SPECIAL REPORTS AND PROJECTS

Agribusiness and big finance’s dirty alliance is anything but “green”

Published

4 years ago

March 20, 2022

Fishbone deforestation Rondônia, Brazil August 5, 2016

When it comes to big polluters, few companies in the agribusiness sector can compete with the soybean farming giants of Brazil. Their environmental crimes include: land grabs, pesticide pollution and the deforestation of millions of hectares of biodiverse forests.¹ Yet Brazil’s soybean barons have never acted alone. From the time they started bulldozing the Amazon and the Cerrado in the 1980s, they have been heavily financed by foreign pension funds, banks and most of the other captains of global finance.

Brazil’s soybean farming companies continue to depend on this foreign money to keep their chainsaws running, but getting access to it has become more difficult. Brazil’s soybean sector is under increasing international scrutiny, and foreign financial companies have their reputations to worry about. So Brazilian soybean companies and their backers are looking for a solution – one that keeps the money and soybeans flowing, while washing their hands of the environmental and social destruction they generate. This is where the new world of green finance comes in, with its claim to support investments based on environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors.

In January this year, Amaggi, the company perhaps most associated with Brazil’s soybean boom, launched a USD 750 million green bond on international markets to raise money for its purchase of certified soybeans and alternative energy projects.² Amaggi is owned by Blairo Maggi, Brazil’s notorious “King of Soy” and winner of the Global Chainsaw Award. During his time as governor of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso and as the federal Minister of Agriculture, Maggi oversaw and encouraged a huge expansion of soybean production into the biodiverse Cerrado. Maggi famously told the New York Times, “To me, a 40% increase in deforestation doesn’t mean anything at all, and I don’t feel the slightest guilt over what we are doing here.”³

AMAGGI. Photo: World King s

Just prior to Amaggi’s green bond, Brazil’s biggest producer of soybeans, SLC Agrícola, issued its own USD 95 million green bond for what it calls “regenerative agriculture”. SLC’s farms cover 460,000 hectares of land, mainly in the Cerrado,where it has deforested at least 30,000 hectares of native vegetation and where it has been fined several times by Brazil’s federal environmental agency for its activities.⁴

The company says it intends to use the proceeds from its green bond to buy new fuel efficient tractors, “green fertilisers”, and various digital technologies to reduce its carbon footprint.⁵ Despite the company’s dubious track record, the bond buyers will have to trust SLC to calculate its emission reductions and a private company hired by SLC to certify them.⁶ This would be like Shell Oil issuing a “green bond” to buy sails for its oil tankers.

What are green bonds?

Bonds are similar to loans. They are used by companies or governments to raise money for their operations. A company uses a bond to raise a set amount of money from financial investors. The bond will specify the amount of money to be raised; when the money has to be repaid, and the interest that the company has to pay to the bond holders. Normally companies will use bonds to raise money because they can repay the funds over a longer period and at a lower interest rate than a loan from the bank.

Green bonds are supposed to be issued to fund activities with environmental benefits, such as forest recovery and conservation, energy efficiency and renewable energy, sequestration and storage of greenhouse gas emissions, sustainable waste management, or conservation of water resources.

When a company issues a green bond, they must hire a specialised company to certify that the activities funded by the bond meet the standards of the international green bond market and that the proceeds raised are used only for the stated activities. If a company fails to comply, the bond ceases to be a green bond and becomes just a traditional bond, which can generate an increase in interest rates in favour of the bond holder.

Green bonds are part of a larger category of bonds called, thematic bonds. While green bonds fund environmental projects; social bonds finance initiatives with social benefits in the areas of health, education, gender equity, housing, etc. Sustainability bonds, on the other hand, finance projects with mixed environmental and social benefits.

And more recently, issuers that do not have a current project to back, but are committed to some future voluntary sustainable goal, can also issue transitional or sustainability-linked bonds (SLB), which do not require funds to be linked to a specific project, opening the door even further to greenwashing practices.

Big finance, big greenwash

The soy companies in Brazil are not the only culprits.⁷ Across the world, the most notorious players in the expansion of industrial agriculture are turning to “green finance” to raise money. They include oil palm plantation companies, fish farming behemoths, pulp and paper manufacturers, meat and dairy giants, pesticide producers and commodity traders.(See Table 1).

Agribusiness is one of the fastest growing sectors in the global market for so-called thematic financing instruments – green, social or sustainable. The total value of green bonds devoted to agriculture and land, for example, shot up by 59% between 2019-2020.⁸

While the market for “green finance” is still relatively small – accounting for only USD 1.7 trillion out of a total global financial stock of USD 118 trillion – it is growing rapidly (see graph 1). The European Union’s recent EUR 20 billi on “social bond” was over-subscribed by 14 times, meaning it could have raised EUR 233 billion, which would have made it the largest debt sale in the history of the European bloc. In so-called emerging countries, the World Bank estimates that the market for green bonds will reach USD 100 billion within the next three years and USD 10 trillion by 2030.⁹ A big chunk of that is on track to go to agribusiness.

This soaring demand for “green finance” is largely coming from big institutional investors and especially pension funds.¹⁰ In part, they are legitimately worried about investing in dirty industries that are out of step with international and national commitments to reduce greenhouse gases or protect biodiversity. But their deeper interest in green finance is how it can be used to maintain their control over the money supply.

Altering public policies to maximise corporate profit

Big finance is concerned about the growing support for regulations on their investments, as well as for public control over the financing and implementation of the infrastructure and social services required to deal with today’s multiple crises – be it climate change or Covid-19.

Green finance provides a way for financial companies to show that they can be trusted to oversee and administer “green” and “socially responsible” investments, and that laws and regulations that penalise and limit their lending to dirty companies are not needed. It also helps ensure that they are not sidelined by public programmes. Green finance keeps them in control over the flow of money, so they can continue to extract billions of dollars in fees and other charges.

Syngenta CEO J. Erik Fyrwald with Sally Jewel (TNC Global Board Member and also COSTCO Wholesale Board Member) discussing collaborating for more sustainable agriculture at the Bloomberg Sustainable Business Summit.

But the big financial companies want the public to bear the risks for their ventures. Green finance may be promoted by private financial companies but it depends heavily on governments. Only governments can generate demand by implementing laws and policies that force companies to make “green” investments, often in the form of taxes on carbon that are passed on to consumers and that disproportionately penalise the poorest.

Governments also generate demand through public-private partnerships (PPP) in infrastructure, social services and other projects. Financial companies love PPPs because the returns on their investments are guaranteed or “de-risked” by governments.¹¹ For the public, however, PPPs mean that essential public services and infrastructure end up being organised to suit the profit demands of financial companies, rather than the diverse and basic needs of the population.

When it comes to the rapidly evolving “nature-based” side of green finance, governments are needed to commodify or privatise land and natural resources that corporations can use to sell carbon credits and “green” projects to access green finance. The allure of green finance has already enticed some governments overseeing major agribusiness expansion zones to implement land and environmental reforms that facilitate the transformation of land and “environmental services” into financial assets.¹²

This is the case in Colombia where a national programme called the “Investment Zones for Rural, Economic and Social Development” (ZIDREs) aims to allocate 7 million hectares of agricultural land to agribusiness companies.

The Brazilian government recently introduced legislation that simultaneously privatises large swaths of public land and allows agribusiness to issue bonds on financial markets using rural land as collateral. The bonds can be issued in foreign currencies and can be purchased by foreign companies or individuals.

With the creation of investment funds specifically in agro-industrial chains (called Fiagro), foreign capital can buy those agribusiness bonds – that may have land and environmental services as ballast – and have an opportunity to evade restrictions on foreign ownership of Brazilian farmland.¹³A similar system was implemented in Argentina during its debt crisis in the 2000s with profound consequences. Today, 208 investment funds hold 235 thousand hectares of Argentine farmland via the issuance of USD 800 million in agribusiness bonds.¹⁴

In addition to de-risking, much of the actual “finance” in green finance also relies directly on the public sector, not the private. So far, the vast majority of green bonds have been issued by public banks and government-backed entities like the Société du Grand Paris which is responsible for Paris’ public transportation network, and development banks like the World Bank or Germany’s KfW.¹⁵

Governments themselves have been increasingly issuing green bonds. The value of these sovereign green bonds increased by 37% in 2020, with most funds going to finance transportation infrastructure. In October 2020, the European Commission announced it would issue EUR 225 billion of its EUR 750 billion (USD 265.87 billion and USD 886.23 billion respectively) recovery debt in the form of green bonds – more than the total value of all green bonds issued in the world in 2019. ¹⁶

There has also been an exponential increase in so-called “social” bonds issued by multilateral banks and developing country governments to finance Covid-19 measures (known as pandemic bonds).¹⁷ Sovereign sustainability bonds, which have both “green” and “social” aspects, were up by more than 1000% in 2020.

Debt-for-Nature Swaps

Within its new green economic recovery setup, the European Union is contemplating raising taxes on imports that have a high environmental impact. This entails imposing non-tariff barriers to commodities that have not “neutralised emissions” in their countries of origin. This would accelerate the demand for agroindustrial “fixes” by major agricultural commodity producing countries to access green finance and markets.

On the other hand, emerging market countries, in the midst of a severe economic crisis and a dramatic increase in their indebtedness, do not have money to finance this green push in their economies or to pay extra pollution taxes. Green sovereign debt bonds linked to biodiversity and carbon emissions targets are gaining prominence in the debt negotiations of these countries.

The World Bank and the IMF intend to bring a concrete proposal to the United Nations Food Systems Summit (23 September, 2021) for the issuance of green sovereign bonds in order to leverage resources at a time of strong investor demand for environmental assets.

Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay, also intend to take a common stance at the upcoming UNFSS through the Southern Agricultural Council (CAS) on the environmental services provided by agricultural and agroforestry systems in Latin America and the Caribbean which hold half of the world’s forests and biodiversity.

To do so, the countries are working to set a definition for the value and rules for establishing markets for carbon credits and also for other ecosystems services such as water regulation and biodiversity maintenance.¹⁸

The Debt-for-Nature swaps consist in lowering the debt service cost of countries that meet the sustainable goals of the 2030 agenda, either by paying less interest or with carbon or biodiversity credits. According to the Climate Bond Initiative, the issuance of themed sovereign bonds by the end of 2020 soared to USD 97.7 billion, with 22 issuing countries.

Even the purchasing of green bonds could arguably be described as public. The biggest buyers of green bonds are, alongside development banks, institutional investors such as pension funds and asset managers like BlackRock. Most of the funds they manage are workers’ retirement savings – now worth over USD 50 trillion dollars. This is fundamentally people’s money, from which financial companies are making fortunes by extracting fees.

