In the wake of this year’s global climate summit, advocates are raising the alarm about how industry continues to distort climate policy with public relations spin.

Indeed, one of the most critical challenges of our times is the need to confront corporate disinformation. While the stakes of Big Oil’s climate denialism and greenwashing are ever clearer — as wildfires tear through communities, entire nations are threatened by rising sea levels, and farmlands are ravaged by extreme weather — a more stealthy set of devastating impacts hides behind the lies fabricated by Big Pesticide corporations.

Like Big Oil, pesticide companies spend hundreds of millions every year on deceitful PR strategies to keep their hazardous products on the market, even as evidence mounts that many pesticides still used today are tied to certain cancers, damage to children’s developing brains, biodiversity collapse, and more.

In a new report, Merchants of Poison, we document a case study of just such pesticide industry disinformation, revealing a PR playbook similar in strategy, institutions — and at times the very same individual players — as that of the fossil fuel industry. As nearly all agricultural chemicals are derived from fossil fuels, this interconnection should come as no surprise.

Increase in genetically modified crops

 

Today, more than 98 percent of genetically modified crops planted in the U.S. are glyphosate tolerant. 

Credit: Merchants of Poison

Merchants of Poison shows how pesticide giant Monsanto (purchased by Bayer in 2019) spent millions on deceptive communications strategies over decades to promote the narrative that its bestselling herbicide glyphosate, better known as Roundup, is safe – as safe as table salt, as Monsanto once claimed.

This messaging encouraged lax regulations that led to widespread use, especially as genetically modified corn and soy engineered to withstand being sprayed with the herbicide came to dominate farm acreage beginning in the mid-1990s.

Today, more than 98 percent of genetically modified crops planted in the U.S. are glyphosate tolerant, and glyphosate is the most widely used agrichemical in the world. In the U.S. alone, nearly 300 million pounds are used each year on farms, public parks, school grounds, and in home gardens. This despite the fact that, as far back as 1984, glyphosate was flagged as potentially causing cancer by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scientists. And, in 2015, glyphosate was designated as a probable carcinogen by the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Recent science has also linked the chemical to lower birth weights among babies, reproductive health impacts, and other serious health concerns.

Manufactured doubt about glyphosate’s cancer link

 

Pesticide companies spend hundreds of millions every year on deceitful PR strategies to keep their hazardous products on the market.

Credit: Merchants of Poison, data from Food Barons, ETC Group 2022

So how did Monsanto thwart science-based regulation and mislead the public for over three decades? Thousands of pages of internal corporate documents brought to light through recent lawsuits over the cancer risk of Roundup reveal some answers. The documents show a PR machine in overdrive to manufacture doubt about the science linking glyphosate to cancer, and they reveal the many strategies Monsanto used to manipulate the scientific record over decades — from ghostwriting studies to running aggressive campaigns to discredit scientists who raised concerns about the pesticide.

The documents also expose how the company carefully cultivated a legion of front groups and other third-party allies that included top universities, scientific organizations, and professors who claimed to be independent even as they worked behind the scenes with Monsanto to protect sales of Roundup.

The documents also reinforce just how much the “disinformation industry” funded by pesticide companies has become a big business itself. Our analysis found that just seven of the front groups named in Monsanto’s internal strategy documents spent a total of $76 million over a five-year period, starting in 2015, pushing a broad range of anti-regulatory messaging. In addition, six industry trade groups named in the Monsanto documents spent more than $1.3 billion during that same time period, which includes defense efforts for agricultural chemicals including glyphosate.

The post Op-ed: What the pesticide industry doesn’t want you to know appeared first on Real Food Media.

We are pleased to announce a new report out this week from Stacy Malkan and US Right to Know, with support from Anna Lappé and Kendra Klein, PhD, of Friends of the Earth. 

Based on a comprehensive analysis of documents released in litigation against Monsanto—and many more obtained in a years-long investigation by US Right to Know—Merchants of Poison: How Monsanto Sold the World on a Toxic Pesticide tells the tale of pesticide industry disinformation, including science denial techniques, attacks on scientists, astroturf strategies, online domination of industry messaging, and other spin tactics. 

Since our founding at Real Food Media, we’ve tried to help expose the ways corporations bend the truth to line their pockets, not protect the public good. This report is another piece of that work, showing how pesticide companies—like Big Oil and Big Tobacco—use spin tactics to shape the story about food and farming, pushing the twin messages that pesticides are safe and that we need them to feed the world.

We hope this report adds to the multifaceted, growing effort to expose industry PR tactics and promote the public good. 

The post Merchants of Poison: How Monsanto Sold the World on a Toxic Pesticide appeared first on Real Food Media.

Originally published by Food Tank

Bonnie Haugen and her family run a grazing dairy farm in Southeastern Minnesota. She recently spoke about the impacts of corporate concentration on her community in front of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform: “When we bought these acres 29 years ago, there were about 12 dairy farms within a three mile radius of us. Now, there’s only one other dairy with approximately 400 cows aside from us. What I’ve seen in my community mirrors national trends: the pressure of corporate ag has taken a fair opportunity away from my neighbors who wanted to keep or pass on dairy farming.” 

Squeezed by inflation that is pushing up the cost of both everyday goods and farm inputs, Midwest farmers increasingly support candidates committed to busting up corporate monopolies in food and farming. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, for instance, in a tight re-election race against Republican opponent Jim Schultz, has led the charge on tackling anticompetitive practices in the agricultural sector that are contributing to inflation. 

“Three of my grandkids ages 8, 6, and 3 want to farm,” continued Haugen in her July 2022 statement, “I want them to have the opportunity to farm without being a serf to corporate ag.” Haugen is a supporter of the Land Stewardship Action Fund (LSAF), dedicated to electing leaders that promote family farming and strong rural economies. 

Farmers Doubly Squeezed

Farmers don’t just grow food, of course; they also consume food–and all manner of basic goods. This means farmers are doubly squeezed by the higher cost of both production and consumption. On the consumption side, farmers and non-farmers alike have felt the increase in living expenses; grocery prices, for instance, are up 13 percent from a year ago. With a few large firms dominating every step in the food chain—from retailers like Walmart to processors like Nestle to seed and chemical giants like Bayer—consolidation is a major contributor to high food prices. 

Former Whole Foods executive and retail market expert Errol Schweizer explains: “Corporate concentration is the strategy, but the goal is extreme profiteering, redistributed upwards to investors and executives. Market concentration increases prices to consumers while hurting worker bargaining power Squeezing farmers is just the first step in a radically inequitable value chain.” 

The Midwest has been beset by precarious farm incomes for decades—dipping into the red more often than not, which means assuming more and more debt. As food analyst Ken Meter points out in his book Building Community Food Webs, between 1996 and 2017, growing corn resulted in an aggregate loss of US$524 per acre while cumulative losses for wheat farmers totaled US$1,236 per acre.

“The commodity system draws wealth out of rural communities,” Meter said. “Over the past century, farmers have really only made money when there was some external crisis, such as the oil crisis of 1973, the global housing finance crisis of 2008, and the war in Ukraine. Otherwise, net income keeps falling even as food prices rise for consumers. But the monopolies in the middle profit every year.”

A new report from Midwest Healthy Ag confirms that Midwest farmers are struggling under the weight of rising costs, including for fertilizers, diesel, and renting land, combined with decreased income from selling milk, grain, and other products. One farmer interviewed for the report said, “Increased fuel prices, along with decreased price for a bushel of corn make me doubt I can survive after 2021.”

Policymakers Rally Against Consolidation

While corporate concentration in agriculture has gone relatively unchecked for decades, food cost inflation has brought the issue front and center. “Corporate profiteering and out-of-control consolidation by big agricultural firms have led to increased prices at every point on the food chain, from the farm to the grocery store,” said Representative Mark Pocan (D., WI—2nd) in a statement announcing the Food and Agribusiness Merger Moratorium and Antitrust Review Act of 2022. 

