Category: Amazon Rainforest

Toxic Side Effects of a UK-Brazil Free Trade Agreement

Monica Piccinini

23 Feb 2022

A recently released report from Pesticide Action Network (PAN-UK), reveals that a potential trade deal between the UK and Brazil is being considered. If a trade deal between both countries goes ahead, the UK population could be consuming products containing higher level of pesticides, which could have a direct impact not only on public health, but also on the environment.

“The UK Trade Secretary is promoting trade with Brazil as providing ‘real opportunities to go further on green trade’. Meanwhile, Brazil’s overuse of highly toxic pesticides is contributing to the destruction of the Amazon and other crucially important ecosystems, contaminating water and poisoning farmworkers and communities. And yet the government has provided no detail on how it will ensure that Brazilian food sold on UK shelves is not contributing to the global climate and nature crises”, said Josie Cohen, Head of Policy and Campaigns at Pesticide Action Network, PAN UK.

Brazil is the world’s third largest user of pesticides, only behind China and the US, allowing almost double the amount of highly hazardous pesticides, HHP’s, to be used (131), compared to the UK (73). For instance, lemons grown in Brazil have 200 times the amount of insecticide dimethoate than in the UK. Dimethoate has been linked to cancer and is banned in the UK.

The UK already imports large amounts of food (meat, fruit and vegetables) and soya for animal feed from Brazil. Food imports are subject to UK safety limits for the amount of pesticides residues allowed to a particular item, but no limits are placed on feed.

Soya beans are Brazil’s largest export to the UK, worth approximately 220 million USD in 2020. The majority of it is genetically modified (GM), and at least 90 per cent of it is fed to animals.

A large amount of the meat British people buy, including beef, dairy and chicken reared in the UK, have been fed on soya grown on deforested land using toxic pesticides.

“Most UK consumers have no idea that some of the meat they are eating has been fed on soya grown using highly toxic chemicals. Right now, the UK government is talking a good game on reducing pesticide harms in the UK, but appears to have no problem with exporting our environmental and human health footprints to Brazil”, mentioned Vicky Hird, Sustainable Farming Campaign Coordinator at Sustain.

In February 2021, Defra signed a “memorandum of understanding” with the Brazilian government with the intention to facilitate trade in agribusiness between Brazil and the UK. The Brazilian agriculture minister, Tereza Cristina Corrêa da Costa Dias, nicknamed by Brazilians as “poison muse”, said that the UK would eventually become more aligned with international rules on food safety.

“The UK government continues to pursue increased agricultural trade with Brazil, but the intensification of agricultural production there has been linked with deforestation and highly hazardous pesticides which harm wildlife and ecosystems. The UK should ensure that it is not contributing to the problem”, said Dr. Emily Lydgate, specialist in environmental law at the University of Sussex.

Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, has continuously developed a close and special relationship with pesticides. He recently incorporated a presidential decree (10.833/2021), amending the 1989 pesticides law, by making the approval process of pesticides even more flexible, including the approval of chemicals that have already been banned in the US and Europe.

With the new amendment, chemicals that cause cancer, genetic mutations and fetal malformation, will be given approval to be used as well as manufactured, if a “safe exposure limit” is determined.

Additionally, the current Brazilian legislation does not provide for a minimum period for the renewal of pesticides licensing. Pesticides that have been in the Brazilian market for more than 4 decades are still being used today, without ever undergoing an assessment of environmental and health issues.

The approval process of pesticides in Brazil has never been made easier, as more power has been given to the Ministry of Agriculture on the decision making process, leaving ANVISA (National Health Surveillance Agency) and IBAMA (Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) excluded from the final decision.



An increase in agriculture exports from Brazil to the UK may also pose a threat to British agriculture, increasing the pressure on farmers to escalate the use of pesticides to compete with cheaper products grown on a larger scale.

Beef and soya production in Brazil plays a major role in the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, as well as devastation of the Cerrado region, the home of 5% of the world’s plant and animal species.