In 2018, the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Europe’s largest investment fund manager, Amundi, launched a USD 2 billion fund to invest in emerging markets’ green bonds.

So far, the buyers have almost entirely been development banks like the IFC, France’s Proparco, the European Investment Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, as well as public pension funds, such as the French public service supplementary pension scheme (ERAFP) and Swedish pension funds Alecta, AP3 and AP4.¹⁹

To a lesser extent, corporations are starting to issue their own thematic bonds, but with more flexible environmental, social and governance criteria. Some of the big corporate green bonds from the past two years include those from the pharmaceutical giants Pfizer (USD 1.3 billion) and Novartis (USD 5.8 billion), one from Alphabet (the holding company for Google), and a US D 1 billion bond￹￹￹ from Amazon to fund generic projects that “advance people and the planet”.²⁰

In 2021, the Kellogg Company became the first processed food corporation to issue a sustainability bond (USD 363 million) to “address the interconnected issues of wellbeing, hunger relief and climate resiliency, including projects where the raw material for your business comes from, land use and natural resources, as water management.”²¹

The key question is what actually constitutes a “green” investment? A dirty company like Amaggi or Shell can raise green funding for some segments of its operations where it may be putting in place alternative energies, while continuing to engage in overall business practices that contribute massively to the climate crisis and other environmental disasters.

Furthermore, the gatekeepers of this flimsy system are not neutral parties, but are largely private companies in Europe, like Sustainalytics, who depend on green bonds to stay afloat.²²

Art by Boy Dominguez

One of the fastest growing instruments of green finance, “sustainability-linked” bonds (SLB) and bank loans, takes these weaknesses to an extreme. These bonds and loans are issued without specifying which projects the proceeds are destined for or what the social and environmental benefits will be.

The corporate issuer is free to allocate the proceeds to any activity with the mere promise of changing its behaviour and reaching voluntary targets at a future date. In general, if the issuer fails to achieve a sustainability target, it has to pay back the debt at a higher rate, meaning that the investors actually benefit when a company fails to reduce the ecological or social damages caused by its operations.

Sustainability-linked bond sales grew from USD 5 billion in 2019 to USD 19 billion in April 2021, attracting big polluters like the Italian energy company Enel, which issued a USD 4 billion SLB, and pension fund managers like APG of the Netherlands, one of the big buyers of Enel’s SLB.²³

APG admits that the flexibility of SLBs make them susceptible to greenwashing, but this didn’t stop it from spending USD 886.23 million on a SLB issued by the British supermarket chain Tesco as part of its pledge to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 60% by 2025.²⁴

The European Central Bank has also included SLBs in its asset purchase programme.²⁵ This is important because, given the sheer size of its green bond offerings, the EU will likely become the standard setter for the “taxonomy” of green finance (i.e. what is and what is not considered “green”).

Beyond its problematic endorsement of SLBs, the EU is also moving to include natural gas and other dirty energy activities within the scope of its green finance programme due to heavy lobbying by corporations and several member states. Meanwhile, as noted by economist Daniela Gabor, “European commitments to develop in parallel a system that works towards penalising dirty lending have evaporated.”²⁶

Even with all this greenwashing, corporations are not carrying out enough “green” activities to absorb the money that big finance has on the table. So the “green” has to be invented, and agribusiness is well-positioned to provide the land and natural resources that can serve as collateral.

Agribusiness to the rescue

The food system accounts for over a third of all global greenhouse gas emissions, and agriculture takes up the largest share of emissions within this sector. Agriculture is also a leading cause of deforestation and land degradation – both of which have major implications for the climate. This means that agriculture is critical to reducing emissions and could help take CO2 out of the atmosphere by restoring it to the soil.

For agribusiness, therefore, there is a huge opportunity to access green finance for operations they claim will reduce their emissions, and to get paid through carbon credits for avoiding deforestation or regenerating soils on their farms or among their suppliers.

Samunnati.

To make this happen, agribusiness companies are working aggressively with corporations from other sectors and corporate-dominated spaces like the Food and Land Use Coalition, the World Economic Forum and The Food Systems Summit to push for so-called “nature-based solutions” with an emphasis on land use and the agricultural sector.²⁷

These”nature-based solutions” are supposed to offset corporate greenhouse gas emissions by planting trees, protecting forests or tweaking industrial farming practices to store carbon in plants and the soil. This year, the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation and The Natural Conservancy launched three reports on “agriculture nature-based solutions“ that maintain that “regenerative agriculture practices” can both reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture to (net) zero and provide a cheap way for other sectors to offset their emissions in line with global 2030 emission reduction targets.²⁸

Nature-based solutions have been widely criticised for distracting from and postponing the real emissions cuts that must be made, and for depending on a massive grab of indigenous peoples’ and peasants’ lands and forests.²⁹ Despite this, the corporate interest in nature-based solutions, regenerative agriculture and other forms of carbon credits and offsets from agriculture continues to grow.

Swiss food giant Nestlé has made “regenerative agriculture” projects a central part of its net-zero plan, with expectations that it will allow the company to offset 13 million tonnes of its greenhouse gas emissions per year by 2030, an amount roughly the size of the total annual greenhouse gas emissions for a small country like Latvia.³⁰

In August 2021, the Japanese conglomerate Mitsubishi bought a 40% stake in Australian Integrated Carbon, which works with Australian farmers to adopt farming practices that sequester carbon in soils to then sell carbon credits to polluting companies like Mitsubishi who want to offset their fossil fuel emissions.³¹ Similarly, the seed and chemical giant Bayer is pursuing a carbon credit business in Brazil and Argentina through a project called PRO Carbono.³²

For agribusiness companies, if they can develop financial instruments – such as green bonds, that enable them to tap into it, the potential pot of money is huge. The UK-based Climate Bonds Initiative claims that Brazil’s agribusiness sector alone could raise upwards of USD 135 billion by 2030 through green bonds linked to sustainable agricultural practices.³³

Climate Bonds Initiative certified its first Brazilian agribusiness green bond in 2020 to a company called Rizoma Agro that focuses on converting large-scale grain farms in the Cerrado to “regenerative” practices that rebuild carbon in soils.³⁴

Bunge and Syngenta also received green bank loans for projects in the biodiverse Cerrado area, in this case to expand soybean plantations over pasture areas instead of forested areas³⁵. These “regenerative agriculture” projects will produce certified “deforestation-free” soybeans, even though the conversion of pasture lands to soybeans in the Cerrado is known to displace cattle production into the Amazon rainforest and to cause numerous other environmental damages³⁶.

Meanwhile, in 2019, Marfrig, a major Brazilian beef producer and one of the worst climate polluters in the agribusiness sector that was exposed last year for purchasing cattle from illegally deforested areas of the Amazon, issued a USD 500 million SLB to finance the implementation of a “deforestation-free” tracking system for cattle it purchases from the Amazon biome!³⁷

Even the financial companies that bought up huge swaths of farmland in Brazil and other parts of the world over the past decade are now investigating ways to generate carbon credits from their operations and to attract investment from pension funds and other institutional investors by marketing farmland as a green investment play.³⁸

Canada’s Caisse de Dépot et Placement pension fund, one of the world’s most important buyers of green debt and a major investor in farmland in Brazil’s Cerrado, issued its own USD 1 billion green bond in May 2021. It intends to use part of the proceeds to buy more farmland.³⁹

Digital agriculture companies also stand to win big from green finance. The early batch of green finance instruments indicates that many of the proceeds will be used to fund the adoption of digital technologies in agriculture under the assumption that these can create efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Moreover, carbon credit and green bond-funded projects require the adoption of digital technologies for monitoring and certification. This is the case with a project in the Southern Cone of Latin America that Cargill, the world’s largest agribusiness company, is financing through a USD 30 million investment in a Land Innovation Fund.⁴⁰

The project measures, tracks and provides a continuous digital record of the soil emissions produced by soybean farmers supplying Cargill.

All of this clearly adds up to more corporate and financial control; it is a lot harder to see how it will make things greener.

Turning off the money supply for corporate agriculture

Investment in the expansion of agribusiness can never be “green”. Nor does it seem possible for big finance to invest in anything other than agribusiness when it comes to agriculture. Both depend on the financialisation of nature and the relentless dispossession of people’s control over their lands, forests, waters and biodiversity. Under global finance’s new green architecture, the formula remains the same: capture public goods and spending to maximise profits for a select group of investors, while providing large polluting corporations with access to a new source of “green” money to maintain business as usual. The only difference this time is that “nature” is being used directly for the issuance of debt.

Whether it is called “green” or “socially responsible”, nothing good can come out of the marriage of big finance and corporate agribusiness. Food sovereignty – the only viable solution for climate justice – will not be financed by Wall Street or the City of London, nor will it be constructed by Cargill and Bayer. It can only be built when people take back control over their lands, seeds, knowledge, and the money supply too.