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has also disparaged corporate concentration in agriculture: “Highly concentrated local markets in livestock and poultry have increasingly left farmers, ranchers, growers, and producers vulnerable to a range of practices that unjustly exclude them from economic opportunities and undermine a transparent, competitive, and open market—which harms producers’ ability to deliver the quality, affordable food working families depend upon,” said Vilsack.

Vilsack’s statement was made in September 2022 as President Biden announced a new US$15 million fund to ramp up collaboration between the USDA and State Attorneys General on enforcement of competition laws, such as the laws against price-fixing. The news follows a December 21, 2021 letter to Secretary Vilsack from a bipartisan coalition of 16 attorneys general offering recommendations for improving competition in the livestock industry.

“One of the ways corporations keep profits high at consumers’ expense is by creating unfair markets where there’s no meaningful competition,” said Minnesota AG Keith Ellison, who spearheaded the letter, “This is especially true in agriculture, where farms and farming communities often face artificially high prices and struggle to afford their lives because antitrust behavior by Big Ag deliberately leaves them with few choices.”

Randy Krzmarzick, a row crop farmer and LSAF supporter in Sleepy Eye, MN, commented, “I’ve been farming some 40 years and I’ve seen continued consolidation in all parts of agriculture, fewer companies that supply our products and buy our commodities.” When asked why he’s planning to vote for Keith Ellison, Krzmarzick said, “I think it’s important to have an attorney general who’s watching out for abuses and who’s on our side—the side of family farmers, of which there’s less and less of us all the time.” 

Photo courtesy of Jed Owen, Unsplash

The post On Eve of Election, Midwest Farmers Squeezed by Inflation Eye Corporate Concentration appeared first on Real Food Media.

The Landless Workers Movement in Brazil (or MST, its acronym in Portuguese) is one of the largest social movements in the world. Born in the early 1980s at the end of the country’s 21-year military dictatorship and in the midst of persistent land inequality, the movement has been at the forefront of land reform in Brazil for decades. Their work is focused on making a reality of the country’s constitutional promise that land should ‘serve a social purpose.’ Against a backdrop of great inequality – 10% of the largest farms occupy nearly three-quarters of agricultural land – the MST has been organizing families to occupy, settle, and farm throughout the country.

In the four decades since its creation, the MST has organized more than 350,000 families to create communities, cooperatives, farms, small-scale food processing enterprises, and farmers markets. An additional 90,000 families still live in informal encampments on contested land, struggling for official land title.

Education and training in sustainable agricultural practices have always been core to the movement’s work, with its commitment to agroecology deepening in 2000 when the MST identified agroecology as key to its strategy of building resilient food systems. Since then, the MST has been developing training centers for agroecology for its members, and beyond.

At the beginning of the pandemic, MST launched an ongoing national campaign to take food from the settlements to vulnerable populations in cities: this collection center organized by ELAA for people living in the outskirts of the state capital, Curitiba, offers a great variety of fresh foods. Image courtesy of Wellington Lenon/ELAA.

Author Anna Lappé interviewed three members of one of the movement’s agroecology schools in southern Brazil, Escola Latino Americana de Agroecologia (ELAA) to learn more about this history and philosophy. The conversation included input from Amandha Silva Felix, management coordinator and policy director at ELAA, and Vinicius Silva Oliveira and Wellington Lenon from the school’s “pedagogic sector.”

This is the third in a series of interviews with key people leading diverse agroecology training programs around the world, view them all here. This interview was conducted by email, translated from the Portuguese, and edited for clarity.

Mongabay: Let’s start with the movement’s commitment to member education. Can you talk about that work?

Felix, Oliveira, Lenon: Throughout its history, the MST has always had a strong commitment to education. The movement has built more than 2,000 schools in land-reform occupied encampments and settlements. In 2000, agroecology became a cross-cutting theme in all MST schools—from kindergarten to higher education. Today, many MST schools offer courses on agroecology in partnership with public universities.

ELAA launched in the fall of 2005. Together with the Latin America Agroecology Institute Paulo Freire (IALA) based in Venezuela, we launched what became IALA’s network of Via Campesina [the international peasant agricultural movement] schools to mainstream agroecological training for farmers, youth, and adults.

Since its founding, ELAA has trained nearly 200 people, offering a 3.5-year “Technologist in Agroecology” course and a four-year degree in Rural Education, Natural Sciences, and Agroecology.

Drone view of ELAA: classrooms are on the right, occupying the main building of a large estate that was expropriated by MST to settle landless farmers, which is now known as Contestado Settlement. To the left are dining halls and student housing. Image courtesy of Wellington Lenon/ELAA.

Mongabay: Can you describe the place itself—what is the school like?

Felix, Oliveira, Lenon: ELAA is located in an MST settlement called the Contestado in the state of Paraná in southern Brazil. It’s truly a movement school: founded by the movement, built by volunteers, and part of the struggle for land reform, the school has 29 acres that include animal production—pigs, cows, sheep, and chickens—a vegetable garden, agroforestry, and field crops such as beans, corn, and manioc.

Mongabay: What is your program’s philosophy?

Felix, Oliveira, Lenon: Our courses are oriented toward young people as well as adults from land reform encampments and settlements in Brazil, and from other regions around the world, including farming communities elsewhere in Latin America such as Paraguay, Argentina, Ecuador, Venezuela, Haiti, Dominican Republic, and Colombia plus Africa, including Afro-Brazilians (quilombolas) and Indigenous peoples.

The program offers on-campus learning and in-community learning; students spend a portion of their time at school and another portion in their community. During their three months on campus, students learn from teachers connected with partner institutions, including the Federal University of Parana State (UFPR) and the Federal Institute of Parana (IFPR). When students return home, they take back the practices and knowledge acquired on campus. We’ve found this allows for powerful exchange and feedback between empirical and theoretical knowledge.

Mongabay: How have the principles of agroecology informed the MST?

Felix, Oliveira, Lenon: The MST adopted agroecology as a core approach in February 2000. After several decades of organizing, the failures of conventional agriculture in land reform settlements were very clear to us. We also learned much about agroecology from partner movements in other countries. La Via Campesina was a particularly big influence for MST to move in this direction.

MST members in the state of Parana have been at the forefront of the process of creating agroecology schools. In 2004, the MST Coordination in Parana State defined the purpose of these schools to create spaces for learning about agroecological production, presenting concrete results to farmers and encouraging an embrace of peasant culture. Just as importantly, these schools are a place for the development of our movement’s humanist values—a place where people work together, educating themselves, learning new perspectives, and having fun!

ELAA students outside the school in early 2020. Image courtesy of Wellington Lenon/ELAA.

Mongabay: How would you describe your Center’s learning approach?

Felix, Oliveira, Lenon: At ELAA we talk about our grounding in rural education or educação do campo in Portuguese. For us, the idea of rural education is based on the pedagogical and epistemological philosophies of popular education, particularly of the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire. These are the pillars of the pedagogical praxis of rural education, which seeks a critical awareness of the world, contributing to the transformation of social relations necessary for human development. In this sense, both form and content matter—going from the hands-on and concrete to the abstract and back again. It’s a dialectic that not only creates ownership of knowledge, but also motivates action based on that knowledge. As Paulo Freire said: “We struggle for an education that teaches us to think—not one that teaches us to obey.”

Mongabay: What are some of the key agroecology themes of your program?

Felix, Oliveira, Lenon: Our teaching covers a range of content related to agroecology, linking theory and practice, scientific and empirical knowledge. The school also covers content on class, capitalism, the role of social movements in social change as well as gender, sexuality, and more. In 2022, the MST launched the Dictionary of Education and Agroecology [PDF in Portuguese]. With contributions from 169 authors from 68 different institutions—public universities, federal institutes of education, social movements, and research institutes—it aims to act in formal and informal education, bringing conceptual bases to the field of education and agroecology. ELAA is adding this tool to its pedagogy.

Mongabay: Can you talk about your research approach and favorite examples of research coming out of the school?  