Pesticides have also contaminated Brazilian water. According to a 2021 study, freshwater bodies in 80% of Brazilian states are now contaminated with herbicides such as glyphosate, posing a direct threat to aquatic species and ecosystems.

Drinking water in Brazil can contain glyphosate levels of up to 500 micrograms per litre. In the UK, the current for drinking water is 0.1 microgram per litre, 5000 times lower than the level in Brazil.

Another catastrophe reported on a regular basis is the countless poisoning incidents in Brazil caused by pesticides aerial spraying. A report published by Publica estimated that between 2007 and 2017, pesticides poisoned approximately 6,500 children, all under the age of 14.

In September 2020, Science Direct reported adverse effects of pesticides on the function of our immune system, which could affect how we fight Covid-19. Additionally, a new study performed in human lung airway cells is one of the first to show a potential link between exposure to organophosphate pesticides and increased susceptibility to COVID-19 infection.

“We have identified a basic mechanism linked with inflammation that could increase susceptibility to COVID-19 infection among people exposed to organophosphates,” said Saurabh Chatterjee, PhD, from the University of South Carolina and a research health specialist at the Columbia VA Medical Center and leader of the research team.

Pesticide Action Network UK has made some key recommendations to the UK government, including putting additional measures in place to ensure that Brazilian agricultural imports are not driven pesticide-related harms to either human health or the environment in Brazil.

Another proposal would be not allowing any weakening of UK pesticide standards as a result of an increase in trade with Brazil and preventing UK farmers from being disadvantaged by cheap food imports produced to weaker pesticide standards in Brazil.

The impact pesticides cause to our health and the environment is undeniable. It doesn’t only affect human life, but also the Amazon rainforest, the Cerrado, the soil, the air, wildlife and the water, speeding up the destruction of the world’s most precious ecosystems.

We only have one life and one planet. It is our duty to protect them both in order to guarantee our survival!

COP26: another Cop Out?

Monica Piccinini

21 Oct 2021

The climate scientists drum beat of concerning data continues with an increased rhythm and it is becoming clear to all but the global leaders that we are running out of time for material action.

As COP26 approaches, national leaders across the world should be galvanising and both individually and collectively evidencing real action to deliver on prior promises and commitments. Sadly, what might be expected appears to be far from the real situation.

It is very apparent that climate change can’t be addressed by a small number of nations. Global pollution and its effects have no respect for man-made sovereign borders. Possibly, for the first time in history, the world needs to truly work together for the greater good and ultimate survival. 

It’s complicated. The world needs full cooperation and commitment from the biggest polluters and the richest and most powerful nations, leaving their greed, egos and empty promises behind. In the short term, it’s those same countries that have the most to lose and need to spend the most in an altruistic manner.

It’s no coincidence that the largest economies have established themselves as powerhouses at the expense of the climate. Much of their industry depends on carbon fuels to function and importantly their infrastructure is from a time when carbon fuels were seen as the future.

So with that background and political short-termism combined, it’s no surprise that the question of climate and sustainability becomes deeply mired in protectionism, nationalism and global politics.

Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, China’s Xi Jiping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador are not expected to attend COP26. Japan’s Fumio Kishida may also be absent from the Summit, which is about to start in Glasglow, Scotland, at the end of this month.

According to an analysis by Carbon Brief on CO2 emissions from land use and forestry, as well as those from fossil fuels, it showed the US as the largest CO2 emitter in history, accounting to 20% of the global total, followed by China with 11%. In third place came Russia (7%), Brazil (5%) and Indonesia (4%).

There is a real sense of urgency, as the world has already used 85% of the CO2 budget that would give a 50% chance of limiting heating to 1.5C, according to Carbon Brief’s data.

According to the OECD, CO2 from the combustion of fossil fuels and biomass accounts for about 90% of total CO2 emissions and two thirds of total GHG emissions.

The top most powerful nations in the world, China and the US, are the top polluters, followed by India, Russia and Japan. China produces 28% of global emissions, more CO2 than all nations put together.

Will geopolitical competition between China and the US help the world tackle climate change?

