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industrial agriculture
'Appalling': US Funded Secret Industry Network Targeting Pesticide Critics
"It's one thing to have an industry come after you after publishing a critical article. This happens all the time in journalism," said writer Michael Pollan, one of those featured in the corporate files. "But to have your own government pay for it is outrageous."
Sep 27, 2024
New reporting published Friday exposes how U.S. taxpayer money was used to fund an elaborate effort by pesticide industry insiders to create detailed dossiers on public critics and environmentalist activists opposed to the widespread pollution created by agrochemical corporations.
The investigation was spearheaded by the nonprofit outlet Lighthouse Reports in collaboration with numerous outlets from around the globe, including The Guardian, Le Monde, The New Lede, ABC News, and the New Humanitarian. It details how outspoken critics of the pesticide paraquat—described as "among the most toxic agricultural chemicals ever produced"—were targeted by an "influence machine that works to suppress opposition to an $78 billion global industry."
While use of paraquat is banned in the European Union, it is still actively sold and applied on fields and farms in much of the world despite the documented harms it produces.
The year-long investigation, according to Lighthouse,
managed to penetrate a PR operation that casts those who raise the alarm, from pesticide critics to environmental scientists or sustainability campaigners, as an anti-science "protest industry," and used U.S. government money to do so.
The U.S.-based PR firm, v-Fluence, built profiles on hundreds of scientists, campaigners and writers, whilst coordinating with government officials, to counter global resistance to pesticides. These profiles are published on a private social network, which grants privileged entry to 1,000 people. The network's membership roster is a who's-who of the agrochemical industry and its friends, featuring executives from some of the world's largest pesticide companies alongside government officials from multiple countries.
These members can access profiles on more than 3,000 organisations and 500 people who have been critical of pesticides or Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). They come from all over the world and include scientists, U.N. human right experts, environmentalists, and journalists. Many of the profiles divulge personal details about the subjects, such as their home addresses and telephone numbers, and spotlight criticisms that disparage their work. Lawyers have told us this goes against data privacy laws in several countries.
The investigative team also released this video on Instagram detailing their findings:
Environmental writer and activist George Monbiot called the revelations "deeply shocking and appalling," and described the story as one which detailed how the U.S. government "funded attacks, denial, and outright lies to protect the pesticides industry from its critics."
The Guardian's reporting details how v-Influence—founded by former Monsanto executive Jay Byrne—received U.S. taxpayer dollars by subcontracting with another group that received a large USAID grant:
Public spending records show the USAID contracted with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a non-governmental organization that manages a government initiative to introduce GM crops in African and Asian nations.
In turn, IFPRI paid v-Fluence a little more than $400,000 from roughly 2013 through 2019 for services that included counteracting critics of "modern agriculture approaches"in Africa and Asia.
v-Fluence was to set up the "private social network portal" that would, among other things, provide "tactical support" for efforts to gain acceptance for the GM crops.
The reporting noted that prominent food writers, including Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman (both of whom have written critically of industrial agriculture), were among those listed in the private network to which industry heavyweights were given invite-only access.
"It's one thing to have an industry come after you after publishing a critical article. This happens all the time in journalism," Pollan told the Guardian. "But to have your own government pay for it is outrageous. These are my tax dollars at work."
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In the Year of Climate Finance, We Need to See Billions Flow Towards Transforming Our Food Systems
A growing coalition of philanthropic organizations, under the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, is committing to scale up funding for agroecological food systems to address intersecting challenges across climate, food and nature.
Jun 23, 2024
This year climate finance is all the talk. As the UN Climate Conference in Bonn wraps up and the stage is set for COP29 later this year, expectations are high for governments to agree on a new climate finance package that will tackle the worsening climate and ecological crises.
In many countries, food production is the climate frontline. Nearly 95% of nationally determined contributions (NDCs) include adaptation and mitigation actions in the agriculture sector yet fail to address the full food system.
It only takes one climate disaster—a drought, flood or heatwave—for entire villages to spiral into debt, poverty and hunger, impacting regional food systems and economies.
Responding to the climate and nature crises, will require a transformation of food systems backed by a rapid redirection of funds to flip agriculture from being part of the problem to offering solutions. Last year, 25 philanthropies—coordinated by the Global Alliance for the Future of Food—called for a tenfold increase in funding towards agroecological and regenerative approaches. Philanthropy, multilateral and bilateral organizations and governments must scale and align funding to catalyze a transition to 50% regenerative and agroecological systems by 2040 and to ensure all agriculture and food systems are transitioning by 2050. Read the full report.
Right now, industrialized food systems account for one-third of greenhouse gas emissions and at least 15% of fossil fuel use. This broken system—the ‘true cost’ of food production—comes at a staggering $12 trillion a year, according to the FAOlast year. It manifests in hefty medical bills and the degradation of our soil, air, water, and biodiversity.
In this decisive decade, the way we grow, consume and package our food cannot be ignored or siloed in an all-hands-on-deck effort to meet our climate and biodiversity goals.
Moving away from a fossil-fuel based food system will not be cheap. It requires unlocking $250-430 billion per year, but this is in fact cheaper— than what is currently spent each year on harmful agricultural subsidies ($635 billion each year) and a fraction of the true cost of current food production.
Right now, investments into agroecology and regenerative approaches by the philanthropic, public, and the private sectors is estimated to be just $44 billion per year.
As representatives of leading philanthropy we are committed to scaling up funding into agroecological and regenerative approaches as a means to leverage existing policies that address the challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss. By embracing agroecology, communities have better control over the food they produce to future-proof their livelihoods and to make decisions to strengthen food sovereignty based on locally-tested solutions and knowledge.