Felix, Oliveira, Lenon: Honestly, for us, every act of research done by our students is remarkable: These students are the sons and daughters of the land, water, and forests—the very people who have historically been denied access to education, especially college.

In terms of our research approach, we work hard at ELAA to ensure that we don’t conduct research for research’s sake, but rather ensure it is a process that gives a return to the community, region, organization, or movement to which the researcher belongs. Our students have conducted research in different areas, including agroecology, politics, gender, sexuality, social movements, and education. Specific research themes have included strategies for environmental protection, sustainable development, digital inclusion of rural families, conservation and management of agrobiodiversity, the saving and sharing of seeds, and more.

Mongabay: What’s one of the biggest challenges you face?

Felix, Oliveira, Lenon: We need to improve our infrastructure. We are at a moment when we need to expand the school building and improve the old ones. This is necessary to meet growing demand and offer better conditions both for students and teachers.

ELAA occupies 29 acres of land that provide practical training for students, a place for agroecology research, and gardens that supply the dining hall. This photo shows agroforestry production plots at an early stage. Image courtesy of Wellington Lenon/ELAA.

Mongabay: How do you think about the concept of agroecology?

Felix, Oliveira, Lenon: When we talk about agroecology, we are not just referring to a way of producing food without pesticides or chemical fertilizers. It is much more than that. We understand agroecology as a broad project of life: We see its political, economic, social, cultural, and environmental dimensions, too.

Agroecology combines sustainable production with a dignified way of life, both for those who produce (rural workers, peasants, traditional communities) and for those who have access to healthy food. Agroecology benefits the whole of society by being based on renewable sources of energy and respecting the biodiversity of the soil, fauna, and flora.

The diversification of production through agroforestry ensures countless benefits to society and the environment: biological insect control; soil biodiversity; long-term productivity from the integrated production of crops; greater financial security for farmers; more nutritious crops; strengthening local and regional economies; preserving of water/groundwater tables to ensure the proper functioning of hydrological cycles. Agroecology is today essential for the mitigation of global warming impacts, curbing the emission of greenhouse gases, and stimulating the sequestration of carbon by biodiversity.

Mongabay: How has ELAA worked to mainstream agroecology and climate action?

Felix, Oliveira, Lenon: To give one example, ELAA is part of the National Plan of Planting Trees and Producing Healthy Food, launched by the MST in 2020 to plant 100 million trees in a decade. MST partners developed a mobile application called Arvoredo to monitor tree planting across the country, and the agroecology schools’ students are playing a key role in promoting the tree planting in their communities.

MST farmer delivers food to the collection center organized by ELAA for people living in the outskirts of the state capital, Curitiba. Image courtesy of Wellington Lenon/ELAA.

Mongabay: How do you respond to the concern that agroecological farming cannot scale to meet the world’s food security needs?

Felix, Oliveira, Lenon: Our MST settlements already show that it is possible to produce healthy and abundant food using these methods. We also see how agroecology is economically more viable, because it prioritizes renewable energy and because it is appropriate for family farming, which is responsible for more than 70% of the food produced in the world. Agroecology is also socially just because it values life in the countryside while promoting the universal right to healthy food. It is culturally necessary because it is in tune with nature’s seasonality, the localization of food systems, and local food traditions. Agroecology has the commons as a core value, which requires participatory governance and the involvement of different agents of civil society and the state to be successful and expand.

Mongabay: What are the greatest hurdles to wider adoption of agroecology?

Felix, Oliveira, Lenon: Our biggest challenge is to define agroecology as the model for food production to achieve food sovereignty and to further make clear that the counterpoint—the agribusiness model, which prioritizes monoculture plantations with intensive use of pesticides, chemicals, and GMO seeds, plus the international trade of commodities—is unsustainable. To achieve this paradigm shift, we need to make progress on public policies to support agroecology, such as smallholder access to credit, and expand training in agroecology. For us, we are meeting these needs by continuing to invest in agroecological education at all educational levels, including launching the “Education and Agroecology in Rural Schools in Agrarian Reform Territories” initiative whose purpose is to expand access to education and agroecology in settlements and land reform camps all over the country.

See related: Land conflicts in Brazil break record under Bolsonaro

Beans are one of the staple foods of Brazilians, and each region has a preference for one type or another. These were harvested in the Contestado settlement and donated to MST’s food solidarity campaign. Image courtesy of Wellington Lenon/ELAA.

Mongabay: What inspires you the most in your work?

Felix, Oliveira, Lenon: What inspires us? To promote the practice of solidarity and social justice on a daily basis, enabling the families of agrarian reform workers to be agents of their own destiny through popular organization. This is the way to promote popular sovereignty in favor of human dignity and respect for fundamental rights.

Mongabay: What is it like to do this work at this particular moment in Brazil?  

Felix, Oliveira, Lenon: The MST emerged decades ago at a historical moment of struggle for the democratization of Brazil. Today, to fight for land reform means to deepen the ongoing process of democratization. Agroecology is at the center of the persistent land reform debate, pointing a way to food sovereignty for those who live in the countryside and for those who live in the city. Faced with the immense recent setbacks in the country—the advance of deforestation, especially in the Amazon, and the genocide practiced by the federal government during the pandemic—the MST has reaffirmed its commitment to fight for social justice and solidarity.

The post ‘Viable, Just & Necessary’: Agroecology is a Movement in Brazil appeared first on Real Food Media.

Nestled in a verdant valley in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, about a four-hour drive southwest of Bangalore, the agroecology learning center Amrita Bhoomi is one of dozens of farmer-to-farmer training hubs around the world focused on agroecology. The center was born out of organizing efforts of the local farmers’ movement KRRS (Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha) founded by Professor Mahantha Devaru Nanjundaswamy in the early 2000s. The movement’s leadership envisioned a teaching center where farmers could share their agroecological practices, learn new techniques, and situate themselves in a Ghandian tradition of organizing for social justice.

In 2002, movement leadership purchased the land that the center still occupies today, a biodiversity haven home to 80 cultivated acres growing dozens of varieties of crops from dryland horticulture – like mangoes and jackfruit – to coconuts and bananas, modeling rainfed farming in lieu of expensive irrigation. Shortly after breaking ground, Nanjundaswamy passed away, but his daughter Chukki Nanjundaswamy, who was 22-years old at the time and having been raised in the movement, joined the center’s leadership and has been growing the organization ever since, working to create an organization that can be an inspiration for local farmers, and many more who visit from around the world.

As part of a series on agroecology for Mongabay, author and sustainable food advocate Anna Lappé had a chance to catch up with Nanjundaswamy. The two last met in person in early 2020 just before COVID-19 lockdown, when Lappé traveled to Amrita Bhoomi as part of an international learning exchange organized by the Agroecology Fund, a global collaborative of funders invested in supporting agroecology worldwide.

In this conversation, Lappé talks with Nanjundaswamy about her work bringing the movement and practice of agroecology to life. The interview was conducted by Zoom and has been edited for length and clarity.

Agroecology practitioners share views and experiences during an international learning exchange in early 2020 at Amrita Bhoomi Learning Centre. Image by Anna Lappé for Mongabay.

Mongabay: Let’s start with the Amrita Bhoomi Learning Centre’s origin story. What was the spark?

Chukki Nanjundaswamy: The idea of starting a center for farmers run by and managed by the farmers themselves was born out of the organizing of the farmers’ movement here, Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha, known by its acronym, KRRS. It was sparked by the farmers’ desire to defend the right to their local seeds.

In the early 1990s, the Indian government had opened up its market for multinational corporations, including for agribusiness giants. The American company Cargill was the first to enter India’s seed sector. Cargill started selling seeds like sunflower and corn—all hybrid seeds [so farmers need to purchase them annually] and all expensive for farmers.

India has had long-held traditions of conserving and sharing seeds within the community and family. For the very first time, corporations were talking about patenting seeds and new global trade regimes like the GATT [the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs] were creating frameworks to enable them to do so, to claim intellectual property rights over seeds.

