A world cup message in New York, to the oceans treaty projection in Switzerland. Here are a few of our favourite images from Greenpeace work around the world this week.

USA – A ferry passes by the New York skyline that is enveloped in wildfire smoke shortly before a rain shower. Most of the Tri-State Area, including New York City, is under an air quality alert on July 15 and 16 due to smoke from Canadian wildfires. The alert is also due to ground-level ozone. New Yorkers can expect to see smoke over the five boroughs during the mid-morning hours. New York City is in a Code Red as heat indices are expected to reach triple digits. 

USA – Greenpeace USA projects a message for World Cup fans onto the Verizon Building and Brooklyn Bridge. Activists lit up the New York skyline days ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup final at MetLife Stadium with the message “Defend Your Balls. Dove, Kick Plastic Out,” as part of its campaign calling out Dove, an Official 2026 FIFA World Cup Personal Care Sponsor, for selling itself as a brand that cares about men yet consistently ranking as one of the world’s top plastic polluters amid growing concerns about the role plastics may play in men’s reproductive health. Greenpeace USA is calling on Unilever to phase out plastic packaging, transition to plastic-free reuse and refill systems, and support a strong Global Plastics Treaty that cuts plastic production. Projections include the messages: “Defend Your Balls,” “Sperm Count Down,” “Microplastics In Semen,” and “Dove, Kick Plastic Out.

Indonesia – Greenpeace Indonesia held a public discussion to mark the launch of the paper, “Reassessing Coal in Islamic Finance: Ethical Imperatives for Divestment and Sustainability in Indonesia.” This paper encourages a reassessment of the tayyib principle of coal, which has negative impacts on health, the environment, and the economy, in the Islamic finance screening methodology.

Switzerland – Greenpeace activists have projected a video at five symbolic locations across Switzerland highlighting the Swiss company Allseas’ involvement in deep-sea mining. The visual shows what the tranquil village of Châtel-St-Denis has to do with Donald Trump and one of the greatest plundering operations in modern history.

Greenpeace has been a pioneer of photo activism for more than 50 years, and remains committed to bearing witness and exposing environmental injustice through the images we capture.

To see more Greenpeace photos and videos, please visit our Media Library.

Star-narrated film, Groundswell ends on a breathtakingly beautiful note. Narrated by Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson, the film paints a picture of a world where a better food system for people and the planet is possible. But what’s blocking this vision of regenerative farming from taking off? Industrial agriculture and Big Ag’s corporate greed.

As regenerative agricultural expert Natalie Topa powerfully states in the film:

At Greenpeace, we agree: food systems are one of our greatest sources of hope. The way we produce food right now through intensive industrial farming is destroying the Earth, but a diverse, regenerative system could restore it. While the film successfully mainstreams the crucial idea of living soil, we have to look closely at the forces holding this future back.

But as inspiring as Groundswell is, it leaves out a critical question: If a better food system is entirely possible, what is blocking us from achieving it?

Big Ag’s corporate greed is blocking regenerative farming

Early in the documentary, Woody Harrelson says that technology and policies haven’t done enough to fix our heating planet. That’s because they don’t challenge the root cause: corporate greed and Big Ag’s grip on our food systems. 

From seeds and fertiliser to consumption, a handful of giant agribusiness corporations monopolise the food market. Today, global agriculture is locked down by a handful of massive corporate monopolies – which means just a few giant companies control almost everything.

From seeds and fertilisers to meat processing and supermarkets, a tiny group of multi-billion-dollar corporations control the market, squeezing farmers on both sides. They use their massive wealth to lobby governments, making sure laws protect their profits rather than the planet or regular people.

This leaves farmers trapped in a vicious cycle. They have to take out massive bank loans just to buy expensive chemical fertilisers and sprays. Then, they are forced to overproduce just to pay off their debts, destroying the land in the process.

Do you ever feel like the world is breaking, but the people in charge aren’t doing anything to fix it? We see the alarm bells ringing every day through erratic weather, floods, and droughts. Yet, the solutions are right in front of us. This corporate bottleneck is exactly why those solutions aren’t being put into action.

Beware of Big Ag’s “regenerative” greenwashing

Because of documentaries like Groundswell the public is demanding change. We know it’s making a difference because industrial giants can no longer ignore the word “regenerative.” But instead of changing their practices, these companies are trying to hijack the term Regenerative Agriculture to protect their usual destructive practices. This is called greenwashing – using eco-friendly language as a marketing shield to cover up environmental harm.

Corporate giants like Nestlé are increasingly using these catchphrases. Even governments are getting in on the action. A few years ago, I attended a regenerative agriculture conference hosted by the New Zealand Ministry for Primary Industries. From the opening speeches, the goal was transparent: rebrand existing, intensive farming to cash in on the global eco-hype.