China and the US should be leaving their differences aside and be focusing on setting up plans in order to tackle one of, if not the most challenging projects of our time, climate change.

The recent defense deal, the Aukus trilateral security partnership between the US, the UK and Australia, added to existing regional military tensions has not helped to soothe relations between the US and China, creating a stand-off which has the potential to evolve into a new cold war.

Additionally, issues like trade, the South China Sea, human rights, the threat of Chinese invasion in Taiwan and intellectual property theft, have contributed to more tensions and disagreement between both nations. This may impact heavily on their commitment to climate change.

President Xi Jinping has pledged to cut down emissions by 2030 and become carbon neutral by 2060, given its economic development is highly reliant on the fossil fuel industry.

More than half of all power in China is generated from coal, using 3 billion tonnes of thermal coal each year. Coal is the biggest contributor to climate change, accounting to 46% of carbon dioxide emissions across the world.

Coal is not the only concern. China produced around one billion tonnes of steel last year, which is the second most polluting industry after coal.

We can easily notice a pattern here. Chinese demand for coal is expected to increase until 2026, therefore increasing carbon emissions until 2030, contradicting the country’s emission goals. Chinese banks and corporations continue to finance and build coal-fired power plants across many countries.

Supply and demand – is it all China’s fault?

Since opening up to foreign trade and investment and implementing free-market reforms in 1979, China has become one of the world’s fastest-growing economies.

The world has actively supported China becoming its industrial heartland. Built upon cheap labour, available raw materials and a welcoming government policy, a huge percentage of commodity product manufacturing has moved to China from other historic manufacturing nations, including the US, the UK, the EU, and other nations.  Servicing the demand has created pressure to build manufacturing infrastructure at the lowest cost possible, and that leads to low tech solutions like carbon based energy production.

It’s no surprise that China has rapidly become one of the biggest global polluters. Other nations have essentially pushed into China their polluting industries.

The denialistic approach

The Production Gap report released by the UN, states that governments across the world still plan to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 and that the majority of gas and oil producers plan on increasing production beyond 2030. 

G20 countries have directed nearly USD 300 billion in new funds towards fossil fuel activities since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic — more than they have toward clean energy, which contradicts entirely to the message they have been giving us all along.

According to a leak of tens of thousands of comments by governments, corporations, academics and others on the draft report of the IPCC’s ‘Working Group III’, recently published by Unearthed, fossil fuel producers including Australia, Saudi Arabia and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), are lobbying the IPCC – the world’s leading authority on climate change – to remove or weaken a key conclusion that the world needs to rapidly phase out fossil fuels.

These scandalous and irresponsible actions go on. Australia asks the IPCC to delete analysis explaining how lobbying by fossil fuel companies has weakened action on climate change in Australia and the US. Saudi Arabia repeatedly seeks to have the report’s authors delete references to the need to phase out fossil fuels.

Brazil and Argentina, two of the world’s biggest producers of beef and animal feed crops like soya beans, have also been pressing the IPCC to water down and delete messages about the climate benefits of promoting ‘plant-based’ diets and of curbing meat and dairy consumption. 

There is no slowing down. According to the OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2021-2030, global GHG emissions from agriculture are projected to increase by 4% over the next ten years, with livestock accounting for more than 80% of this increase.

Meat production requires significant use of resources such as land, feed and water and is also a great contributor to climate change. By 2030, 34% of the agricultural production in Latin American and the Caribbean, is projected to be exported.

Brazil, the US and Europe are the three largest meat exporting countries. China is the world’s largest meat importer. According to the Brazilian Meat Exporting Industry Association, between January and July this year, shipments of beef from Brazil to China reached 490,000 tons and generated sales of US$2.5bn, an increase of 8.6 per cent and 13.8 per cent, respectively, compared with the same period last year.

In China, per capita beef consumption is projected to rise a further 8% by 2030, after having risen 35% in the last decade.

Brazil has been the main destination for Chinese investments in South America, having received US$ 66.1 billion, equivalent to 47% of the total invested, in the last decade until 2020.