The movement here saw its organizing as part of fighting back. Dr. Vandana Shiva was very close to the farmers’ movement here and she had started a campaign to protect the farmers’ rights to neem, challenging multinational companies that were trying to patent this plant, which had been grown here for centuries. In 1993, KRRS conducted one of their biggest direct actions, ransacking Cargill’s offices in Bangalore where the company was headquartered.

I was in primary school at the time, but I still remember the action so clearly. After the Cargill demonstration, KRRS members decided to set up a center to save and share local seed varieties. KRRS was organizing to protect our sovereignty, our seeds, our agricultural systems and our biodiversity.

Mongabay: What’s the center’s pedagogical approach?

Chukki Nanjundaswamy: We’ve been influenced by Dr. Rammanohar Lohia, an Indian Socialist thinker whose slogan was spade-prison-vote—where spade symbolized constructive activity, prison stood for peaceful struggle against injustice, and the vote for political action. For us in KRRS these three symbols are very important.

When we, the next generation, took over Amrita Bhoomi, we learned from agroecology schools in other parts of the world, in Cuba, for instance, and in South America. In these schools, they use a methodology of farmers teaching farmers. It’s an approach we brought to our work. We also take an intergenerational approach, because most senior farmers were farming pre-Green Revolution and we’re losing that knowledge. They’re a treasure.

For nearly two decades, we have also been a teaching center for an agroecological practice known as Zero Budget Natural Farming [ZBNF, also known as Community Managed Natural Farming or Subhash Palekar Natural Farming].

We believe one of the reasons why the farming sector is in such crisis is because our so-called agricultural universities are not doing research for the farming community here. They’re mostly funded by transnational corporations and their research benefits those transnational corporations, like Syngenta, Cargill, Bayer [which bought agrochemical company Monsanto in 2018]. Our farmers have nothing to learn from the scientists; they basically all teach Green Revolution technologies [the hyper-reliance on synthetic inputs like pesticides and fertilizers and the use of hybrid seeds.]

Agroecology practitioners share views and experiences during an international learning exchange in early 2020 at Amrita Bhoomi Learning Centre. Image by Anna Lappé for Mongabay.

Mongabay: Can you tell me more about your programs?

Chukki Nanjundaswamy: We’ve tried different approaches over the years. The center is open for farmers to come to the land and learn. Agriculture departments and agricultural universities have run ‘exposure visits’ where researchers come to the land to learn. We also target young people who want to get into farming, and we offer a three-month course where they can come on the weekends. A few times, we have done ‘mega trainings.’ In 2015, for instance, we worked with La Via Campesina to bring 1,000 people, including several dozen from nine other countries, for a seven-day training.

Mongabay: When we visited the center with the Agroecology Fund we saw firsthand some of the techniques practiced under the banner of Zero Budget Natural Farming. Let’s dig into what that is.

Chukki Nanjundaswamy: There are two schools of thought on sustainable farming methods in India. One, organic farming, emerged in the 1980s. Organic farming here had class and caste dimensions, because even though it doesn’t use synthetic fertilizer or pesticides, it does depend on external inputs—often costly ones. It is still an input-based farming system which makes farming expensive and dependent. The farmers’ movement here embraced ZBNF because it is a method that helps farmers become totally self-reliant. It’s not a recipe, there is a lot of scope for farmers to design it according to their own specific conditions, according to their own soil conditions. They don’t have to purchase anything; it’s a knowledge-based technique.

In ZBNF, we refer to fertilizer as a ‘stimulant.’ It is made with jaggery [a traditional cane sugar found in India], some protein, cow manure and urine, and a handful of soil from your own farm. Commercializing it is impossible because you need bacteria from your own farm to multiply. You can’t sell it. In this approach, Mother Earth is everything: you just have to take care of her and nurture her. We just have to give her love.

Making a farmer self-reliant is part of the Gandhian principle of Swaraj which means autonomy. Agroecology is also a fight for such agrarian autonomy.

Agroecology practitioners share views and experiences during an international learning exchange in early 2020 at Amrita Bhoomi Learning Centre. Image by Anna Lappé for Mongabay.

Mongabay: Have you done formalized research at the center?

Chukki Nanjundaswamy: No, not exactly, but we consider every farmer a scientist. To give you an example: the fall armyworm is a notorious corn pest. It’s been causing chaos all over the world. Pesticide companies like Syngenta have been pushing products to deal with it. In the past couple of years, in countries in Africa, farmers who were growing corn started using pesticides for the first time to manage armyworm infestations.

But after only a couple of years of experimentation, farmers here came up with a simple technique: spray the corn with a combination of milk and jaggery in the evening. Ants, attracted by the sweet milk, are drawn to the corn where they discover, and eat, the worms. You don’t need pesticides. To me, this is a great example of a simple innovation by farmers on their own farm.

It’s amazing when you learn about what’s possible to do yourself, when big companies are making millions of dollars selling toxic fungicides or pesticides. We’re told, you can’t grow certain vegetables without pesticides. That’s just not true. We have proven it’s possible with very simple techniques, like the fall armyworm approach or using fermented buttermilk as a fungicide. We have shown you can spray it to control pests on vegetables like cabbage or cauliflower, for example. This is the kind of research we’re doing.

Mongabay: What is the response you’re seeing from farmers learning about agroecology through your center for the first time? 

Many agroecology techniques were discussed during an international learning exchange in early 2020 at Amrita Bhoomi Learning Centre. Image by Anna Lappé for Mongabay.

Chukki Nanjundaswamy: It takes time for farmers to change, because the majority here have become addicted to chemicals and believe it’s difficult to change. It takes time for any kind of transformation, but we believe that it’s not a choice anymore. If you want to get out of the hands of corporate agriculture and the corporate system, you have to be self-reliant. Gandhi talked about this when he spoke about what he means by autonomy: self-rule. We have to reclaim agriculture, starting by reclaiming our seeds and reclaiming our knowledge system, which has been given away to pesticide dealers. And, it means reclaiming our biodiversity, because the Green Revolution has taught that monoculture is better, economically. We have seen this is false. We have seen farmers committing suicide [due to their indebtedness from the high costs of commercial seeds and chemical inputs like fertilizer and pesticides, plus irrigation] in the areas where the Green Revolution was brought in the sixties and seventies, states like the Punjab are now totally dominated by wheat and rice.

Mongabay: One criticism of agroecology is that it’s labor-intensive and young people don’t want to go into farming.

Chukki Nanjundaswamy: Agroecology is welcoming young people back to agriculture. We saw this during Covid—how young people, especially educated young people, were coming back to learn agriculture here.

Mongabay: Can you say more about what you’re seeing in terms of more support for agroecology from consumers?

Chukki Nanjundaswamy: In terms of the popular support, we are finding people living in cities are very aware now about the food they’re eating. During COVID, we started doing more direct marketing of vegetables and fruits and we found there’s definitely a great consciousness about the kind of food people want to eat. They are asking for better food and want to support farmers. This is the kind consciousness rising we’ve witnessed.

Let’s talk about the Green Revolution. There’s still a belief among some foundations and governments that it is still the only farming practice that can work at scale. We’re seeing the Alliance for the Green Revolution in Africa, for instance, working to roll out similar practices across that continent based on that argument. What do you say to those who argue that we need Green Revolution technology in order to meet the food security needs of the world?

Chukki Nanjundaswamy: Well, first, using our natural farming techniques, we have seen that you can actually double yields with local varieties and these practices. Farmers in our network are producing a variety of foods—from rice to pulses—without using any chemicals and they still have better yields. It’s clear to us that the Green Revolution is just propaganda to sell products. Unfortunately, at most agricultural universities, nobody shares the stories we’re seeing among our farmers—so we speak among ourselves. We need to create platforms where we work with scientists to build the kind of evidence, the kind of data, that is required by our opponent.

Agroecology is a global practice and movement, including in this village in Lao PDR. Image via Asian Development Bank, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Mongabay: We’ve been talking a lot about yields and food security, but biodiversity is a key element of agroecology as well. I’m curious how you see biodiversity intersect with agroecology teaching.