New Zealand’s massive dairy producers love to boast that their farming is pasture-based (meaning cows eat grass outside), compared to the cramped feedlots often seen in Europe and America. But don’t buy the hype. Grass-fed can still mean highly industrial:

• It is still a monoculture: Vast landscapes have been stripped of wild trees and biodiversity to create giant fields filled with just one animal and only one or two species of grass.
• It relies heavily on chemicals: You can only cram that many cows onto a field if the grass is supercharged by millions of tonnes of synthetic (artificial) fertiliser, made using fossil fuels.
• It is a massive climate polluter: Pasture-based or not, New Zealand’s intensive dairy industry remains the country’s single biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions.

Real regenerative agriculture means diverse plants and animals, living soil, fewer chemicals, shorter supply chains and communities in control. Big Ag’s “regenerative” branding usually means business-as-usual factory farms with new labels. We need to support lots of smaller-scale, local producers, processors and retailers who live in and care about our communities – and are fighting factory farms.

Industrial agriculture is busting Earth’s planetary boundaries

Groundswell ends on a high note with a beautiful montage of regenerative initiatives and hopeful graphs showing how eco-friendly farming practices are growing globally. Yes, there is a real reason for hope in the rising number of farmers pushing for this change. But the dark flipside is that conventional industrial agriculture is expanding too – and fast. It is swallowing up ecosystems, belching out massive greenhouse gas emissions, and blowing past more planetary boundaries than any other industry.

Right now, the world’s largest meat empire – JBS – is planning an absolutely enormous expansion of industrial meat farming into a brand new frontier: sub-Saharan Africa. For decades, JBS has been the market leader in Brazil’s beef industry, which is the primary engine behind the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. Now, it plans to use Nigeria as a gateway to export its destructive mega-farm model to the African continent.

JBS is not acting alone. From Nigeria to New Zealand, Mexico to Spain, industrial meat and dairy giants are aggressively expanding production. Often to produce foods that aren’t even nutritious. In the case of the New Zealand dairy industry, its biggest customers make chocolate bars.

Just as the Groundswell documentary makes clear, we do not need conventional industrial agriculture to feed the world. These expansions are not about feeding people; they are about lining shareholders’ pockets – at seemingly any cost to people and planet. JBS is run by two billionaire brothers and the company is right now being sued by the Brazilian government for labour abuses.

But, at a time when logic, science, and public opinion say we must move away from chemically-dependent monocultures, the industry still holds so much power. And it is using its wealth and influence to lobby for environmental deregulation and massive corporate handouts. Unless we break the power of Big Ag, we’re on a direct path to more industrial destruction.

More plant-based meals and buying local food is good. But to break Big Ag’s grip we need people power

If giant corporations stand between us and the world envisioned by Groundswell, how do we break their grip?

Yes, we can and should support local: buy our produce at farmers’ markets instead of the big supermarket chains. Eat less meat and dairy and replace it with more plants, which use far less land and water to produce. If we have the time and space, we can even grow some of our own veggies in gardens and allotments or keep backyard chickens.

But change doesn’t come from consumer choices alone. History shows us that the biggest changes occur through people power. They happen when everyday people stand up together against industrial giants – and win. And there are reasons for hope – we are already seeing the cracks in the system:

• In Denmark: Following relentless public pressure to protect drinking water and animal rights, the Danish government has officially committed to regulating industrial pork production and supporting regenerative, ecological farming methods. This is a huge turnaround for a country whose meat industry churns out more pigs per person than anywhere else in the world.
• In Croatia: Local communities have mobilised a massive grassroots coalition to fight a toxic mega-project – an industrial factory farm aiming to slaughter 100 million chickens a year. Europe’s largest poultry producer has pulled out of the project, citing local opposition as its main reason.
• Taking on the behemoths: Greenpeace recently disrupted the shareholder meeting of JBS – the world’s largest meat empire and one of the key engines behind the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. We are taking legal action to block them from exporting this destructive model to sub-Saharan Africa and beyond.

Time to take our power back – with healthy soil and a food system that heals not harms people and planet

Groundswell shows us a beautiful destination, but we have to build the road to get there.

To heal the planet, we absolutely need to build healthy soil and recloak our Earth in greenery. But we cannot get there unless we dismantle the political stranglehold of the small number of massive corporations who profit from keeping things broken.

We have the power to fix our food system, but it requires all of us standing together. Join Greenpeace today and help us fight for a food system that heals the Earth and belongs to people, not corporations.

Stop Big Ag: End Toxic Greed

Join the global movement putting people and the planet before corporate profit. 

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Amanda Larsson is the Global Project Lead for Agriculture at Greenpeace Aotearoa 

The Stakes for the ISA and Deep Sea Mining in 2026 and Beyond

Deep sea mining isn’t just an environmental disaster—it is a unilateral power grab disguised as a resource war, and a modern iteration of colonial history in the Pacific.

This report exposes how a speculative industry is trying to colonise the ocean floor—and highlights the critical, fleeting window the international community has to stop this resource grab before it starts.

From Norway to New Zealand, efforts to exploit the seabed have crashed into a
wall of opposition: legal challenges, parliamentary blocks, and fierce resistance from local communities, scientists, the fishing industry, and environmental groups. The world is not waiting for deep sea mining; it is actively mobilising against it.

Download the report:

Power Games in the Deep: The Stakes for the ISA and Deep Sea Mining for 2026 and beyond – Full Report