Green finance ventures by agribusiness

Company	Green finance mechanism	Notes
SLC Agricola	Green bond worth USD 94 million issued in 2020. It was raised in green agribusiness bonds (Agribusiness Receivables Certificates) to be applied in digital and low Carbon Farming Practices, Integrated Systems (Crop-Livestock) in its 460 thousand hectares of soy, maize and cotton monoculture plantations. The green bond was issued through Bradesco bbi, Itaú and Santander banks.	The second party opinion (SPO), Resultante, listed in its report several passages linking SLC Agricola with environmental crimes and land grabbing. Although it was approved, the issuance of the green bond was validated with the recommendation of not allocating the funds to those questionable areas.
Amaggi	Sustainability bond worth USD 750 million in 2021 to be applied to its 170 thousand hectares in a mix of environment projects such as renewable energy and land use, as well as in socio-economic activities as job creation. The bond was coordinated by BNP Paribas, Bradesco Securities, Inc., Citigroup Global Markets, Inc., Itaú BBA USA Securities, Inc., JP Morgan Chase & Co., Rabobank and Santander Investment.	Amaggi group is the largest exporter of soybean from Brazil and is a major buyer of soybean from known deforesters like SLC Agrícola and BrasilAgro, and has not yet agreedto a 2020 cut-off date for land clearing in the Cerrado region .
AgriNurture Inc.	Green bond of EUR 75 million (USD 89 million). to be issued in Europe in 2021. Proceeds will be used for various activities including reducing greenhouse gas emissions and expanding its farming operations.	AgriNurture Inc. is a company based in the Philippines that received early backing from Cargill’s hedge fund Black River and the Far Eastern Agricultural Investment Company of Saudi Arabia. It has become one of the largest farming companies and agricultural exporters in the country through the development of large-scale farms and plantations, most recently for maize in Mindanao.
Olam International	Olam has secured three “green” loan facilities since 2018 from different consortiums of banks: a sustainability-linked loan of USD 500 million in 2018, a USD 525 million sustainability-linked revolving credit facility in 2019 and a USD 525 million sustainability loan in 2020– all to be used for general spending but with an interest margin dependent on Olam’s ability to meet various targets. In 2019 it launched the world’s first “digital loan” of USD 350 million.	Olam is an Indian non-resident company based in Singapore. It is one of the world’s largest commodity traders and has invested heavily in farming operations and contract farming schemes, particularly in Africa and Latin America. It is part-owned by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek and Japan’s Mitsubishi. It claims to have 2.4 million hectares under direct management, including a controversial 144,000 hectare oil palm plantation concession in Gabon.
COFCO	Sustainability-linked loan with 20 banks, worth USD 2.3 billion in 2019. ING, BBVA and Rabobank acted as sustainability coordinators. ABN AMRO has acted as coordinator and facility agent.	It was the largest loan by an agricultural trader. The loan is linked to a general year-on-year improvement target of ESG performance, assessed by SPO Sustainalytics and increasing its traceability of Brazilian agri-commodities. In late 2020, the World Bank’s International Financing Corporation (IFC) began subsidising the traceability of the direct suppliers of soybean in Matopiba, in the Cerrado region (Brazil).
Samunnati	In July 2021, Samunnati issued a USD 4.6 million agricultural green bond via the market platform Symbiotics. The proceeds are to be “fully allocated towards climate smart agriculture.”	Samunnati is an Indian micro-credit lender for farmers and agribusiness. Its investors include the US pension fund TIAA and the US government’s International Development Finance Corporation.
Bunge S.A	A ten-year loan of USD 50 million to soybean suppliers in Cerrado to support a deforestation-free target. This is Santander Bank and The Nature Conservancy (“TNC”) financial mechanism that is not formally considered as green finance, but that links the expansion of soy to a “compliance with environmental law” in Brazil.	The Responsible Commodities Facility (RCF) and the Soft Commodities Forum Platform, bring together giant agribusiness traders (ABCD, Cofco, Viterra -ex Glencore Agriculture) to issue new “green” agribusiness debt instruments for the expansion of soybean plantations over pasture areas.
Cargill	Land Innovation Fund, created with Cargill’s USD 30 million to support the expansion of soybean over degraded pasture areas in Argentina and Paraguay’s Cerrado and Grand Chaco. The fund is incorporating the suppliers into a traceability chain for measuring soil carbon emissions. T he Bank of Cargill is increasing its use of agribusiness bonds to fund soybean suppliers, with a rise of 30% in 2020 in Agribusiness Letters of Credit. The company is part of the Brazilian Initiative for Green Finance to support the emission of green bonds in agriculture.	Cargill is perhaps the soybean trader most linked to deforestation and fires in their supply chain. In 2019, Nestlé stopped sourcing all of its purchases of Brazilian soy from Cargill with the trader not being able to trace soybeans from its suppliers. In 2020, Norwegian Grieg Seafood did not allow any funds from its Green Bond worth U SD 103 million to be used to purchase feed supply from Cargill until the company had significantly reduced itsrisk of soybean-related deforestation in Brazil.
Mafrig	Onesustainable transition bond worth USD 500 million issued in 2019 through BNP Paribas, ING and Santander, to purchase deforestation-free cattle from direct suppliers in Amazonia. Onesust aina bility-linked loan worth USD 30 million in 2021 as part of green financing to support Mafrig’s transition to a no-deforestation requirement across its entire chain.	The first labelled “transition bond” issued in the world, after the green bonds held by one of the world’s biggest beef producers were refused by investors. The bond was re-labelled to support high-emitting companies that do not fit green bonds requirements to clean up their supply chain. Only two other transition bonds of this kind were issued in 2020 due to the lack of reliability.
Rizoma Agro	Green bond worth USD 5 million issued as a green agribusiness bond (Agribusiness Receivables Certificates) to support the expansion of regenerative and organic agriculture production in its 1200 hectares located in São Paulo, Brazil. It was structured by the financial consultancy Ecoagro.	The first certified agriculture green bond issued in the world, according to the new CBI principles for the agriculture sector. According to Rizoma’s founding partner, Pedro Paulo Diniz, regenerative agriculture has the potential to offset “more than 100% of human carbon emissions” and often “has more biodiversity than a native forest”.
Ventisqueros	Chilean salmon farmer Ventisqueros announced at the end of 2020 that it had landed a USD 120 million green loan from banks Rabobank and DNB. The proceeds will fund the expansion of production from the current 40,000 metric tonnes to 60,000 metric tonnes.	In 2019, there was a massive escape of salmon from one of Ventisqueros’ farms in Chiloé leading to a complaint from the National Fisheries and Aquaculture Service (Sernapesca) before the Superintendency of the Environment and in court. The company has also refused to comply with a sentence issued by the Council for Transparency ordering them to provide Oceana with data on their use of antibiotics in 2015, 2016 and 2017.
Mowi	Mowi completed a USD 165 million green bond in 2020, the first green bond issued by a seafood company. The proceeds will be used for green projects as defined by Mowi’s green bond framework.	Norway-based Mowi is the world’s largest aquaculture company and largest salmon producer. It is notorious for the aggressive tactics it deploys against critics and for the damage it has caused to the environment, particularly to wild salmon stocks.
Syngenta	Long-term loan for the recovery of degraded pasture areas by soybean planting via the Reverte programme, led by Syngenta in partnership with TNC and Itaú bank. Although not formally a “green loan”, the Itaú bank already reserved USD 86 million to “restore” 30 thousands hectares in Cerrado with soybean and other inputs provided by Syngenta.	The Reverte programme announced by Syngenta aims to “restore” 1 million hectares by 2025. In addition to using green finance to sell inputs and the obligation to use the traceability system, the Syngenta Group traded the seeds in exchange for the soybean harvest (barter operation) and operated the export of the company’s first cargo ship of soybeans from Brazil to China.
FS B ioenergia (joint venture between the American Summit Agricultural Group and Tapajós P articipações holding company controlled by the Chinese group Dakang)	Three Green bonds totalling U SD 639 million in 2020 and 2021 coordinated by Morgan Stanley to produce ethanol from maize and produce 100% renewable energy. One sustainability-linked bond worth USD 26 million with Credit Suisse Bank and one sustainability-￹linked loan of USD 33 million in 2020 with Santander bank, conditioned to: reducing the carbon footprint; improving the traceability of suppliers, and disclosure and transparency in its annual reports.	This was the first green agribusiness bond for the bioenergy sector, called Agribusiness Receivable Certificates (CRA). The company produced 100% of ethanol for maize. The bioenergy sector, along with the forestry sector, is one of the biggest issuers of green and sustainability bonds.
Suzano S.A.	Four Green bonds since 2016 totalling USD 1.6 billion for pulp and paper industrial forestry. The offering was coordinated by J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, BNP, Crédit Agricole, MUFG, Santander, Rabobank, SMBC Nikko, Scotiabank and Mizuho. Two sustainability-linked bonds (SLB) totalling USD 1.2 billion in 2020 and another U SD 1 billion SLB issued in June 2021, through BNP Paribas, BofA, J.P. Morgan, Mizuho, Rabo Securities and Scotiabank. Onesustainability-linked loan worth USD 1.6 billion in January 2021 operated by BNP Paribas. Both SL bonds and loans are linked to reducing the company’s direct emissions and water consumption across all its operations and purchases (scopes 1 and 2) and also have an “inclusion” target to have woman in leadership positions.	Suzano was the first issuer of green bonds and sustainability-linked bonds in Brazil and has 37% of its debts tied to green finance. Suzano S.A has more than 1 million hectares of industrial pine and eucalyptus monoculture plantations in Brazil and is historically linked to a series of human rights violations against local communities and the labour rights of its workers.
Tropical Landscapes Financing Facility (TLFF)	Sustainability bond worth USD 95 million issued in 2018 by the USAID initiative Tropical Landscapes Financing Facility (TLFF) through BNP Paribas in partnership with WWF. The bond was issued to fund 88 thousand hectares of rubber plantation for PT Royal Lestari Utama (RLU), an Indonesian joint venture between France’s Michelin and Indonesia’s Barito Pacific Group.	Asia’s first sustainability debt instrumentand part of the Memorandum of Understanding between UN Environment and BNP Paribas that was signed at the One Planet Summit in Paris in December 2017. The target is to reach USD 10 billion of innovative sustainable finance by 2025 for projects that support sustainable agriculture and forestry in ways that help solve the climate crisis.

1 Claire Acher, “Brazil soy trade linked to widespread deforestation, carbon emissions”, Mongabay, 3 April, 2019. https://news.mongabay.com/2019/04/brazil-soy-trade-linked-to-widespread-deforestation-carbon-emissions/

2 Ana Mano, “UPDATE 1-Brazil’s Amaggi soybean producer prices $750m green bond –CFO”, Reuters, January, 2021.

.https://www.reuters.com/article/amaggi-bond-idUSL1N2JW2MY ; https://chainreactionresearch.com/the-chain-amaggis-new-green-bond-prompts-questions-on-deforestation-commitment/

3 Jenny Gonzales, “Soy King Blairo Maggi wields power over Amazon’s fate, say critics”, Mongabay, 13 July 2017. https://news.mongabay.com/2017/07/soy-king-blairo-maggi-wields-power-over-amazons-fate-say-critics/

4 Caio de Freitas Paes, “Trader Cargill, pension fund TIAA linked to land grabs in Brazil’s Cerrado”, 3 February 2021. https://news.mongabay.com/2021/02/trader-cargill-pension-fund-tiaa-linked-to-land-grabs-in-brazils-cerrado/; Global Witness, “Razing the stakes”, 6 May 2020. https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/forests/razing-stakes/

5 Available at: https://isecbrasilsiteblob.blob.core.windows.net/ri-files/EMISS%C3%95ES/ISEC/CRA/EMISSAO%2020%20SERIE%2001/RESULTANTE_SLC_Relat%C3%B3rio%20Final_CRA%20Verde_24112020_v.2.pdf.