Chukki Nanjundaswamy: Agroecology emphasizes intercropping, multi-cropping, and the symbiotic relationship between crops and the symbiotic relationship with friendly pests. You are creating an environment for your crops to grow happily and to take care of each other. It’s like a traditional, large family; it’s not a nuclear family. It’s a giant family where everyone takes care of each other. This is why biodiversity is so much a part of agroecology.

Mongabay: What’s a hope you have for the future of the center?

Chukki Nanjundaswamy: We would love to have more in-house trainers and offer a more formalized program, where we can also offer a diploma. Especially for those children of farmers who are not getting into university and who are disappointed by the kind of farming that their family has been doing—who want to try agroecology.

The post Farmer to Farmer Agroecology: Q+A with Chukki Nanjundaswamy of Amrita Bhoomi Learning Centre appeared first on Real Food Media.

Just east of Birmingham in the U.K. sits the sixth-largest university in the country, Coventry University,  home to 38,000 students and a relatively new center for the study of agroecology — a burgeoning field of social and environmental science.

Founded in 2014 and nestled on 9 hectares (22 acres) at Ryton Gardens, the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience (CAWR) provides an academic home to 45 full-time research staff and more than 50 Ph.D. students, nearly half hailing from outside the U.K., including Africa, Asia and Latin America. From its inception, the center has taken a transdisciplinary approach, employing the knowledge and skills of social scientists, natural scientists and artists-in-residence. More than 50 master’s students and 42 agroecology practitioners are graduates of its program, and it’s recognized internationally for its work on alternative food networks and “agroecological urbanism” — the concept of bringing agroecology principles like diversity and mimicking natural ecosystems into urban food planning — and is now at the forefront of pushing agroecology and food sovereignty forward.

Following her feature for Mongabay about agroecology as a leading solution to climate change in response to the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report calling for urgent action, author and sustainable food advocate Anna Lappé is interviewing leaders in the field of agroecology education, research and extension. She begins with Michel Pimbert, founder and director of the center, to better understand Coventry University’s work bringing agroecology to much wider attention. The interview was conducted by email and has been edited lightly for length and clarity.

Mongabay: Let’s start at the beginning. What’s the birth story of the center?

Michel Pimbert: In 2013, the university invited staff across the schools to pitch ideas for new areas of research. Much to my surprise, my proposal for a significant new center on agroecology and sustainable food systems was very well received! The university understood that hardly any research was going on in agroecology at the time, whether in the U.K., Europe, or beyond. Lucky for us, the vice chancellor and his team were quick to see that creating a new agroecology center would be a unique selling point for the university. This led to the birth of the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience. Since then, we’ve received significant investments to recruit staff and Ph.D. researchers, attract international talent, and build a strong global research program on agroecology and sustainable food systems. Across all this work, and from the very beginning, we’ve emphasized the need to include peoples’ knowledge in ways of knowing and the co-creation of knowledge.

Mongabay: You’ve talked about the concept of “cognitive justice.” I had never heard that phrase before I heard you use it. It’s quite provocative. Can you share what you mean by it and how it relates to your approach to teaching, learning, and knowledge dissemination?

Michel Pimbert: The term comes from our philosophy of knowledge. Unlike many mainstream institutions, we reject the idea that academic knowledge is superior to the knowledge of Indigenous peoples and peasant farmers. This is what we mean by a commitment to “cognitive justice” — and I see it as key for agroecology, which aims to combine farmers’ knowledge with ecological science. But it also matters more generally for our work on decolonizing curriculum and transforming research for a just and sustainable society.

Mongabay: “Resilience” has become quite the buzzword, but it’s always been central to your work — it’s even in your name! How do you bring a study of resilience into your programs?

Michel Pimbert: When we focus on developing agroecological practices for resilience, we mean resilience to the climate crisis and to market volatility. We focus on how building farmer and citizen knowledge to improve agroforestry, intercropping and polycultures, evolutionary plant breeding, integrating livestock in agricultural systems as well as promoting shorter food webs to link producers and food eaters are all key to such multifaceted resilience. Another research strand is community self-organization. By that, we mean a focus on how — and under what conditions — communities can collectively mobilize their knowledge and agency to respond to crises like floods, droughts, and other natural/man-made disasters, and self-organize for managing alternative food networks and local governance.

Mongabay: Right. You often emphasize how agroecology is not just about what happens on the land but what happens in power structures, too. How does that show up in the CAWR’s research?

Michel Pimbert: Yes, exploring strategies for transforming governance — for agroecology, food sovereignty, and the right to food for all — is a key priority for the center. For that reason, research at the center also focuses on local to global policy choices that are needed to tackle threats to people and nature, and to promote agroecology and sustainable food and farming systems. We also look at institutional choices such as land tenure that can support large-scale shifts towards agroecology. 

Mongabay: Can you share an example of a research project that embodies your center’s cross-disciplinary approach?

Michel Pimbert: Yes! I think the contributors from all around the world who used stories, poems, photos, and videos to create Everyday Experts: How people’s knowledge can transform the food system demonstrate well this transdisciplinary approach. It’s also a powerful showcase of how people’s knowledge can help transform the food system towards greater social and environmental justice.

Mongabay: You talk about the co-creation with movement partners for your research?

Michel Pimbert: Our partnerships grow out of conversations with social movements and peasant organizations. We are often asked to include them in funding bids or to provide research support for projects they have prioritized. One of the challenges is the typical donor approach, which does not allow open-ended, flexible, process-oriented projects of co-inquiry that social movements often require. Donors often have what I call a “log frame mentality” — one that is rigid and overemphasizes quantitative objectives.

Mongabay: In a recent Mongabay feature, I talked about how the latest IPCC report centers agroecology as a key climate solution. Are you excited by its new popularity?

Michel Pimbert: Yes, it’s exciting to see the greater acceptance and understanding of the potential of agroecology since the center was founded eight years ago. However, it’s important to stress that funding for agroecology remains pitifully small — the lion’s share of public funds continues to support industrial and “green revolution” agriculture. Agricultural policies and subsidies continue to support larger farmers and the use of agrochemicals that massively harm people and the land, and fuel runaway climate change. What’s more, I would caution that as agroecology becomes more popular, we have to resist the watering-down of ideas and cooptation; it’s important to continue to commit to an agroecology that transforms the dominant food regime rather than one that seeks to conform with it.

See more of Mongabay’s agroecology coverage here.

Mongabay: How does biodiversity intersect with teaching agroecology?

Michel Pimbert: Conserving and enhancing biodiversity — both domesticated and wild — is key for agroecology. Moving from uniformity to diversity on the farm and the wider landscape requires an emphasis on much higher levels of biodiversity. Take pest management, for instance: instead of relying on petroleum-based pesticides, agroecological solutions address on-farm pests by diversifying local ecology to enhance the abundance of natural enemies of pests and diseases. To reduce soil erosion and loss of water, these methods focus on planting diverse cover crops and terracing. To buffer against climate extremes, diversity-rich agroforestry creates micro climates, and on and on and on. Agroecological practices based on the use of greater biodiversity also enhance dietary diversity that is essential for improving health and combatting malnutrition.

Mongabay: How has the climate crisis impacted how you approach research? 

Michel Pimbert: A focus on climate change was built into the center’s program from the start. The center’s climate scientists have been modeling changes to develop better prediction for droughts, floods, and forest fires in Africa, Europe and Asia. Agroecological approaches to climate adaptation are explored in Africa and Europe as well as Central America. We also do policy research aimed at exposing corporate greenwashing and the threats posed by nature-based solutions and net-zero plans that are now promoted by post-COP26 finance for climate change.

Mongabay: From your center’s research, what are you seeing about how agroecology can scale to meet global nutritional needs?

