In the ensuing decade, we have been thrilled to see the conversation about food systems grow—and so we were delighted to see the latest missive: The Washington Post’s feature on the environmental cost of the food we eat. But we were disappointed with its narrow focus. By pitting one food against another—rice or potatoes? salmon or cod?—the piece misses a big opportunity to help consumers think about the climate consequences of their food buying decisions. 

One of the reasons our food system is a driver of environmental crises, including the climate crisis, is because of how food is grown, particularly our system’s dependence on the fossil-fuel based inputs of pesticides and synthetic fertilizer. Pesticides are fossil fuels in another form: 99 percent of all pesticides are derived from fossil fuels. And greenhouse gas emissions from nitrogen fertilizer alone are greater than all commercial aviation worldwide, noted a recent report by the Center for International Environmental Law. The good news is that, unlike aviation, we have technologies to free agriculture from fossil-fuel dependency through methods like organic and regenerative agriculture. Indeed, these production systems—that reduce the burden of costly and polluting inputs like pesticides and fertilizers—were identified as key climate solutions in a recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. So for readers who want to lighten the environmental load of their diet, reaching for the organic label or seeking out products raised with regenerative practices is a powerful place to start. 

We’re pleased to see mega-platforms like the Washington Post take on these big issues—we hope these deeper connections get exposed. 

FYI — Unpublished LTE 

As someone who has been trying to raise the alarm about the environmental impacts of the global food system for years, I was delighted to see The Washington Post’s headline: “This is the environmental cost of the food we eat.” But by pitting one food against another — rice or potatoes? salmon or cod? — the piece misses a big opportunity to help consumers think about the climate consequences of their food buying decisions. One of the biggest reasons our food system is a driver of environmental crises, including the climate crisis, is because of how food is grown, particularly our system’s dependence on the fossil-fuel based inputs of pesticides and synthetic fertilizer. Pesticides are fossil fuels in another form: 99 percent of all pesticides are derived from fossil fuels. And greenhouse gas emissions from nitrogen fertilizer alone are greater than all commercial aviation worldwide, noted a recent report by the Center for International Environmental Law. The good news is that, unlike aviation, we have technologies to free agriculture from fossil-fuel dependency through methods like organic and regenerative agriculture. Indeed, these production systems—that reduce the burden of costly and polluting inputs like pesticides and fertilizers—were identified as key climate solutions in a recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. So for readers who want to lighten the environmental load of the foods they eat, reaching for the organic label or seeking out products raised with regenerative practices is a powerful place to start. 

Anna Lappé | Founder and Strategic Advisor, Real Food Media |Author, Diet for a Hot Planet

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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.

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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. 

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It’s time to take action on every sector, including food.

As I wrote in Diet for a Hot Planet, food systems are at once climate casualties, culprits—and a key to the cure. The food system is responsible for an estimated third of greenhouse gas emissions, particularly a significant source of nitrous oxide and methane emissions, gases with many times the heat trapping qualities of carbon dioxide. Research in the intervening years has only underscored the need to rethink food systems if we are to get the climate crisis under control. As a recent study exposed, even if we got everything right in terms of limiting emissions from other sectors; we ignore food at our peril. But how? Here are some of our ideas!  

As our Twitter feed fills with grief and alarm about the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest report, we can heed the call of labor organizer Joe Hill: “Don’t Mourn, Organize.” We might amend this sentiment in an era of climate grief amidst an acute pandemic: we can mourn and organize.