Between 2007 and 2020, Chinese companies made large investments in Brazil, mainly in the electricity sector, which attracted 48% of the total value, followed by oil extraction, with a 28% share, and mining, with 7%. 

A recently published report, The Lancet Countdown, mentioned that over a 6- month period in 2020, over 51 million people were affected by at least 84 disasters from storms, droughts and floods across the world.

The fact is that there is no going around the subject of climate change. Unless the situation we put ourselves is taken seriously and faced head on with immediate action, all of humanity faces a tragic future, or no future at all.  None of the world leaders, who continuously deny the situation, will be here to tell the story.

Nature has already shown its clear message to the world with extreme weather events like floods, wild fires, volcano eruptions, death and horrific devastation across the world, including in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, across Europe, India, Russia and the US. Turning a blind eye to these events and the certainty of a much worse scenario shows total irresponsibility and disregard to life, to each one of us, as well as to every single living being on this planet.

The world is calling for global leadership on a scale never seen before, at the very time when nations are sadly turning inwardly and political factions are more concerned with domestic rivalry and individual gains. 

Bolsonaro’s Environmental Denialism

Monica Piccinini

6 May 2021

“A man proceeds towards his announced goal of the conquest of nature, he has written a depressing record of destruction, directed not only against the earth he inhabits but against the life that shares it with him”, Rachel Carson in her book “Silent Spring”, first published in 1962.

Since taking office in 2018, Brazil’s President, Jair Bolsonaro, and his environment minister, Ricardo de Aquino Salles, have been crystal clear about their views and objectives on environmental policies in Brazil.  Their words and actions have served to weaken and dismantle structures and mechanisms of the environmental protection laws, as well as cutting resources for the environment.

Bolsonaro’s policies have encouraged miners, land grabbers and illegal ranchers to cut down the forest for national development. Cattle ranching for industrial meat and soya farms have also contributed for the deforestation not only of the Amazon, but also the Cerrado region in central Brazil.

In May 2020, the government transferred responsibility for leading anti-deforestation efforts in the Amazon from environmental agencies to the armed forces, despite their lack of expertise and training.

Under Bolsonaro’s administration, an area of 2.7 million acres of the Amazon forest, seven times the size of London, was lost in a single year. The rainforest has suffered the worst deforestation for 12 years, according the INPE, Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research.

Scientists warn that if 5-8% more of the Amazon is lost to deforestation, it could reach a tipping point, meaning the rainforest will not be able to produce enough rain to sustain itself. Around 17-20% of the Amazon rainforest has already been destroyed.

Bolsonaro called NGOs working in the Amazon, a “cancer”, a group that he “can’t kill”, accusing them, without proof, of the destruction of the rainforest. He also blamed Indigenous people and small farmers for Amazon fires.

This week, a group of 40 UK firms threatened to stop sourcing products from Brazil over land reforms by signing an open letter calling on Brazil’s legislature to reject a bill, which could legitimise the private occupation of public land.

It is worth pointing out that 2 of the signatories in this letter include the firms Pilgrim’s UK and Moy Park. JBS S.A., a Brazilian company and one of the largest meat processing companies in the world, owns 80% of Pilgrim’s Pride. Moy Park is also owned by JBS, a company linked to the destruction of Brazil’s rainforest.

“Supermarkets need to go beyond their sustainability rhetoric by setting strict requirements for their suppliers, banning deforestation, monitoring their suppliers for compliance, and dropping contracts with the worst offenders like JBS,” said Mighty Earth.

The Amazon rainforest and the cerrado regions are not the only ones being threatened by Bolsonaro and his administration. Any institution or individual who opposes to Bolsonaro’s views and policies, have also been subject to intimidation and vicious attacks.

At the Climate Leaders Summit this year, Bolsonaro pledged to work with the Indigenous communities and protect the Amazon, but instead he has being accused of using intimidation tactics towards the indigenous peoples.

A week after the Climate Leaders Summit, two indigenous leaders and activists, Sônia Guajajara and Almir Narayamoga Surui, were both summoned for questioning by the federal police over allegations of defamation of Bolsonaro’s government.

