards a better world for all. As more than 1,000 events took place across New York, its flagship program convened over 100 top-level CEOs, executive directors, and government figures – from right around the world.

Climate Week NYC, September 21-28, was the world’s largest climate gathering outside of the Conference of the Parties (COP). Organizers said this year’s theme, “Power On,” was a call to continue to drive progress.

Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission President, joined the discussions. Taking part were the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne, the Prime Minister of the Bahamas, Philip Davis. Ministers from Denmark, Indonesia, Australia, Vanatu, Japan, and the UK. The actors and activists Mark Ruffalo and Jane Fonda took place in the discussions . Ex-footballer Robbie Fowler. Artists, broadcasters, musicians, and thousands of delegates all were part of the conversation.