6 Resultante, “Second Opnion. Relatório Final”, CRA verde. 24 November 2020. Accessed August 2021.https://isecbrasilsiteblob.blob.core.windows.net/ri-files/EMISS%C3%95ES/ISEC/CRA/EMISSAO%2020%20SERIE%2001/RESULTANTE_SLC_Relat%C3%B3rio%20Final_CRA%20Verde_24112020_v.2.pdf. See also: https://www.slcagricola.com.br/ra2020/en/pdf/slc_ra_2020_1.pdf

7 To see the Brazilian private companies that have issued thematic bonds access the database of Sitawi specialized consultancy (SPO) seehttps://www.sitawi.net/noticias/sitawi-lanca-primeiro-banco-de-dados-de-titulos-verdes-no-brasil/. See also Climate Bond Initiative: “Agriculture sustainable finance state of the market: Brazil briefing paper 2021”.https://www.climatebonds.net/files/reports/cbi-brazil-agri-sotm-eng.pdf

8 Climate Bond Initiative (CBI), “Sustainable Debt. Global state of the market 2020”, p.9. https://www.climatebonds.net/files/reports/cbi_sd_sotm_2020_04d.pdf . The updated green bond market data is mostly based in CBI data, the only global certifier of green bonds.

9 Amundi Asset management; International Finance Corporation (IFC) World Bank Group, “Emerging Market Green Bonds Report 2020”, Spring 2021. Emerging Market Green Bonds Report 2020 (ifc.org)

10 To see all investors that have signed public statements and participated in the green bond market see:https://www.climatebonds.net/get-involved/investor-statement

11 Daniela Gabor, “Private finance won’t decarbonise our economies – but the ‘big green state’ can”, The Guardian, 4 June 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/04/private-finance-decarbonise-economies-green-state

12 GRAIN, “Digital Fences: Financial enclosure of agricultural land in South America”, 22 September 2020.https://grain.org/e/6531

13 The new private finance vehicle,Fiagros, is based on the Brazilian Securities Commission’s Resolution No. 39/2. Besides changes to the land law (Law 13.465/17), the rural credit instruments (Law 13.986/2020), and the agribusiness bonds (Law 14.130/2021), the legislature also approved a payments for environmental services law (14.119/2021) that includes carbon credits, environmental reserve quotas and green bonds.

14 GRAIN, “Digital Fences”, 2020. See the complete cases in the Annex available in Portuguese and Spanish:https://grain.org/system/attachments/sources/000/006/141/original/PT_zonas_de_expans-o_e_investimento_na_Am-rica_do_Sul_PDF_18_09.pdf

15 See Climate Bonds Initiative (CBI). 2020. Op cit. p. 7. Development Banks have issued 68% of the total sustainability bonds, worth USD 108 billion. The World Bank, through the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, has been the largest issuer of these bonds totalling USD 81 billion in 2020, tripling its investments compared to 2019. It also provides technical assistance to other issuers, particularly in the process of issuing green, social, or sustainability (GSS) sovereign bonds by developing countries, in CDI. 2020. Op.cit. p.12

16 Mehreen Khan. “Is Brussels green bond washing?”, Financial Times, 19 October 2020. https://www.ft.com/content/38130bf9-2bcc-494e-9b71-889d517edc7a

17 China tops the list of the largest issuers of these social bonds, raising USD 68 billion, mainly in pandemic bond. CBI.2020. op.cit. p.14.

18 Javier Lewkowicz, “Argentina pushes for a debt-for-nature swap”, Diálogo Chino, June 15, 2021.

https://dialogochino.net/es/clima-y-energia-es/43781-argentina-apuesta-a-un-canje-verde-de-su-deuda-soberana/

19 “Green bond fund of the year, Initiative of the year: Amundi and IFC’s Emerging Green One”, Green Finance, 2 April 2019: https://www.environmental-finance.com/content/awards/green-social-and-sustainability-bond-awards-2019/winners/green-bond-fund-of-the-year-initiative-of-the-year-amundi-and-ifcs-emerging-green-one.html; Rachel Fixsen, “Alecta, ERAFP among backers of $1.4bn EM green bond fund,” IPE Magazine: 19 March 2018: https://www.ipe.com/alecta-erafp-among-backers-of-14bn-em-green-bond-fund/10023735.article; “Amundi’s one-year-old green bond fund ‘ahead of schedule’,” Environmental Finance, 4 March 2019: https://www.environmental-finance.com/content/analysis/amundis-one-year-old-green-bond-fund-ahead-of-schedule.html

20 Climate Bond Initiative (CBI), 2020. op.cit. p. 11. Other corporations issuing green bonds in 2020 include Volkswagen (USD 2.3 billion) Daimler AG (USD 1.1 billion) and Volvo (USD 588 million). p.6. See also Environmental Finance. Sustainable Bonds insight 2021. https://www.environmental-finance.com/assets/files/research/sustainable-bonds-insight-2021.pdf

21 Mich Battle Creek,“Kellogg Company Announces Pricing of its Inaugural Sustainability Bond”, Kellogg’s, May 11 2021. https://newsroom.kelloggcompany.com/2021-05-11-Kellogg-Company-Announces-Pricing-of-its-Inaugural-Sustainability-Bond

22 These external specialised agents, as Second Part Opinion (SPOs) or certification agencies, follow parameters also created by private specialised agencies and adopted by the international green bond market as the International Capital Market Association (ICMA) – responsible for elaborating the Principles of Green Bonds, Social Bonds, and the Guidelines for Sustainable Bonds; the World Bank; the International Finance Corporation (IFC); and the Climate Bonds Initiative (CBI).

23 Xuan Sheng Ou Young. “Why investor appetite for sustainability-linked bonds is growing”, BNP Paribas Asset Management Blog, 22 July 2021.https://investors-corner.bnpparibas-am.com/investing/why-investor-appetite-for-sustainability-linked-bonds-is-growing/

24 APG. “Sustainability bonds: new opportunities, but avoid greenwashing”, 9 July 2021. https://apg.nl/en/publication/sustainability-linked-bonds-new-opportunities-but-avoid-greenwashing/

25 Stephen M. Liberatore, “Sustainability-linked bonds do not fit our impact framework”, Nuveen, A TIAA company 2021. https://www.nuveen.com/global/insights/income-generation/sustainability-linked-bonds-do-not-fit-our-impact-framework

26 Daniela Gabor, “Private finance won’t decarbonise our economies – but the ‘big green state’ can”, The Guardian, 4 June2021: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/04/private-finance-decarbonise-economies-green-state

27 For more on FOLU and the agribusiness greenwashing lobby promoting “nature-based solutions” see, GRAIN, “Corporate greenwashing: “net zero” and “nature-based solutions” are a deadly fraud”, 17 March 2021: https://grain.org/en/article/6634-corporate-greenwashing-net-zero-and-nature-based-solutions-are-a-deadly-fraud

28 The FAO/TNC reports are here: http://www.fao.org/land-water/overview/integrated-landscape-management/nature-based-solutions/en/. There is no international definition or criteria on “regenerative agriculture” but the examples in the reports highlight a mix of traditional and industrial practices such as no-till farming, crop rotation, precision agriculture technologies and gene editing for the production of biofertilisers and microorganisms. For FOLU’s perspective on the concept, see: “Growing Better. Ten Critical Transitions to Transform Food and Land Use”, 2019, especially “Critical Transition 2. Scaling productive and regenerative agriculture”, https://www.foodandlandusecoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/FOLU-GrowingBetter-GlobalReport-ExecutiveSummary.pdf. For the World Economic Forum’s view see: “The Future of Nature and business”, 2020. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_The_Future_Of_Nature_And_Business_2020.pdf

29 See for example, Corporate Accountability, Global Forest Coalition, Friends of the Earth International, “The Big Con: How Big Polluters are advancing a “net zero” climate agenda to delay, deceive, and deny”, June 2021: https://www.corporateaccountability.org/resources/the-big-con-net-zero/

30 GRAIN, “Corporate greenwashing: “net zero” and “nature-based solutions” are a deadly fraud”, 17 March 2021: https://grain.org/en/article/6634-corporate-greenwashing-net-zero-and-nature-based-solutions-are-a-deadly-fraud

31 Andrew Marshall, “Mitsubishi and AIC team up for carbon farming credits”, The Land, 4 August 2021: https://www.theland.com.au/story/7370631/mitsubishi-buys-into-carbon-farming-with-aic-partnership/?src=rss

32 “Bayer lança programa no Brasil para captura de carbono na agricultura”, Reuters, 27 May 2021. https://www.reuters.com/article/commods-bayer-carbono-idBRKCN2D82T8-OBRBS and “Bayer anuncia el lanzamiento de la primera fase de la iniciativa Carbono en la Argentina”, Bayer, 22 July 2021. https://www.conosur.bayer.com/es/bayer-lanza-la-iniciativa-de-carbono-en-argentina

33 “Título verde pode injetar R$ 700 bilhões na agricultura brasileira até 2030”, Nova Cana, 7 January 2021. https://www.novacana.com/n/industria/financeiro/titulo-verde-injetar-r-700-bilhoes-agricultura-brasileira-2030-070120

34 “Ecoagro and Rizoma Agro announce the world’s first Green Bond Certified under the Climate Bonds Standard for Agriculture”, CBI, 2 September 2020. https://www.climatebonds.net/resources/press-releases/2020/09/ecoagro-and-rizoma-agro-announce-worlds-first-green-bond-certified

35 About Green finance and green bonds by agribusiness in Brazil see: Grupo Carta de Belém. “Mapeamento das distintas iniciativas sobre recuperação econômica e retomada verde”. December 2021. Especially Gabriela de Oliveira Junqueira. Relatório Final. Eixo 1 e Junior Aleixo. Relatório Final, Eixo 2. An executive report will be published by the end of 2021.