1. Decarbonize the Food System, Fund Agroecology: All around the world public and private funders are stepping up to support the research, advocacy, and learning necessary to unlink food production from an addition to energy-intensive synthetic fertilizer, petrochemicals, and unhealthy monocultures. Knitted together under the umbrella of “agroecology,” you can find these efforts in every corner of the world. Learn more at www.agrecologyfund.org or watch this short video with voices of agroecology from around the world. 
2. Take on the Petrochemicals in Food: Some of the biggest players in the food system are agrochemical giants like Bayer and Syngenta. Pushing antiquated and toxic pesticides, their products are destroying biodiversity and contributing to the climate crisis. Join Pesticide Action Network North America to be part of the movement of people around the world calling for the abolition of petrochemicals on our farms. 
3. Target Agribusiness: Big Oil companies deserve our wrath, for sure. It’s clear that these companies have known for decades that their practices would lead us off this climate cliff, but agribusiness companies too need to feel the force of our fury. Companies like ADM and Cargill have been driving deforestation in climate-critical regions for decades. Learn more about taking on these food giants at RAN. Industrial meat giants, like Tyosno and JBS, are also deadly contributors to the climate crisis—not to mention animal welfare and human rights abuses. Learn more about factory farming and the environment at Foodprint.org. 
4. Focus on the Financing. These companies are only able to keep operating because they’ve got the immense reserves of the world’s banking and insurance industries behind them. For years advocacy groups have been working to undermine this financial support. Rainforest Action Network, where I’ve served on the board for 10+ years, is just one of these groups. Learn more about Banking on Climate Chaos here.  
5. Support Farmers Doing it Right: Thankfully, there are countless organizations and thousands of farmers who are embracing a way of farming that’s good for people and planet. Here are some of the fabulous groups doing this essential work: SAAFON, Practical Farmers of Iowa, Black Farmer Fund, Soul Fire Farm, and so many more. 
6. Eat with the Climate at Heart: On September 21st, my mother’s new edition of her 1971 classic, Diet for a Small Planet, will be published. A celebration of planet- and plant-centered cuisine and a call to arms that if you care about fixing food you have to engage in democracy, the book will hopefully inspire you to think differently and (filled with 85 recipes) to cook!  
7. Bust the Myth that We Need Industrial Agriculture to Feed the World: An oldie but a goodie, our Food MythBusters video takes on this entrenched myth.  

The post The IPCC report on Climate is Here. The News is Bad. But We Knew That. appeared first on Real Food Media.

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

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I hate to be the dark cloud hovering over Farhad Manjoo’s solar array (“The Wind and Solar Boom Is Already Here,” column, April 30), but while those who care about climate stability should applaud the growth of renewable energy sources like wind and solar, fossil fuel industry expansion into worrisome markets should concern us all.

As the Center for International Environmental Law has reported, for instance, the fossil fuel industry is moving rapidly into plastics, including investing heavily in expanding or building new petrochemical facilities to ramp up production. The industry is also eyeing pesticides and ammonia fertilizer, eager to exploit the emerging demand in soil carbon markets with fossil-fuel-dependent agricultural models.

If we care about getting the climate crisis under control, we have to look at all the profitable but destructive outlets for the fossil fuel industry, including plastics, pesticides and fertilizers.

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I had a chance to do a deep dive on the powerful new research about the shadow of pesticide used here and around the world and what we can do about it in the first two segments of Sam Seder’s The Majority Report.

Want to learn more about this issue? Make sure you read this Q+A with two of the research paper’s 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.

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The post What Carey Gillam Learned Through Years of Investigating Monsanto appeared first on Real Food Media.

When a workplace accident left Lee doused in a toxic chemical and facing a deadly cancer, his turned his life upside down. In 2018, the world watched as Lee was thrust to the forefront of one the most dramatic legal battles in recent history.

The Monsanto Papers is the inside story of Lee Johnson’s landmark lawsuit against Monsanto. For Lee, the case was a race against the clock, with doctors predicting he wouldn’t survive long enough to take the witness stand. For the lawyers representing him, it was a matter of professional pride and personal risk, with millions of dollars and hard-earned reputations on the line. For the public at large, the lawsuit presented a question of corporate accountability.

With enough money and influence, could a company endanger its customers, hide evidence, manipulate regulators, and get away with it all—for decades? Readers will be astounded by the depth of corruption uncovered and moved by Lee’s quiet determination to see justice served. 

Use code GILLAM for 20 percent off the book at Island Press.

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