“The persecution of this government is unacceptable and absurd. They will not silence us”, Guajajara said on an April 30 Twitter post.

Brazil’s environment minister, Ricardo Salles, has recently made a statement about rubber tapper leader, Chico Mendes, who was murdered in 1988, saying, “What difference does it make who Chico Mendes is at the moment?” Later on, Salles mentioned that he was unaware of who Chico Mendes was.

Chico Mendes’ initial aim was to protect the “seringueiras”, rubber tappers, in the Amazon region, that were exploited in large-scale projects and expansion of agribusiness in the country. He also helped establish the Worker’s Party (PT) in Brazil.

“Chico Mendes was a worker, activist, social leader, rubber tapper, parliamentarian, politically persecuted, an example of struggle. He gave his life for the environment and was cowardly murdered by the system. Respect Chico Mendes, minister”, wrote a parliamentarian on Twitter.

The agribusiness industry in Brazil is one of the most powerful lobby groups today, made up of the largely land-owning elites, the very ones Chico Mendes was fighting against. This is an example of how dangerous life can be for environmental activists in Brazil, and now more than ever.

Since 2019, many Brazilian scientists have also been under Bolsonaro’s attacks. He accused the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) for lying about data showing increase deforestation in the Amazon and then fired its director, physicist Ricardo Galvão, for defending the data.

According to Science magazine, online harassment appears to have escalated to physical attacks. Biologist Lucas Ferrante, a doctoral candidate at INPA, published articles in high-profile journals (including Science) criticising Bolsonaro’s environmental and health policies, his cellphone and social media accounts lit up with threatening messages.

In November 2020, Ferrante suffered an attack by a man driving an Uber vehicle he had hailed; the man told Ferrante he “needed to shut up” and attacked him with a pointy object. Since then, Ferrante is reluctant to leave his house and carries a cellphone that isn’t linked to his name.

One more concern for environmentalists in Brazil is Bolsonaro’s government’s release of a staggering 1,059 pesticide registrations since January 2019. One third have already been banned in the European Union due to the risks to health and the environment. A quarter of Brazilian municipalities have a mix of 27 pesticides in the water; 51% of the food contains pesticide residues.

Recently, there have been reports of pesticides being launched by plane over children and communities in Brazil in disputes over land. There are growing complaints from rural communities of symptoms of pesticide poisoning, said to originate from pesticide spraying from farmers’ airplanes.  It is said that the farmers want those communities to depart the land. The Brazilian state is not responding to the seriousness of the problem.

Illegal deforestation, destruction of the environment, invasion of indigenous territories, intimidation tactics and violence towards environmental activists, indigenous leaders and scientists, is abhorrent, unacceptable and must be addressed for the sake of Brazil and humanity. 

Global Food Crisis

Monica Piccinini

26 Jan 2021

A radical and collective rethink is required to re-engineer many of humanities core living systems, if we are to sustain our existence on the planet.  With the global population having grown from 6.1 billion to 7.7 billion in 20 years, demand on the world’s resources is at breaking point. 

Two powerful forces are magnifying each other’s effects, creating a hurricane, which will leave devastation in its path.  These forces are not military or subversive in nature, they are basic human instincts; to feed ourselves and our families with healthy nutritious food, and the human desire for easy access to more food, more clothes, more products and more money.

The voracious demand of the worlds growing consumer base is fuelling and incentivising commercial greed, which in turn is feeding the demand within the world’s population.  A tornado that is spinning faster and faster and getting bigger, as our population gets larger and older.

Less scrupulous organisations and individuals knowingly cut corners and standards to deliver more to more, at less and less.  Often camouflaged in the respectable delivery of corporate profit and shareholder value.  This is a race to the bottom, a race in which humanity will lose.

Industrial agriculture is one such villain responsible for degradation of the land, water, and ecosystems, high green house gas emissions, biodiversity loss, hunger and nutrition deficiencies, as well as obesity and diet-related diseases.