Michel Pimbert: Agroecological practices have been shown to increase production in the developing world. By harnessing more biodiversity on the farm and in food chains, agroecology can increase dietary diversity, something that is so badly needed today, including in wealthy societies hooked on junk food and highly processed foods. However, to be clear: Agroecology should not be seen as another technical fix for hunger and malnutrition. Agroecological production that enhances the availability of a diversity of foods needs to be part of a wider societal process of transformation that prioritizes equitable access to land and other means of production, fair access to — and distribution of — food, and supports people’s agency to claim and realize the right to food for all.

See related: From traditional practice to top climate solution, agroecology gets growing attention

Mongabay: It’s clear that what you’re calling for is massive transformation. From your vantage point, what are its greatest hurdles?

Michel Pimbert: In this moment, there are two starkly contrasting models of development, each seeking to radically transform food and farming. The first focuses on modernizing and sustaining capitalism through the promotion of what is being called the fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). The 4IR relies on robots, gene editing, remote sensing, big data, drones, vertical farms, cell-cultured “meat,” digital technologies, and the “internet of things” to manage plants, animals, and the wider farming environment, as well as the entire agri-food chain. The second pathway emphasizes food sovereignty and agroecology.

Mongabay: Let me guess which pathway your center promotes.  

Michel Pimbert: Clearly, food sovereignty and agroecology — and we are not alone: I’m inspired by countless programs around the world who share our vision. But the dominant discourse on modernity and progress, government policies, and funding priorities still favor the energy-intensive 4IR — and thus, frustratingly, continue to fuel the climate crisis, mass species extinction, and the economic genocide of farmers. It should come as no surprise to anyone that the financial and corporate actors who disproportionately benefit from the emerging 4IR are its biggest boosters and pose the biggest hurdles for a transformative agroecology based on diversity, decentralization, autonomy, and democracy.

Mongabay: It’s such a dark time in so many ways — from a persistent global pandemic to senseless wars and climate crisis-induced weather extremes — what inspires you amidst all this?

Michel Pimbert: Despite all the odds, I am inspired by the many people-led initiatives that are helping to reinvent food and farming for a more convivial, just, peaceful, and sustainable world.

The post Food for All: Q&A with Michel Pimbert of the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience appeared first on Real Food Media.

Soil policies should be driven by science—not agrochemical companies.

The last time soil health was perceived as a pressing public concern was at the peak of the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. Now, for the first time in nearly a century, it has once again piqued policymakers’ interest as awareness grows that the ground beneath our feet is a crucial carbon sink, making the soil a potentially powerful tool to fight the climate crisis. Speaking at an Earth Day summit last month, President Joe Biden said, the “soil of our Heartland [is] the next frontier in carbon innovation,” reflecting the momentum behind an idea known as “regenerative agriculture.” But just as the nation is waking up from its long slumber about the importance of soil, new research shows that the pesticides so commonly used in American agriculture are devastating the very organisms that ensure dirt becomes healthy soil and not just dust. 

As a set of chemical poisons, pesticides pose an undeniable hazard to the life of soil. This new study—from Friends of the Earth, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the University of Maryland—is the first comprehensive review of the impact of pesticides on soil organisms. Researchers (including one of us) analyzed nearly 400 studies focused on the effect of pesticides (a term that includes insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides) on 275 species or groups of soil invertebrates, from beetles and earthworms to mites and ground-nesting bees. In 71 percent of cases, pesticides either directly killed the organisms being tracked or significantly harmed them; for example, by impairing their growth and reproduction or decreasing their abundance and diversity. These findings parallel previous research that illustrates pesticides’ impact on vital soil microorganisms like bacteria and fungi. 

Other research reveals troubling trendlines: A recent study found that pesticides’ toxic impact on many invertebrates has nearly doubled in the past decade because of the increasing use of two specific classes of pesticides: neonicotinoids and pyrethroids. Some neonicotinoids are 1,000 times more toxic to bees than the infamous pesticide DDT, and they linger in the environment for months or years, creating a compounding toxicity in the environment. Another study found that since neonicotinoids were first introduced in the 1990s, US agriculture has become 48 times more toxic to insect life. Scientists warn that the loss of invertebrates threatens the collapse of ecosystems—and that biodiversity loss is a crisis on par with climate change.

The findings of this new study should alarm us not only because they further underscore the starring role pesticides play in the decline of insect populations, but also because the life of soil is at the heart of its ability to capture and store carbon. What do we mean by the “life of soil”? Plants breathe in carbon from the air, then store it in their bodies and exude it through their roots. Hidden from our view, a teeming ecosystem of microorganisms transfers carbon from roots to soil. Invertebrates such as earthworms and springtails feed on fallen plants, breaking them down and excreting carbon-rich casts and feces, mixing organic matter into the soil as they go. 

The aliveness of soil also bolsters farmers’ resilience in the face of climate-change-driven weather extremes like droughts and floods. Invertebrates are ecosystem engineers: With their tunnels and burrows, they craft soil structures, enabling the flow of nutrients, air, and water below ground. This allows the land to readily absorb water during intense rains and retain it during times of drought, much like a massive sponge. 

In short, healthy soil is living soil. So it should be no surprise that chemicals designed to kill are at odds with the objectives of regenerative agriculture. Research shows that the very farmers who are not using hazardous pesticides are among the most successful at capturing carbon. Organic farmers—who are expressly prohibited from using over 900 agricultural pesticides and who have long championed regenerative approaches like cover cropping, crop diversification, and composting—can sequester up to 25 percent more carbon in soil and achieve deeper and more persistent carbon storage than farmers using chemical approaches. 

Yet some of the loudest voices in the national conversation on soil are the companies behind the world’s most toxic pesticides. Last month, pesticide giants including Bayer-Monsanto and Syngenta were among the prominent backers of the reintroduced Growing Climate Solutions Act (GCSA), a bill that would channel interest in regenerative agriculture into soil carbon markets. 

That means farmers would be paid to sequester carbon—and then those “carbon credits” would be sold to polluters, allowing them to keep polluting. There’s no doubt that farmers should be supported in shifting to regenerative methods. But the evidence shows that using carbon markets to do so is an oversimplified and dangerous approach that will “let big polluters off the hook and fail the needs of family farmers,” says the National Family Farm Coalition. Carbon markets have repeatedly failed in their primary goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. They have been plagued by fraud, and in many cases they have worsened pollution in low-income communities and communities of color, even resulting in human-rights abuses across the globe. Moreover, measuring soil carbon in a uniform way to ensure integrity in soil carbon markets will likely remain an elusive goal because soil carbon fluctuates based on the seasons, and samples taken even from the same field can lead to very different results. 

In light of this new study’s findings, another fundamental flaw of carbon markets is particularly concerning: They can be gamed by powerful players. Hence, the support from pesticide giants. Bayer, for instance, is pushing the passage of GCSA because the company stands to win big. If the bill passes, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) would facilitate farmers’ participation in private schemes like the new Bayer Carbon Initiative. Farmers would enroll in Bayer’s digital agriculture platform, Climate FieldView, and implement certain practices—dictated by Bayer—to receive compensation. Bayer would then sell credits for farm-sequestered carbon to polluters. But programs like Bayer’s are designed to accommodate the largest industrial-style farms and depend on use of the company’s patented seeds and toxic pesticides like glyphosate, a weed killer with known impacts on soil organisms like earthworms. Even more perverse, Bayer may pay farmers in the form of credits to be redeemed in the Bayer PLUS Rewards Platform—credits that are most efficiently spent on more Bayer products. 

While we celebrate that the conversation about soil and climate change is becoming mainstream, it’s imperative that the resulting policies are driven by science, not by the interests of agrochemical companies. The successful conservation programs that emerged from the Dust Bowl era can show us the way. Rather than spend billions of federal dollars creating market mechanisms that will enrich pesticide corporations and further entrench their power at the expense of family-scale farmers, the environment, and our health, we can invest in long-standing but under-resourced programs like the USDA’s Conservation Stewardship Program, Environmental Quality Incentives Program, and National Organic Program. And, we can update these programs to facilitate equitable participation of BIPOC farmers and to reflect the latest science on ecologically regenerative practices. 