36 From 2000 to 2014, more than 80% of soybean expansion in the Cerrado took place over areas of pasture and other crops, driving the advance of cattle ranching into the Amazon forest, particularly in northern Mato Grosso and southern Pará states in Diana Aguiar and Maurício Torres. “Deforestation as an instrument of land grabbing: enclosures along the expansion of the agricultural frontier in Brazil”, Agro é Fogo,

. 2021: https://agroefogo.org.br/a-boiada-esta-passando-desmatar-para-grilar/

37 Jasper Cox, “Brazil bonds make green investors look ridiculous,” Global Capital, 27 August 2019: https://www.globalcapital.com/article/28mtxz67sok79sit5mosg/tuesday-view/brazil-bonds-make-green-investors-look-ridiculous; “Brazil beef giants linked to illegal Amazon deforestation”, Mongabay, 11 December 2020: https://news.mongabay.com/2020/12/brazil-beef-giants-linked-to-illegal-amazon-deforestation/; and for information on Marfrig’s GHG emissions see GRAIN and IATP, “Emissions impossible: How big meat and dairy are heating up the planet”, July 2018: https://grain.org/e/5976

38 GRAIN, “The global farmland grab goes green”, 10 May 2021: https://grain.org/e/6667

39 Elisabeth Jeffies, “Hard reality: Why Canada’s pensions are blazing a trail in green bond issuance”, Capital Monitor, 15 July 2021. https://capitalmonitor.ai/institution/asset-owners/canadas-pensions-are-world-leaders-in-green-bond-issuance/ ; https://www.cdpq.com/sites/default/files/medias/pdf/en/CDPQ_GreenBond_Framework_SPO2021.pdf

40 Land Innovation Fund. https://www.landinnovation.fund/.

SPECIAL REPORTS AND PROJECTS

Top 10 agribusiness giants: corporate concentration in food & farming in 2025

Published

2 months ago

August 28, 2025

witnessradio.org

ETC Group’s 2022 publication “Food Barons” exposed the increasing concentration of corporate power in the industrial food system.¹ It documented the rise of mergers and acquisitions, the increasing influence of finance capital, and the penetration of digitalisation and other disruptive technologies across corporate supply chains.²

During the Covid pandemic and the subsequent outbreak of war in Ukraine, these corporations showed how, during times of global shocks or crises, they could use their monopoly power to make obscene profits, with huge impacts on people the world over.³

Three years later, war persists in Ukraine and new wars and genocides are raging in Palestine, Sudan and the DR Congo. The US is pursuing a global trade war, global temperatures are smashing record highs, and diseases with pandemic potential (like bird flu) are still a cause of major disruptions.⁴ The situation is as volatile as ever and, yet, corporate concentration in the food system has only continued unabated.⁵

In this report, we examine the state of corporate concentration in six sectors critical to agriculture: commercial seeds, pesticides, synthetic fertilisers, farm machinery, animal pharmaceuticals and livestock genetics. Corporate consolidation has increased in most of these sectors and four of them– seeds, pesticides, agricultural machinery and animal pharmaceuticals– meet the definition of an oligopoly, in which four companies control more than 40% of a market.⁶ Concentration can be even higher at the national level, as is the case with synthetic fertilisers. In livestock genetics, where publicly available information is scarce, we focus on poultry – the largest sector within the meat industry – and its extreme and long-standing levels of corporate concentration.

This report also highlights corporate investment in new technologies, like digital platforms, artificial intelligence (AI) and gene editing, which are likely to deepen corporate power in the food system. It also looks at how they are buying up smaller companies in newly relevant sectors, and forging alliances with Big Tech companies and other corporations in the food sector to expand their dominance from seeds to supermarkets.⁷

Concentration gives corporations more power to dictate prices and lobby policy makers. They can use this power to disrupt scientific research, block regulations that protect people’s health and the environment, and undermine democratic participation in the shaping of food systems.⁸ Concentration increases their ability to crush alternatives and ensure the expansion of a model of agriculture that is immensely profitable for them while being hugely destructive for people and the planet. The industrial food system is responsible for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions and it is the leading source of soil and water pollution and biodiversity loss.⁹ It destroys local food systems and economies, displaces peasants and indigenous peoples from their territories and forces them to migrate far from their homes. It is also built on the severe exploitation of workers.¹⁰

Actions are urgently needed to take down the monopoly power of these corporations and to get power back into the hands of the world’s food producers, workers and consumers.

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Commercial seeds and pesticides¹¹

The commercial seed sector refers to crop seeds (primarily proprietary field crop and vegetable seeds) sold via the commercial market and genetically modified crop traits. Farmer-saved seed and seed supplied by governments and public institutions are not included.

The pesticides sector includes herbicides, insecticides and fungicides which are different types of agrochemical products that target weeds, insects and fungi, respectively.

The slate of top companies in commercial seeds and pesticides are unchanged from 2022: BASF, Bayer, Corteva and Syngenta.¹² They control 56% of the global seeds market (Bayer alone accounts for 23% of it), and 61% of the pesticides market (see Tables 1 and 2).

Compared to 2020, the revenues of these companies have increased significantly. But for Bayer all is not as well as it seems. Battered by an 80% decline in its share price since acquiring Monsanto in 2018, it initiated a restructuring in 2023, laying off about 7,000 employees to cut costs.¹³ Bayer’s financial problems are a result of multiple failures in court where juries have agreed with plaintiffs arguing that the company’s Roundup herbicide caused their cancers. It settled many claims in 2020 through a US$10.9 billion payout, but some 58,000 claims are pending.¹⁴ In April 2025, it was reported that Bayer might stop manufacturing glyphosate if it does not obtain court protection in the US against these lawsuits.¹⁵

The seed corporations continue their focus on genetically modified crops, and have introduced some new varieties, such as Bayer’s shorter “smart” GM maize and BASF’s GM soybeans resistant to soybean cyst nematodes.¹⁶ They are also increasingly integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into their plant breeding. For example, Syngenta has a partnership with InstaDeep, a UK based company now acquired by the German biotechnology company BioNTech. The aim is to use AI technology to “learn the language of plant DNA” and make predictions on how different genetic sequences perform and how to alter their performance.¹⁷ Bayer claims that using AI to analyse genomic data has shortened breeding cycles from 5-6 years to only 4 months.¹⁸

Table 1. Top 9 corporations in the commercial seeds sector

Ranking	Company (Headquarters)	Sales in 2023 (US$ millions)	% Global market share ¹⁹
1	Bayer (Germany)²⁰	11,613	23
2	Corteva (US)²¹	9,472	19
3	Syngenta (China/Switzerland)²²	4,751	10
4	BASF (Germany)²³	2,122	4
	Total top 4	27,958	56
5	Vilmorin & Cie (Groupe Limagrain) (France)²⁴	1,984	4
6	KWS (Germany)²⁵	1,815	4
7	DLF Seeds (Denmark)²⁶	838	2
8	Sakata Seeds (Japan)²⁷	649	1
9	Kaneko Seeds (Japan)²⁸	451	0.9
	Total top 9	33,695	67
	Total world market²⁹	50,000	100%

Another rapidly growing area of investment is biological pesticides and fertilisers.³⁰ Biologicals (or bioinputs) describe a range of products derived from biological processes (as opposed to chemical synthesis), such as pesticides sprayed on crops or stimulants applied to soils to increase plant growth. But there is no standard definition, and regulations of these products are lax.³¹ According to industry estimates, the biologicals market is expected to grow to nearly US$22 billion by 2032, with an estimate of 1,200 companies engaged in the sector.³² All of the top pesticide companies are now heavily investing in it in order to ensure their dominance. Corteva, for example, recently bought up two biological manufacturers, Stoller and Symborg, while Syngenta signed a partnership with a Belgian startup to develop biostimulants.³³ Biologicals’ sales by Bayer amounted to US$214 million in 2022, while in 2023, Corteva reported US$420 million in sales and Syngenta US$400 million.³⁴

The top pesticide companies clearly state that their biological products are not meant to replace “traditional crop protection products” but, rather, to be used alongside them. Moreover, while the companies describe their biologicals as “natural products”, this can be misleading because the label is ambiguous and these products raise biosafety issues and can involve genetically modified microorganisms.³⁵

Biologicals are part of a larger move by the top pesticide and seed corporations into what they call “regenerative agriculture”. This refers to a vaguely defined set of practices that can also include cover cropping, reduced tillage, crop rotation, genetically modified seeds, biologicals, and digital agriculture. Corporations claim, without convincing scientific evidence, that their model of regenerative agriculture will sequester carbon into soils, among other benefits.³⁶ Corporate regenerative agriculture programmes ensure companies the extraction of valuable agricultural data from farmers, giving them a competitive advantage in the market.³⁷ The carbon credits generated by farmers are bought by companies that wish to continue their polluting operations and not reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

Bayer sees a US$100 billion opportunity in the shift to regenerative agriculture through biologicals, agrofuels, digital agriculture and carbon farming.³⁸ The growing focus on regenerative agriculture is driving collaborations and partnerships across the industrial food chain. While Syngenta has partnered with Pepsico, McDonalds and Lopez Foods to promote regenerative agriculture, BASF has initiated a project to assess the feasibility of a ‘nature-market’ among soybean farmers in Brazil.³⁹

Digital technologies are central to corporate regenerative agriculture programmes. To derive commercial benefits from those, presumed impacts like reduced greenhouse gases and carbon sequestered in soils need to be measured at scale using digital tools. The top seed and agrochemical companies have their own proprietary digital platforms via which they obtain publicly available agricultural data, data from satellites, sensors, farm equipment, data from their own R&D wings and data that farmers share with these platforms.⁴⁰ In the case of Bayer, it extracts data from more than 89 million hectares across 20 countries that are subscribed to its Climate FieldView platform. Syngenta’s digital platform covers about 88 million hectares across the world.⁴¹ The top agribusiness companies’ digital agriculture technologies are inextricably linked to Big Tech’s cloud servers and databases.⁴²

The digital technologies that Big Ag are rolling out “assist” farmers in deciding when to plant their seeds, what type of seeds to use, how much and what kind of pesticides to spray. They claim to be able to predict disease outbreaks, measure soil health and even estimate yields. Farmers who are enrolled in these programmes have to adopt specific agricultural practices to be eligible to earn money from the production of carbon credits. These digital platforms allow corporations to effectively dictate agricultural practices and push their products on millions of hectares across the world.