The world’s population is set to reach nearly 10 billion by 2050, with huge concern on the need to ensure universal access to healthy food, but at the same time making sure food is produced in a sustainable way. Hunger and malnutrition is a result of the oligopoly control of the agrifood business supply chain. A high percentage of food is often lost along this supply chain before it even reaches the consumer.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation, FAO, an estimated 2 billion people in the world did not have regular access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food in 2019, putting them at greater risk of various forms of malnutrition and poor health. This forecast grew worse early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, with the World Food Programme (2020) warning on 21 April 2020 that the planet was facing a famine of “biblical proportions”.

More than 30 countries in the developing world, the UN agency cautioned, could experience widespread hunger, and 10 of those countries each already have more than 1 million people on the brink of starvation. 

“We are facing acute, interconnected crises – hunger, malnutrition, biodiversity loss, the climate crisis, growing inequality and poverty. What we need are real solutions, not more greenwashing from agribusiness. Real solutions – public regulation for agroecology and Food Sovereignty – require dismantling corporate power, redistributing resources, re-localising food systems and ensuring small scale producers have control. Food is a human right not a commodity”, said Kirtana Chandrasekaran, from Friends of the Earth International.

Countries need to realise the urgent need to support small-scale food producers, such as family farming and agroecology, adopt measures to address food price volatility, better market linkages and shorter supply chain, improving coordination between producers and consumers. Agroecology contributes to reduction of greenhouse emissions and builds farming that is more resilient to climate change.

Family farming represents 90 per cent of all farms globally, and produce 80 per cent of the world’s food in value terms, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation, FAO. Family farmers combined with the practice of agroecology could be key to addressing global food security, as well as the conservation of ecosystems, considering they have full government support through adequate policy, resources, services, programs and regulations and their production methods comply with environmental standards. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations has produced a document, “The 10 Elements of Agroecology”, a guide to transition to sustainable food and agricultural systems, offering a unique approach to meeting significant increases in our food needs of the future.

It is evident the dominance exercised by mega-corporations over food systems. A few corporate food empires control the majority of the food we consume and their practices have caused a serious impact on our health, environment, and farming communities. Their production is carried out on mass scales, based on intensive use of agrochemicals, hormones and antibiotics. They prioritise profit above all else.

These global agribusiness giants not only control the market price farmers get, but also what we eat, not to mention their contribution to poor health, food waste, soil erosion and soil acidification due to the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, wildlife destruction, ground water pollution, disease outbreaks, death, hunger and food insecurity, deforestation and climate change. According to the Climate Land Use Alliance, commercial agriculture drives 71% of tropical deforestation, posing serious risks to our global forests and climate.

On a report of Mighty Earth, more than one million square kilometers of the planet have been cleared of their natural vegetation to grow soy, one of the primary ingredients of animal feed used to raise meat. More than three quarters of the world’s soy is used to feed livestock.

Cargill, Bunge, JBS, ADM – Archer Daniels Midland and Tyson are the World’s largest agribusiness companies. Cargill is a US privately held company, found in 1865 by William Wallace Cargill. It was named the “worse company in the world”, according to an astonishing Mighty Earth Report. The company has been involved in scandals that go from fatal food poisonings, agricultural pollution, deforestation, contamination, to allegations of child enslaved labour. This large corporation still manages to keep a very low profile.

“The people who have been sickened or died from eating contaminated Cargill meat, the child laborers who grow the cocoa Cargill sells for the world’s chocolate, the Midwesterners who drink water polluted by Cargill, the Indigenous People displaced by vast deforestation to make way for Cargill’s animal feed, and the ordinary consumers who’ve paid more to put food on the dinner table because of Cargill’s financial malfeasance — all have felt the impact of this agribusiness giant.” These are the words of former Member of Congress and Chairman of Mighty Earth, Henry A. Waxman.

Cargill, the UK’s largest soybean importer, has been linked to the deforestation of 61,260 hectares of forests in the Brazilian Amazon and the Cerrado since March 2019. Cargill provides chicken to the UK market via Avara, the company’s joint enterprise with Faccenda foods. They supply chicken to Tesco, Nando’s and McDonald’s.