During the Dust Bowl, the crisis was visible: Plumes of dust from the plains swept across the country and darkened the skies in Washington, DC. Today, the soil story is hidden in the ecosystems beneath our feet, but the crisis is just as pressing. This study is an urgent missive that the renewed national interest in healthy soil must result in policies that support truly regenerative efforts that build healthy, living farming systems. 

The post We Can’t Talk About Regenerative Ag Without Talking About Pesticides appeared first on Real Food Media.

What Biden’s burger boondoggle tells us about partisan politics and spin-doctoring.

The post What’s the Latest Beef With Beef? appeared first on Real Food Media.

For decades, data on pesticide exposure has been vague and non-existent. Anna Lappé talks to the researchers who have put hard numbers to unintentional pesticide poisonings and fatalities globally.

Last December, four researchers from Germany, Malaysia, and the United States published the results of a systematic review estimating the number of unintentional pesticide poisonings and fatalities globally. The conclusion was startling: An estimated 44 percent of farmers, farmworkers, and pesticide applicators experience at least one incident of acute pesticide poisoning on the job every year, and 11,000 die annually from accidental pesticide poisoning.

We’ve been hearing more and more about the impact of pesticides on insects, other wildlife, and ecosystems, but this research puts a magnifying glass on another huge concern about the explosive use of pesticides around the world: their impact on people.

When I learned about this study, I thought: finally. For years, I had been tracking the global estimates for pesticide poisonings and fatalities. Over this time, I had noticed something strange—the numbers I saw reported in various outlets had stayed the same, about 1 million pesticide poisonings and about 200,000 fatalities, annually. The fatality figure made headlines most recently in 2017 when the United Nations released a report on pesticides and human rights, and one article after another repeated the figure like it was breaking news: “U.N. report estimates pesticides kill 200,000 people per year,” read one headline.

But dig behind these headlines and you would find these numbers were old—really old. The poisoning and fatality estimates that we’d been hearing for years actually came from a 1990 World Health Organization (WHO) report. In other words, we have not had solid global data on how many people are getting sick and dying every year from pesticide exposure for decades—and even that 1990 figure was more back-of-the-napkin math than systematic review.

This new study—based on a review of more than 170 studies from 140 countries—finally provides up-to-date estimates for occupational pesticide poisoning incidents and unintentional fatalities. The conclusions should alarm us all and kick policy makers into gear on long-standing commitments to crack down on the world’s most toxic pesticides, like the insecticide chlorpyrifos still widely used even though it’s a known brain-damaging chemical with no safe level of exposure for children.

I had a chance to dive into the study with two of its authors, Wolfgang Boedeker, an epidemiologist and board member of Pesticide Action Network-Germany, and Emily Marquez, a staff scientist with the Pesticide Action Network-North America. Boedeker shared what this study reveals about how widespread pesticide poisonings are and Marquez helped highlight what can do about it, particularly in the United States.

Let’s start with a definition: systematic. Your paper looks at unintentional acute pesticide poisoning (UAPP). What qualifies as a UAPP?

Boedeker: WHO defines acute pesticide poisoning as when one or more symptoms—such as headaches or dizziness, developing a rash, or feeling dizzy or nauseous—have been reported by workers or farmers within 48 hours of contact with these chemicals. In most cases, these poisonings are experienced as unspecific symptoms after you’ve used pesticides in your field. They may show up a couple of hours after applying pesticides, then be gone again.

What you found about the prevalence of UAPPs was shocking: You estimate that 44 percent of all farmers are poisoned by pesticides every year. But what about the person who may ask, “So what? A farmer feels a little sick in their field, why should we care about these illnesses—and not just mortality?”

Boedeker: If you get intoxicated by pesticide poisoning, you get sick, you often can’t work, you lose income. And, every acute exposure can lead to long-term, chronic disease. Acute intoxication is an unacceptable sign of an exposure to dangerous chemicals. We have to take it very seriously. This is one of the key messages in this paper: not just to look to the fatal intoxication, but enlarge our perspective to the non-fatal intoxication because these poisonings are an expression of dangerous exposure to chemicals.

Many of these acute exposures can lead to chronic illnesses, like cancer. We didn’t include an investigation into that literature because it would have made this study much more complicated, but we need a systematic review on the chronic effects of pesticides, too. And while in this study, we didn’t include the public health effects of the uptake of pesticides via food either, we know there are residues in food and drinking water—and that’s another important issue that needs systematic review. systematic

You estimate 11,000 fatalities every year from unanticipated pesticide poisonings, a much lower figure than the previous one from WHO, but notably, yours does not include fatalities from intentional poisoning. And, your paper notes how widespread that is: An estimated 14 million people have died by suicide using pesticides since the advent of the Green Revolution in the 1960s.

Boedeker: Right. Our fatality figure is lower but as you say we don’t include suicides. Suicides by pesticide poisoning have been investigated for a long while now, and yes, the numbers are alarming.

One reason for the number of poisonings is that pesticide use has skyrocketed: up 81 percent in the past 35 years. In certain regions, you note, that increase has been dramatic. South America saw almost a 500 percent increase while Europe saw just a 3 percent bump.

Boedeker: Yes, the profile of pesticide use has changed dramatically in these 35 years. The amount of pesticides used has grown and the size of rural populations has become larger, so more people are being exposed to more pesticides.

What did you find in terms of geographic hotspots for pesticide poisonings?

Boedeker: Countries in the Global South are most affected, which is to be expected: Not only are these regions where pesticide use is high, but also where there are fewer protective measures against exposure.

What did you hope for the report’s impact?

Boedeker: Our first aim was to have a more reliable figure on pesticide poisoning. The old figure was still cited in every policy paper when it comes to the public health impacts of pesticide use. We wanted to widen the scope beyond fatal poisoning. Secondly, our hope was to show that even after decades of policy interventions, pesticide poisoning is still a big problem. While our number of fatalities is smaller than the old figure, our UAPP figure is so much higher. Our analysis shows that this is a big public health problem and there is urgent need to address it.

What are policy approaches that could address this crisis?

Boedeker: There was a push years ago to stop the export to the Global South of highly hazardous pesticides, or HHPs, but then it got quiet. [There are nearly 300 HHPs on the market, these are pesticides that are known to be highly toxic to humans, linked to cancer or endocrine disruption or those that have shown to be particularly damaging to the environment]. We have a new push for this discussion based on this data. In Germany, for instance, we have governmental discussions on the prohibition of the export of HHPs and we are hoping to see this throughout Europe.

Marquez: Pesticide Action Network-North America got its start campaigning on the export of HHPs banned in the United States but sold in other countries where they weren’t banned. It’s important to keep watchdogging this, as PAN Germany, PAN Europe, and other partners in PAN International like Public Eye do with their “double standards” campaigns.

Right, there’s been organizing around HHPs for a long time. In your paper, you mention a 2006 United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization recommendation for a progressive ban on highly hazardous pesticides, so what happened?

Boedeker: We haven’t seen more progress on this ban, I believe, because of successful international lobbying by the chemical industry, which has made sure these recommendations have not come far. There is a United Nations ethical code of conduct on pesticide use and management with clear messages that these pesticides—which are dangerous and not to be used in certain conditions because they need to be applied with protective measures—should not be exported or used in certain countries. We hope this study will help policy makers realize how getting these codes of conduct in place, and putting real restrictions on HHPs, is an urgent public health issue.

What are national policy priorities that you think could make a difference?

Marquez: In the United States, I think we could do a lot more to prevent pesticide poisonings in agriculture by strengthening protections for farmworkers. Every year in California, for example, there is news about farmworkers—sometimes large groups, all at the same time—getting poisoned while they’re working. Another very important way to get at this problem is transitioning off agriculture that depends so heavily on pesticides to manage the system. Research on nonchemical alternatives to pesticides is really important and it doesn’t get as much funding as it needs.

And what can we do as individuals?