Table 2. Top 10 corporations in the pesticides sector

Ranking	Company (Headquarters)	Sales in 2023 (US$ millions)	% Global market share
1	Syngenta (China/Switzerland)⁴³	20,066	25
2	Bayer (Germany)⁴⁴	11,860	15
3	BASF (Germany)⁴⁵	8,793	11
4	Corteva (US)⁴⁶	7,754	10
	Total top 4	48,472	61
5	UPL (India)⁴⁷	5,925	8
6	FMC (Germany)⁴⁸	4,487	6
7	Sumitomo (Japan)⁴⁹	3,824	5
8	Nufarm (Australia)⁵⁰	2,056	3
9	Rainbow Agro (China)⁵¹	1,623	2
10	Jiangsu Yangnong Chemical Co., Ltd. (China)⁵²	1,595	2
	Total top 10	67,982	86
	Total world market⁵³	79,000	100

Another emerging set of alliances in this sector is between commodity trading corporations and fossil fuel companies. For example, Corteva has a partnership to develop canola hybrids for agrofuels with Chevron, the multinational oil and gas company, and Bunge, one of the world’s largest commodity trading corporations. Corteva also has a joint venture with the UK oil company BP that will contract farmers in Europe and the Americas to grow mustard seed, sunflower and canola feedstocks for agrofuels for aviation.⁵⁴ In another example, Syngenta is collaborating with the US commodity trader ADM on research and commercialisation of low carbon-intensity oilseeds for agrofuels.⁵⁵

Synthetic fertilisers

Industrial agriculture is highly dependent on synthetic fertilisers. They are differentiated by the type of nutrient they contain: nitrogen in the form of urea, phosphorus (as phosphate) and potassium (as potash). These nutrients (and the fossil fuels used for nitrogen fertiliser production) are globally traded commodities, making the sector particularly vulnerable to price fluctuations and trade disruptions.⁵⁶

With a market value of US$196 billion, fertilisers is one of the most profitable sectors across the industrial food system, particularly at times of food price spikes.⁵⁷ The revenues of the top 10 companies were US$76 billion in 2023 (see Table 3), an increase of 57% compared to 2020.⁵⁸ And in 2022 they had been even higher, 130% more than in 2020.⁵⁹ The World Bank explained the spike in fertiliser prices as a result of high natural gas prices from trade disruptions.⁶⁰ But a study of Nutrien, Yara, Mosaic, ICL Group, CF Industries, OCP, PhosAgro, OCI and K+S found that they had generated these extreme profits in 2022 by taking advantage of the war in Ukraine raising prices above the increased cost of producing goods, and deepening the debt of farmers and entire countries as a result.⁶¹

The global fertiliser market is dominated by a small number of companies, and fertiliser production takes place in a small number of countries. Over 55% of global urea production occurs in four countries: China, India, Russia and the US. And only China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Qatar account for 41% of nitrogen fertiliser exports. For phosphate fertilisers, 70% of world production and 61% of world exports are concentrated in China, Morocco, the US and Russia. Similarly, for potash fertilisers, Canada, Russia, Belarus and China account for 75% of world production and the first three alone are responsible for 77% of world exports.⁶² Many of the top fertiliser companies are based in these producer countries.

At a global level, the top 10 controls 39% of the total market. But this concentration increases when the market is considered by type of fertiliser or by country. For example, five companies, OCP (Morocco), Mosaic (US), ICL (Israel), Nutrien (US) and Sinofert (China) account for a quarter of the phosphate-based fertilisers market.⁶³ But in the US, Mosaic controls 60% of domestic phosphate fertiliser production and until recently 90% of the domestic market.⁶⁴ With potash fertiliser, just four companies– Nutrien, Mosaic, ICL and K+S– occupy 50% of the global market.⁶⁵

Fertilisers are a leading source of greenhouse gas emissions in the agriculture sector. Nitrogen fertilisers alone are responsible for one in every 40 tonnes of total global emissions each year.⁶⁶ There is thus growing international interest in reducing fertiliser use and, in response, the fertiliser companies are ramping up their greenwashing efforts. Like the pesticide companies, the fertiliser companies are investing in biofertilisers and biostimulants, and marketing these as “complementary” to their synthetic fertilisers, often through their digital platforms and carbon credit schemes.⁶⁷ Yara, for instance, which recently acquired the Italian organic-based fertiliser company Agribios, has a digital carbon farming platform called Agoro Carbon that is used by farmers on over 809,000 hectares in the US.⁶⁸

Yara and other fertiliser companies maintain that “green” energies can be utilised to produce nitrogen fertilisers, and thereby dramatically reduce emissions. Their main focus is on blue hydrogen, which is produced from fossil fuels but with carbon capture and storage (CCS), and on green hydrogen, which is produced using wind or solar energy. This is already opening up new markets, such as the inclusion of Yara’s “low-carbon” fertilisers in PepsiCo’s planned 2.8 million hectare regenerative agriculture projects in Latin America.⁶⁹ But there is growing criticism of the social and environmental conflicts associated with CCS projects, as illustrated by the case of the residents of Ingleside in the US who are opposing a plant planned by Yara.⁷⁰ And while the production of green hydrogen-based fertilisers is lower in its CO₂ emissions, nitrogen oxide emissions still occur on farms. Green hydrogen projects are also increasingly linked to land, water and energy grabs in the Global South.⁷¹

Table 3. Top 10 corporations in the synthetic fertilisers sector

Ranking	Company (Headquarters)	Sales in 2023 (US$ millions)	% Global market share
1	Nutrien (Canada)⁷²	15,673	8
2	The Mosaic Company (US)⁷³	12,782	7
3	Yara (Norway)⁷⁴	11,688	6
4	CF Industries Holdings, Inc, (US)⁷⁵	6,631	3
	Total top 4	46,774	24
5	ICL Group Ltd. (Israel)⁷⁶	6,294	3
6	OCP (Morocco)⁷⁷	5,967	3
7	PhosAgro (Russia)⁷⁸	4,989	3
8	MCC EuroChem Joint Stock Company (EuroChem) (Switzerland/Russia)⁷⁹	4,298	2
9	OCI (Netherlands)⁸⁰	4,188	2
10	Uralkali (Russia)⁸¹	3,497	2
	Total top 10	76,007	39
	Total world market⁸²	196,000	100

Farm machinery

Farm machinery here refers to manufactured equipment used in agriculture like tractors, haying and harvesting machinery and equipment used for planting, fertilising, ploughing, cultivating, irrigating and spraying. As farm equipment companies move towards digitalisation and automation, this sector can also include their proprietary digital platforms, drones, and robotic technologies.

In the farm machinery sector, the top four companies control 43% of the global market according to 2023 sales figures (see Table 4). Much of the focus of these companies is now on integrating AI and digital technologies – through partnerships and acquisitions – to allow for more precision, as they claim, in the application of seeds, pesticides and fertilisers.

In 2023, for example, John Deere acquired Smart Apply, a US precision spraying equipment company. It is developing a technology to reduce indiscriminate agrochemical spraying in vineyards, orchards and nurseries by sensing the size and foliage of individual plants and adjusting the agrochemical volume to be sprayed.⁸³ But while doing that, the technology will collect valuable on-farm data on pesticide application, canopy volumes, the number of trees, the health of individual trees, and other information to assess the profitability and productivity of the orchard or vineyard. Another technology John Deere is deploying, called See & Spray, uses cameras to detect weeds in farms. The company says this technology saved farmers from spraying approximately 8 million gallons of herbicide across over 400,000 hectares in 2024.⁸⁴ See & Spray is being utilised in a partnership John Deere has with Syngenta and the US-based company InnerPlant to develop genetically modified “sensor plants” (like cotton, soybeans and maize). The GM plants will send out signals when stressed by drought, pests or fertiliser deficiencies which would then be detected by See & Spray and then treated with Syngenta’s pesticides. Innerplant calls it “the most exciting GM trait since Roundup Ready”.⁸⁵

Syngenta also has a partnership with CNH Industrial to integrate its digital farming platform Cropwise with CNH’s farm machinery. This will likely give both corporations seamless access to the data accumulated by each other giving CNH access to Syngenta’s valuable on-farm data and Syngenta the opportunity to promote its products through CNH.

The farm machinery giants are also positioning their technologies to be part of regenerative agriculture and carbon farming programmes. John Deere, for instance, is partnering with Cargill’s regenerative agriculture programme RegenConnect to collect data on agricultural practices from farms, analyse if they fulfil Cargill’s sustainability criteria, and, eventually, buy and commercialise carbon credits.⁸⁶ Another example is the partnership between Kubota and Tokyo Gas to reduce methane emissions from rice cultivation in the Philippines. Under the project, Filipino farmers are told how to select seeds, manage soil and implement a rice-growing technique to reduce methane emissions, with the companies extracting data to create carbon credits for Kubota and Tokyo Gas.⁸⁷

Since the new machinery technologies under development require farms to have a high-speed internet connection, the farm machinery companies are partnering with telecom and satellite giants to expand rural internet connectivity. CNH, for example, is partnering with Telecom Argentina to expand internet connectivity across 500,000 hectares in Buenos Aires, while John Deere has a partnership with Elon Musk’s SpaceX satellite telecommunications company.⁸⁸

Table 4. Top 10 corporations in the farm machinery sector

Ranking	Company (Headquarters)	Sales in 2023 (US$ millions)	% Global market share
1	Deere and Co. (US)⁸⁹	26,790	15
2	CNH Industrial (UK/Netherlands)⁹⁰	18,148	10
4	AGCO (US)⁹¹	14,412	8
3	Kubota (Japan)⁹²	14,233	8
	Total top 4	73,583	43
5	CLAAS (Germany)⁹³	6,561	4
6	Mahindra and Mahindra (India)⁹⁴	3,156	2
7	SDF Group (Italy)⁹⁵	2,197	1
8	Kuhn Group (Switzerland)⁹⁶	1,583	0.9
9	YTO Group (China)⁹⁷	1,493	0.9
10	Iseki Group (Japan)⁹⁸	1,057	0.6
	Total top 10	89,629	52
	Total world market⁹⁹	173,000	100

Animal pharma

The animal pharmaceutical industry includes medicines and vaccines, diagnostics, medical services, nutritional supplements (medicated feed additives), veterinary and other related services for animal health.

According to some estimates, global animal pharmaceutical sales totalled US$48 billion in 2023.¹⁰⁰ The main markets are the US (42.3%) and Europe (27.3%), where the largest companies in the sector are based.¹⁰¹ In 2023, the top 10 controlled 68% of the market, with the top four companies accounting for almost half of all sales (see Table 5).