“British consumers have been talking loud and clear – they don’t want to be complicit in destroying Brazil’s precious forests. However, supermarkets are failing to protect them from eating meat fed with forest-destroying soy, ”says Robin Willoughby, director of Mighty Earth UK. “We are urging the CEOs of Tesco PLC, J.Sainsbury’s, ASDA, Morrisons and Aldi UK to take immediate steps to stop the destruction of Brazil and abandon Cargill.”

Brazil’s Cerrado and the Amazon rainforest are not the only regions that have been affected by the exploitation of Cargill. The Gran Chaco region, 110 million hectare ecosystem, spanning Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay, faced burning of their fields to make way to genetically modified soy. Home to communities of Indigenous Peoples, including the Ayoreo, Chamacoco, Enxet, Guarayo, Maka’a, Manjuy, Mocoví, Nandeva, Nivakle, Toba Qom, and Wichi.

Cargill also helped drive destruction of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire’s forests to grow cheap cocoa, buying cocoa grown through the illegal clearing of protected forests and national parks as a standard practice. Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire are the world’s two largest cocoa-producing countries. Many other countries across the world have also been affected by the greedy practices of Cargill.

“The agricultural sectors and livestock farming in particular must shift towards sustainability to enhance their contribution to food security, nutrition and healthy diets and build back better to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic and other challenges”, FAO Director-General QU Dongyu said on September 28, 2020,  in his opening remarks to the 27th session of the Committee on Agriculture (COAG).

Many other factors affect the way our food is grown, such as the use of pesticides, which cause a huge impact on our health, soil, water and animal life. Chemicals considered harmful to our health, and also to the environment, have been sold by the world’s largest agrochemical companies: Bayer, BASF, Syngenta, and Corteva – members of Croplife International lobby group. These chemicals have been linked to increased cancer, liver disease, DNA damage, reproductive failure, endocrine disruption and also groundwater contamination, microbiome disruption, poisoning of birds, mammals, fish and bees. Although in European markets some of these dangerous products have already been banned, European companies can still produce and sell them to regions with lesser regulations. 

Recently, the UK government has allowed farmers to use a poisonous bee-killing pesticide neonicotinoid thiamethoxam on beet crops, a chemical that has already been banned in the EU. Pesticides should be replaced with safer, agro-ecological and other appropriate non-chemical alternatives.

Another great concern is the fact that the largest technology companies, such as Amazon and Microsoft, are now entering the food sector, where we have seen a strong relationship being formed between companies that supply farmers with pesticides, expensive machinery, drones, etc., and those who are in control of food distribution and collecting and storing data.  Farmers are being pushed to use their mobile phone apps, which feeds them with data as well as monitors their every movement. It is worth pointing out that small farmers can’t afford this high tech data gathering technology.

The largest agribusiness companies all have apps that cover millions of hectares of farmland, supplying farmers with information in exchange for a discount on their products. One example is Bayer, the world’s largest pesticide and seed company, where its app is being used in the US, Europe, Canada, Brazil and Argentina. This digital infrastructure is run by platforms developed by tech companies that run cloud services, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS).

The aim is to integrate millions of small farmers into a wide centrally controlled network, making it easier for corporations investing in agribusiness to control and profit by encouraging and forcing them to buy their products. Profit is definitely the main and only purpose of these global technology companies like Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Alibaba, as well as agrochemical corporations, such as Sygenta/Chem China, Basf, Bayer/Monsanto, Corteva, including the involvement of international institutions supporting digital agriculture such as AGRA, CGIAR, FAO and the World Bank.

There is no question that something needs to be done in order to ensure the protection of biodiversity by developing sustainable agricultural practices. By dismantling the power of large agribusiness corporations and reconstructing sustainable agri-food systems, a more reliable, secure and healthy world will be the place where we will be able to live in harmony with the environment, and where it will provide us with our very basic human right: food. We are facing an urgent call from Nature!