Marquez: As a voter, I would pay attention to what your representatives have to say about farmworkers, supporting small farmers, and research initiatives on non-chemical alternatives to pesticides—especially if you are from a state that has a lot of agriculture. You can also engage your local representative and ask them what they’re doing about pesticide poisonings. Any place where pesticides get used has the potential for people to get poisoned.

There are other policy processes you can engage in—some states have taken the step of banning or phasing out a particular pesticide, for example, as with action around the insecticide chlorpyrifos in Hawaii, New York, and California. Five other states are now pursuing regulatory action on the insecticide. There are other processes, too, like participating in comment periods in your state or county or weighing in during comment periods from national agencies. Our organization, Pesticide Action Network, provides updates on key comment periods for public engagement, helping people around the country engage in these important policy battles.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

The post New Study Shows the Growing Risks of Pesticide Poisonings appeared first on Real Food Media.

A new study published in Science offers a stark warning about the climate crisis: Even if we completely halted fossil fuel use in the near term, we would still blow through the carbon budget needed to avoid catastrophic climate change unless we change the trajectory of emissions from the global food sector. Although many have warned about the climate impact of modern food production and land use, this new science is soberingly clear, and it has garnered attention around the world.

Without radically reducing emissions from agriculture, the research shows we won’t meet the Paris Agreement’s goal to limit average warming to 1.5°C – 2°C degrees. And yet, even those targets still position us to face some pretty extreme climate impacts.

Civil Eats talked with Michael Clark, a researcher at the Nuffield Department of Population Health at the University of Oxford and one of the lead authors on the study, about the findings, what they teach us about collective action to move the needle on climate, and how we might build the political will to do so.

Why does the food system have such a big climate toll?

One of the main sources of greenhouse gas emissions from food systems is meat, and within that red meat from ruminants: beef, sheep, goats, and—to a lesser extent—other livestock like pork. The reason why ruminants have a relatively large impact is two-fold: They’re particularly inefficient at converting grass into things we can eat; or, if they’re not being fed grass, converting soy or other feed into food for humans. This matters because you have to include the climate impacts of producing the feed we then give to cows and other ruminants. Another reason why ruminants are particularly high emitters is because during their digestive process, they convert their food into methane, a potent greenhouse gas that they then burp.

The other large source of emissions within food systems is from fertilizer use—from how it is processed to emissions from application. Nitrogen naturally converts into nitrous oxide, which is one of the other very potent greenhouse gases.

This I think has been a blind spot. We’ve disrupted the carbon cycle, but we’ve disrupted the nitrogen cycle, too.

Exactly. Estimates are that humans have doubled the amount of reactive nitrogen in the world—that is human sources of reactive nitrogen are at least as large as the amount of reactive nitrogen that is naturally available. Not ideal.

Your findings paint a picture based on current trends. What trends did you track?

Very broadly speaking, emissions from the food system are a function of what we eat, how it’s produced, and the size of the population. We looked at these three factors and trends to date and projected out if these patterns continue over the next several decades.

What we found at a global scale is that the most important driver is changes in dietary habits; populations eating more food and eating a larger proportion of that food from animal sources, either meat, dairy, or eggs. Population growth is an important driver, but it’s not as important as dietary habit change. And while changes in food production—like having better management techniques and reducing emissions per unit of food—could counter those shifts, it would not be by a huge amount.

Now, all this is at a global scale; for any single country, that global pattern may not match up. Diets are changing, but not uniformly. For instance, diets are not changing by a huge amount in the United States, but if you go to a place like China or Brazil, countries experiencing large economic transitions, there are massive dietary shifts happening and with them those emissions are going to be driven up.

Do you feel the story of food systems emissions has been late to the game in climate change?

Rightfully, a lot of the effort, focus, and political will has targeted emissions abatement through fossil fuels. That makes a huge amount of sense. But we’re getting better knowledge about the impact food has had on the environment—and the trajectory of emissions—and starting to see, thankfully, food becoming a bigger part of the conversation.

Talk about some of the main levers for change. First, plant-rich diets: Let’s get into what you mean by that and why this diet shift makes a difference.

We mean a reduction in meat, dairy, and eggs and an increase in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, legumes, and so on. What’s critical here is that while the endpoint is similar for everyone in the world, the direction you might need to go to get there will be really different. In the United States, for instance, this shift in diets might mean a typical person eating much less meat and much more fruits and vegetables. The second thing I really want to stress is that these plant-rich diets are associated with pretty large increases in health outcomes. While for this paper we focused on climate, plant-rich diets have enormous co-benefits.

Let’s talk about another lever for reducing food system emissions; what you and your co-authors call “healthy calories.”

Approximately half the global adult population is eating too much or not enough. In certain countries the figures are even more extreme. For my co-authors and me, the healthy diet lever means—independent of a plant-rich diet—what proportion of calories are coming from fruit, vegetables, and other healthy sources of calories. We know that so many people are not getting the right amounts of food for a healthy diet. Similar to the plant-rich lever, this means in some places, eating a lot less, in other places, it will mean people eating more [healthy foods].

Food waste has gotten a lot more attention in the past few years—in part, I think, because the percent of food that is wasted is so high and because addressing food waste feels so doable.

Yes, it’s pretty shocking: About one-third of all food that is produced remains uneaten, ether because it’s thrown away, rots, or otherwise doesn’t get to the people who want to eat it. The sources differ widely by country, sometimes it’s a lack of refrigeration, lack of storage, grain silos, and so on. In the United States, a family of four wastes on average $1,600 worth of produce a year. That’s a pretty big incentive to act.

It always surprises people that if the emissions associated with food loss were a country, it would be the third largest emitter in the world.

Let’s talk about what you are seeing in terms of policy responses.

One of the joys and complications of working on a global study is that the policy responses are going to look very different wherever you are. We talked earlier about the climate impacts of nitrogen fertilizer use. One policy that has really been effective has been the 1991 European Union Nitrates Directive. Now, when it was passed, it was designed to reduce nitrogen runoff because agricultural sources of runoff were one of the main causes of water pollution in Europe. Since then, fertilizer applications per hectare have decreased by about half, yet crop yields have continued to increase as they were before. It’s just one example of a relatively large geographically scaled policy that is working. While it wasn’t specifically designed to address emissions, it most certainly has had emissions benefits.

We can look at farmers choosing different production pathways. Like in some cases adding more crop rotations into their planning or using agroecological approaches, such as planting hedgerows, agroforestry, and more. Honestly, there really is a huge amount that can be done. But it’s important to stress that no single action is going to solve the problem.

One of the big food-climate debates is about soil carbon sequestration and livestock. What do you think about those who argue for livestock’s ability to rehabilitate soils?

We know for sure we can be doing a lot better in terms of soil carbon storage. And we are seeing incredible results from a range of strategies, like some I mentioned: planting cover crops, intercropping, and silvopasture, planting hedges between fields that can prevent soil loss—and more. All of these can help sequester more carbon in the soil, but I think the key message should be: Soil carbon sequestration is part of the solution, but it isn’t the only solution.

Now, for the debate about cows! The instances where I’ve seen cows or other ruminants’ potential to be net negative in terms of greenhouse gas emissions—after accounting for methane emissions—is over short timescales, in certain conditions, on previously degraded land. So, yes, it may be possible for cows to play a helpful role, but in a limited way. How the cows are raised matters; but how many cows you’re raising matters more.

Do you feel like any parts of your paper have been misunderstood as this complex story gets translated for the general public?

I actually think the coverage has been good. There are basically three main points and I think the media has been capturing them well: One, food matters to climate and if we continue eating the way we are, it will result in catastrophic climate change; two, there is a lot we can do; third, everyone has a role to play—consumers, businesses, food processors, everyone.

I know one question those who work on climate often gets asked is, “Are you optimistic or pessimistic?”—but, I feel I should ask the same of you.

I’m laughing because it’s an uncomfortable question to answer. We are starting to move in the right direction, but honestly, we’re not moving anywhere close to as fast as we need to. We need to start acting now. It would have been great to have made these changes years ago, but we didn’t.

Right. As they say, the best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago. The second best time is today.

Exactly.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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