There is a political appetite to make this transition and intergrate agroecological approaches into policy.
For example, the Tanzania government has worked with national civil society organizations to develop a National Ecological Organic Agriculture Strategy and implementation plan. Similar agroecology strategies are being developed in other Eastern African countries, like Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda. Priority actions include making agroecological and bio-inputs available, ensuring avenues for knowledge exchange and skills-sharing among farmers, expanding market access for food producers, mainstreaming village land use planning, fostering investments across the value chain, and supporting coordination, capacity building and governance at all levels.
And they’re not alone. In the Andes, smallholder farmers are stewarding thousands of varieties of native potatoes, preserving their cultural heritage, supporting their livelihoods and providing food for domestic consumption while also growing new markets in collaboration with researchers, civil society experts and other food system actors. Mountains are unique ecosystems, many of which are biodiversity hotspots and home to Indigenous Peoples. Mountain ecosystems are generally forgotten in national and international discussions, but are critical to biodiversity and resilience, especially in the face of climate change. The Andes are also not an island—they are critical for the existence of the Amazon and in turn the Amazon has a dramatic influence on the climate of the Andes, highlighting the interconnectedness that very often is broken by industrial agriculture. Support for Indigenous and agroecological approaches is vital to sustain the important contributions made by smallholder farmers in building thriving and sustainable local and regional food economies.
In this decisive decade, the way we grow, consume and package our food cannot be ignored or siloed in an all-hands-on-deck effort to meet our climate and biodiversity goals. It’s a race against time and we urgently need to see the money—in the tens of billions of dollars—move towards real solutions, particularly where policies are ready to be turned into action.
We are calling on governments, the private sector and other philanthropic partners to join us in this initiative and commit to scaling up their investments so communities, Indigenous Peoples and the health and the future of all living beings and the planet are at the center of our financial decisions.
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Complaint of the Great Salt Lake
I’m down to 900 square miles now; I’ve been told that if things stay this way, I’ll be gone in five years.
Apr 06, 2024
I have a story for you this April about how your tax dollars work. It may not be obvious at the start, but be patient. I need to tell it to you before it’s too late.
In the old days, my waters filled 3,000 square miles, and the streams flowing to me from the Wasatch Mountains kept me full. Along my banks were millions of brine flies that would get into people’s teeth, but the flies fed the birds and the birds fed any creatures willing to hunt them. Though my waters were unfit for people to drink and would pickle any washing in them, there was salt there worth people’s taking. The Shoshone and Ute who visited me took what they needed and otherwise left me alone. It was hard for them to live near me anyway, but we got along. They respected me, and I stayed full.
After a while, the Mormons came, fleeing campaigns of religious cleansing further east. In all his shrewdness, Brigham Young reckoned that no one else would want to settle anywhere near me. You know the rest pretty well. The Mormons were well organized and resourceful enough to build farms along my streams, and they prospered well enough to supply wagon trains going further west to Oregon and California and eventually set up a state. They knew the limits of the land, and for a time, there was no quarrel between the settlers and me.
Once upon a time we got along. No more.
By and by, more settlers arrived. The community grew, and people discovered they could mine my salt and so a commercial industry in salt started. More people came, and industry grew. Motor vehicles followed, with more and more burning of oil and gas. Farmers in the area discovered they could grow high grade alfalfa for export, but that required mechanization and lots of fresh water. As commercial agriculture took more and more water from my streams, the people and I became rivals, and the atmosphere itself began to change.
Utah’s delegation in Congress made sure all this evident prosperity was well supported in Washington. There were plenty of subsidies for the fossil fuels needed to drive this commerce, and for the commerce in armament which grew in size across the nation after 1945. Very few of your lawmakers seemed to mind. The subsidies continued, and the air started to go crazy.
By the 2000s, endless war had begun, and still goes on, along with the Long Drought. There’s less snow in the Wasatch Mountains, and less water in my streams, though no less insistence on it from the alfalfa. Your recent federal effort to rescue the climate, though well-meant, is puny compared to the support your government gives the oil and gas devouring military establishment and the wars it supports in Gaza and Ukraine, where the Earth weeps.
I’m down to 900 square miles now. My waters are less deep. I don’t feel very good, and can’t shake it. I’ve been told that if things stay this way, I’ll be gone in five years. These days, any one of you could count dead birds by the hundreds along my shores, and smell them. The bed on which I now toss and turn has salt in it, but most of it is arsenic-laced toxic dust. When it blows into the air, which it does more and more often, you people breathe it in, especially in the poorest neighborhoods nearest me. Now that the air over Salt Lake City has turned brown, emphysema, Alzheimer’s, and ALS follow. What your leaders call national security makes you sick, and your taxes pay for it, in spite of yourselves.
Once upon a time we got along. No more. Around your country and around the world, you don’t even get along among yourselves, and too many of you have talked yourselves into believing there’s no way out. So much for policy that comes from diseased minds. You sicken, and I die.
Unless you do something about it. I can’t. But you can. No more diseased minds. Wise up. Let Iowa, where the Mormons rested on their way west, grow alfalfa for export. Get free of coal and oil and endless warfare, and maybe the air will be less crazy. Care for one another, because each of you depends on everyone else to meet your needs. Covid-19 should have taught you at least that much.
Even in the Long Drought, there’ll be enough water left in my streams for the rest of your farms, and some for me to drink if you treat my streams with some respect. Once I get well, our quarrels will end. There’ll be no more of my poison dust in the air, and you can take some of my salt for yourselves, just like in the old days. And maybe the Ute and Shoshone will come for a visit.
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