Most animal pharma revenues are generated from pets, not livestock. In 2023, livestock accounted for 45.8% of the animal pharma market, down from 59% in 2020.¹⁰² But this varies by country. For example, in 2023, Zoetis’ products for pets accounted for 80% of 2023 sales in the US, 70% in Japan and 69% in China, while in Brazil, livestock products represented 59% of its sales.¹⁰³

Pets’ health has attracted players from other sectors, such as the US based Mars Inc., one of the world’s largest food companies. The corporation has been increasing its investment in the veterinary sector, and currently owns 3,000 veterinary clinics worldwide.¹⁰⁴ As it is a private company, its revenues are not made public, but according to Mars, 60% of its US$50 billion in sales in 2023 came from the Mars Petcare segment, which includes pet food and veterinary care.¹⁰⁵ Nearly half of Mars’ 150,000 workers are with its Mars Veterinary Health division.¹⁰⁶ The large retailer Walmart is also moving into this sector, building veterinary clinics inside its US stores.¹⁰⁷

Corporate concentration in this sector gives companies the power to exert strong pressure on governments to influence legislation in problematic sectors such as antibiotics. The global sales of farm antibiotics is valued at US$5.10 billion, with cattle accounting for near 40% of the use.¹⁰⁸ For years, the industry has defended the use of antibiotics in farm animals by linking them to faster growth, better health, and “feed efficiency”.¹⁰⁹ The problem, however, is that use of antibiotics in animals can lead to the emergence of bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics, including those critical to human health. Antibiotic resistance is already responsible for the deaths of 700,000 people around the world every year.¹¹⁰ Despite strong opposition from Elanco, Zoetis, Phibro and others, the European Union managed to reduce the overuse of antibiotics on farms, but widespread use continues in the US and elsewhere.¹¹¹

As industrial livestock is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for 14.5% of total emissions according to the IPCC, animal pharma companies are trying to show they are taking climate action by developing drugs that can reduce emissions.¹¹² Elanco, for example, has won approval in the United States to market the drug Experior which claims to reduce ammonia gas in cattle.¹¹³ However, such techno-fixes can have only marginal overall impact, as livestock emissions occur across the whole industrial chain, from deforestation for feed crops, manure lagoons, to waste, to the use of fossil fuels throughout the production process.¹¹⁴

Table 5. Top 10 corporations in the animal pharma sector

Ranking	Company (Headquarters)	Sales in 2023 (US$ millions)	% Global market share
1	Zoetis (US)¹¹⁵	8,544	18
2	Merck & Co (MSD) (US)¹¹⁶	5,625	12
3	Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health (Germany)¹¹⁷	5,100	11
4	Elanco (US)¹¹⁸	4,417	9
	Total top 4	23,686	49
5	Idexx Laboratories (US)¹¹⁹	3,474	7
6	Ceva Santé Animale (France)¹²⁰	1,752	4
7	Virbac (France)¹²¹	1,348	3
8	Phibro Animal Health Corporation (US)¹²²	978	2
9	Dechra (UK)¹²³	917	2
10	Vetoquinol (France)¹²⁴	572	1
	Total top 10	32,727	68
	Total world market¹²⁵	48,000	100

Livestock genetics

The genetic material used in the industrial production of meat, dairy and aquaculture is supplied by a small number of relatively unknown companies that are mostly privately owned. As detailed financial data is not publicly available for most of these companies, it is difficult to determine companies’ market shares and even the value of the global market. However, it was possible to arrive at some estimates for chicken, which tops global meat production (narrowly exceeding pigs).¹²⁶

Corporate concentration is particularly acute with chicken. Just three companies dominate the poultry genetics market: Tyson Foods (US, public), EW Group (Germany, private) and Hendrix Genetics (Netherlands, private). Together, they supply more than 120 countries with breeds through licensing and distribution agreements or through their own farming operations.¹²⁷

Tyson and EW Group control the two main hybrid breeds used in most of the world’s industrial broiler farms (chickens for meat): Cobb (Cobb-Vantress) and Ross (Aviagen).¹²⁸ While Tyson does not provide a breakdown of sales from its genetics division, EW Group subsidiaries Aviagen Limited (UK) and Hubbard S.A.S reported sales of $252 million and $68 million respectively in 2023.¹²⁹

Both Tyson and EW Group operate in the US, Brazil and China, where 51% of the world’s chicken production takes place.¹³⁰ In the US, they supply the breeding stock for 98% of broilers, with Cobb-Vantress holding half of the market.¹³¹ In Brazil, the Cobb type accounts for 60% and Ross for 35% of all industrial breeds.¹³² China is still 70% dependent on imports of chicken genetics, with Cobb-Vantress and Aviagen breeding half of the domestic grandparent stock locally.¹³³ But the Chinese state and Chinese companies are working to break this dependency, particularly in light of the outbreaks of bird flu in the US. Three local companies, Sunner Group, Yukou Poultry and Xinguang Nongmu, now have nearly 30% of the market, with Sunner holding over 20%.¹³⁴ They have also started to export to countries such as Tanzania, Pakistan and Uzbekistan.¹³⁵

Global companies in the sector are looking at the African market for growth, where, in many countries, indigenous chickens still account for 80% or more of the chicken population.¹³⁶ In southern and eastern Africa, Tyson and EW Group’s Aviagen have merged with regional partners over the past decade, including cross-shareholdings. Some of the joint ventures are through companies registered in the tax haven of Mauritius.¹³⁷ In Zambia, which is increasingly used as a hub for chicken exports to the region, Tyson and EW Group dominate the entire market, holding 45% and 55% market shares, respectively. Zambian regulators found in 2018 that the genetics companies were coordinating to restrict the supply of breeding stock and increase prices, thus affecting smaller producers and consumers. Similar behaviour was found in the US, resulting in fines.¹³⁸

EW Group is also the top player in sales of genetics for chickens used for laying eggs (layer), through its subsidiaries Hy-Line International and Novogen S.A.S.¹³⁹ Second is Hendrix Genetics, owned by private equity firm Paine Schwartz Partners, with layer genetics sales estimated at US$274 million in 2023.¹⁴⁰ China is the main producer of eggs with 34% of global egg production, followed by the US, India and Indonesia with 7% each.¹⁴¹ Chinese reliance on imported grandparent layer breeders is also decreasing and is currently below 30%, but EW Group and Hendrix Genetics still supply genetics to several of China’s largest egg producing companies.¹⁴² In the US, EW Group and Hendrix Genetics not only have a monopoly on layer genetics, but also dominate the layer supply chain, through their control of hatcheries. In the recent ‘egg crisis’ that hit the country, there were allegations that the two companies colluded with dominant egg producers to keep prices high.¹⁴³

The focus on uniformity, scale and high yields makes the breeds of these companies highly susceptible to diseases. Even with strict biosecurity measures on farms, disease outbreaks still occur, as can be seen in the massive number of outbreaks of bird flu at industrial farms in the US and Europe in 2024 and 2025. In response, genetics companies are trying to breed chickens resistant to bird flu and other diseases using gene editing techniques, like CRISPR-Cas9.¹⁴⁴ For example, Cobb-Vantress co-funded research into the use of CRISPR to create chickens resistant to avian flu, which showed that multiple genetic modifications were needed to prevent “viral escape”.¹⁴⁵ Companies are also genetically modifying chickens for increased growth rates and sex sorting.

Illustrations: Andre M. Medina (@andre_m_medina)

Notes:

1Hope Shand, Kathy Jo Wetter and Kavya Chowdhry, “Food Barons 2022: crisis profiteering, digitalization and shifting power”, ETC Group, September 2022, https://www.etcgroup.org/files/files/food-barons-2022-full_sectors-final_16_sept.pdf

2For an understanding of the history of corporate concentration in the seed, pesticide, fertiliser and agricultural machinery sectors, see Jennifer Clapp, “Titans of Industrial Agriculture. How a few giant corporations came to dominate the farm sectors and why it matters”, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2025.

3See: SOMO, “Hungry for profits. How monopoly power tripled the profits of global agricultural commodity traders in the last three years”, 30 January 2024, https://www.somo.nl/hungry-for-profits/; GRAIN and IATP, “A corporate cartel fertilises food inflation”, 23 May 2023, https://grain.org/e/6988

4FAO, “FAO warns of ‘unprecedented’ avian flu spread, in call for global action”, 17 March 2025, https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/03/1161186

5Attempts towards mergers and acquisitions across the industrial food chain, like in commodity trading sectors, grocery retail, and food and beverage processing corporations continue full throttle. See: Bunge, “Bunge Shareholders Approve Viterra Combination”, 5 October 2023, https://www.bunge.com/Press-Releases/Bunge-shareholders-approve-viterra-merger; Jody Godoy, “Kroger’s $25-billion deal for grocery rival Albertsons blocked by US courts”, Reuters, 11 December 2024, https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-court-blocks-krogers-25-billion-acquisition-grocery-rival-albertsons-2024-12-10/; and Mars, “Mars to Acquire Kellanova”, 14 August, 2024, https://www.mars.com/en-in/news-and-stories/press-releases-statements/mars-acquisition-august-2024

6See: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/concentrationratio.asp

7Nina Lakhani, “‘They rake in profits – everyone else suffers’: US workers lose out as big chicken gets bigger”, The Guardian, 11 August 2021,https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/11/tyson-chicken-indsutry-arkansas-poultry-monopoly

8See: Corporate Europe Observatory, “Yara: Poisoning our soils, burning our planet,” 17 September 2019, https://corporateeurope.org/en/2019/09/yara-poisoning-our-soils-burning-our-planet; Corporate Europe Observatory, “Monsanto lobbying: an attack on us, our planet and democracy,” Undated, https://corporateeurope.org/sites/default/files/attachments/monsanto_v09_web.pdf; and Peter Waldman, Tiffany Stecker, and Joel Rosenblat, “ Monsanto was its own ghostwriter for some safety reviews”, Bloomberg, 9 August 2017, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-09/monsanto-was-its-own-ghostwriter-for-some-safety-reviews

9C. Costa et al. “Roadmap for achieving net-zero emissions in global food systems by 2050”, Scientific Reports, 12, 15064, 2022: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-18601-1; UNEP, “Driving finance for sustainable food systems: A roadmap to implementation for financial institutions and policy makers,” April 2023: https://www.unepfi.org/publications/driving-finance-for-sustainable-food-systems/

10ETC Group, “A long food movement: transforming food systems by 2045”, 29 March 2021, https://www.etcgroup.org/content/long-food-movement

11In this report, commas are used to separate thousands. Dots are used to separate decimals.

12Hope Shand, Kathy Jo Wetter and Kavya Chowdhry, “Food Barons 2022: Crisis Profiteering, Digitalization and Shifting Power”, ETC Group, September 2022, https://www.etcgroup.org/files/files/food-barons-2022-full_sectors-final_16_sept.pdf

13See: Chris Westfall, “Cutting middle management: Bayer’s costly experiment one year later”, 7 January 2025, Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/chriswestfall/2025/01/07/cutting-middle-management-bayers-costly-experiment-one-year-later/; Anonymous, “‘Broken’ Bayer needs bolder action”, Financial Times, 7 March 2024, https://www.ft.com/content/c1d9b0a6-2c25-4184-9a92-6d4ea13546bc; Bayer Annual report 2024, p. 2, https://www.bayer.com/sites/default/files/2025-03/bayer-annual-report-2024.pdf

14Brendan Piersen, “ Bayer must pay $78 million in latest Roundup cancer trial, jury finds”, Reuters, 11 October 2024, https://www.reuters.com/legal/bayer-must-pay-78-mln-latest-roundup-cancer-trial-jury-finds-2024-10-10/

15Patrick Thomas, “Farmers’ favorite weedkiller nears its end, Bayer warns”, 14 April 2025, https://www.wsj.com/business/farmers-favorite-weedkiller-nears-its-end-bayer-warns-324da1e6

16See: BASF, “BASF unveils Nemasphere nematode resistance trait, the new standard of nematode management for soybean farmers”, 10 June 2024, https://www.basf.com/us/en/media/news-releases/2024/06/basf-unveils-nemasphere-nematode-resistance-trait–the-new-stand; Bayer, “Short corn is smart corn”, 10 March 2025, https://www.bayer.com/en/news-stories/short-corn-is-smart-corn

17“How InstaDeep and Syngenta are accelerating crop trait discovery”, Shoots By Syngenta, undated, https://shootsbysyngenta.com/success-story-syngenta-and-instadeep

18Bayer, “Unleashing the Potential of AI”, undated, https://www.bayer.com/en/innovation/unleashing-the-potential-of-ai

19Percentages in the figure indicate the shares in the total, and may not tally due to rounding.

20Bayer Annual report 2023, p. 83. Includes: corn seeds and traits value (6,857), soybean seeds and traits value (2,571), cotton seeds value (575), vegetable seeds value (735). Total: 10,738 million Euros. https://www.bayer.com/sites/default/files/2024-03/bayer-annual-report-2023.pdf[Exchange rate: 1.081488].

21Corteva Annual report 2023, p. 3, https://investors.corteva.com/static-files/e34e5b8f-833c-4b8c-9222-6d57245db918

22Sources: Syngenta Annual report 2023, https://www.syngenta.com/sites/default/files/bond-investor-information/financial-results/financial-report-2023.pdf; and Capital IQ. Revenue for the Syngenta Seeds segment (including the sales of the subsidiaries in China). ChemChina figures are included.

23BASF Annual report 2023, p. 94, https://www.basf.com/global/en/investors/calendar-and-publications/reporting#item-1682409434284-1523096230[Exchange rate: 1.081488].

24Vilmorin & Cie Annual report 2022-2023, https://www.vilmorincie.com. Total revenue: 1,894.4 million Euros [Exchange rate: 1.047471].

25KWS Annual report 2023,(1 July 2023 – 30 June 30 2024),p. 2, https://mediamaster.kws.com/04_Company/03_Investor_Relations/04_Financial_Report/2023_2024/Q4/KWS-SAAT-Annual-Report-2023-2024-1.pdf [Exchange Rate: 1.081668].

26DLF Seeds Annual report 2023, p. 74, https://dlf.com/about-us/annual-report[Exchange Rate: 0.140732].

27Sakata Seeds Annual report, p. 1, https://corporate.sakataseed.co.jp/en/ir/library/shi2630000000cee-att/SAKATA20240712_summary_of_consolidated_financial_results_for_the_year_ended_may_31_2024.pdf

28Kaneko Seeds Annual report, (1 June 1 2023 – 31 May 2024), p. 1, https://kanekoseeds-p.jp/en/financial/pdf/Financial_Summary_20240531.pdf[Exchange Rate: 0.007323].

29S&P Global, “Revisiting seed company sales and profit”, FAO, 2024, https://openknowledge.fao.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/0535a5cd-2373-414c-8758-2349227dd52e/content

30“Biologicals, a key building block in regenerative agriculture”, Bayer, https://www.bayer.com/en/agriculture/article/biologicals-building-block-in-regenerative-agriculture

31GRAIN, “Corporate bioinputs: Agribusiness’s new toxic trap”, 1 August 2024, https://grain.org/e/7175

32See: MarketResearch Biz, “Agricultural biologicals market”, 2023, https://marketresearch.biz/report/agricultural-biologicals-market/; The Mixing Bowl, “2023 Ag Biologicals Landscape”, 2023, https://www.mixingbowlhub.com/landscape/2023-ag-biologicals-landscape

33“Corteva Agriscience completes acquisitions of Symborg and Stoller”, Corteva, 2 March 2023, https://www.corteva.com/resources/media-center/corteva-completes-acquisitions-of-symborg-and-stoller.html

34GRAIN, “Corporate bioinputs: Agribusiness’s new toxic trap”, 1 August 2024, https://grain.org/e/7175

35Bayer, “Agriculture biologicals, innovation inspired by nature”, https://www.bayer.com/en/agriculture/agriculture-biologicals

36GRAIN, “Regenerative agriculture was a good idea, until corporations got hold of it”, 1 December 2023, https://grain.org/e/7067

37Hope Shand, Kathy Jo Wetter and Kavya Chowdhry, “Food Barons 2022: crisis profiteering, digitalization and shifting power”, ETC Group, September 2022, https://www.etcgroup.org/files/files/food-barons-2022-full_sectors-final_16_sept.pdf

38Gerson Freitas Jr, “Bayer sees €100 billion opportunity in cleaner-farming shift”, Bloomberg, 20 June 2023, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-20/bayer-sees-100-billion-opportunity-in-shift-to-regenerative-agriculture

39See: https://www.syngentagroup.com/regenerative-agriculture; “McDonald’s USA, Syngenta and Lopez Foods collaborate to help produce beef more sustainably in the US”, Syngenta, 14 November, 2024: https://www.syngenta.com/media/media-releases/2024/mcdonalds-usa-syngenta-and-lopez-foods-collaborate-help-produce-beef-more; and Verena Kempter, “BASF and Solidaridad team up to empower Brazilian farmers to foster biodiversity”, BASF, 3 April 2024, https://www.basf.com/global/en/media/news-releases/2024/04/p-24-142

40“Bayer demonstrates digital technologies as a key enabler for regenerative agriculture”, Bayer, 9 November 2023, https://www.bayer.com/media/en-us/bayer-demonstrates-digital-technologies-as-a-key-enabler-for-regenerative-agriculture/

41See: Thomas Eickhoff, “New Frontiers in Digital and Carbon Farming”, Bayer, 20 June 2023, https://www.bayer.com/sites/default/files/2023-07/New%20Frontiers%20in%20Digital%20and%20Carbon%20Farming_CS%20Innovation%20Summit%202023.pdf; and “Syngenta Group reports record $33.4 billion sales and $5.6 billion EBITDA in 2022”, Syngenta, 22 March 2023, https://www.syngentagroup.com/newsroom/2023/syngenta-group-reports-record-334-billion-sales-and-56-billion-ebitda-2022#:~:text=The%20Group’s%20digital%20solutions%20have,$0.5%20billion%2C%20up%2081%20percent; Jonathan Shoham, “Digital farming and biologicals. Presentation to ABIM” S&P Global,

October 2023, https://www.abim.ch/fileadmin/abim/documents/presentations2023/ABIM2023_Session4_Digital_solutions_for_biocontrol_Jonathan_Shoham.pdf, pg.9.

42See: Hope Shand, Kathy Jo Wetter and Kavya Chowdhry, “Food Barons 2022: crisis profiteering, digitalization and shifting power”, ETC Group, September 2022, https://www.etcgroup.org/files/files/food-barons-2022-full_sectors-final_16_sept.pdf; ETC Group, “Behind sugar and spice and everything nice”, 9 May 2024, https://etcgroup.org/content/behind-sugar-and-spice-and-everything-nice; GRAIN, “Techno feudalism takes root on the farm in India and China”, 24 October 2024, https://grain.org/e/7196

43Sources: Syngenta Annual report 2023, https://www.syngenta.com/sites/default/files/bond-investor-information/financial-results/financial-report-2023.pdf; ADAMA Annual report 2023, https://s201.q4cdn.com/536806127/files/doc_financials/2023/q4/2023-Adama-Annual-Report.pdf; and Capital IQ. Figures include Syngenta Crop Protection segment and ADAMA’s revenue [Exchange rate: 0.141316]. ChemChina figures are included.

44Bayer Annual report 2023, p. 160. Includes: herbicides value (5,926), fungicides value (3,444), insecticides value (1,596). Total: 10,966 million Euros. https://www.bayer.com/sites/default/files/2024-03/bayer-annual-report-2023.pdf[Exchange rate: 1.081488].

45BASF Annual report 2023, p. 93,https://www.basf.com/global/en/investors/calendar-and-publications/reporting#item-1682409434284-1523096230[Exchange rate: 1.081488].

46Corteva Annual report 2023, p. 3, https://investors.corteva.com/static-files/e34e5b8f-833c-4b8c-9222-6d57245db918

47UPL Annual report 2023, p. 401, https://www.upl-ltd.com/financial_result_and_report_pdfs/Da7CGgxBEBSh8KKSrznTRJFTNU3ahra0yEy0O8R4/UPL_Annual-Report_2023-24.pdf[Exchange rate: 0.012457].

48FMC Annual report 2023, p. 1, https://s21.q4cdn.com/968238644/files/doc_financials/2023/q4/FMC-Financial-Schedules.pdf

49Sumitomo Annual report 2023,(1 April 2023 – 31 March 2024), p. 18, https://www.sumitomo-chem.co.jp/english/ir/library/annual_report/files/docs/scr2024e.pdf. This figure includes Sumitomo’s Agrosolutions Business, Environmental Health Business, Feed Additives Business, and Pharma Solution Business [Exchange rate: 0,00700374].

50Nufarm Annual report 2023, p. 22, https://cdn.nufarm.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/08102711/Nufarm-Annual-Report-2023-FINAL_compressed.pdf[Exchange rate: 0.665986].

51Sino-Agri Leading Biosciences Co., Ltd., “Sino-Agri Leading Biosciences wins 4th place in Chinese Top 100 Pesticide Companies Ranking”, 24 May 2024,https://news.agropages.com/News/NewsDetail—50255.htm [Exchange rate: 0.141316].

52Sino-Agri Leading Biosciences Co., Ltd., “Sino-Agri Leading Biosciences wins 4th place in Chinese Top 100 Pesticide Companies Ranking”, 24 May 2024,https://news.agropages.com/News/NewsDetail—50255.htm [Exchange rate: 0.141316].

53S&P Global, “Revisiting seed company sales and profit”, FAO, 2024, https://openknowledge.fao.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/0535a5cd-2373-414c-8758-2349227dd52e/content

54See: “Corteva Agriscience, Bunge and Chevron announce collaboration to produce winter canola to meet growing demand for lower carbon renewable”, Chevron, 14 March 2023, fuels https://www.chevron.com/newsroom/2023/q1/corteva-agriscience-bunge-and-chevron-announce-collaboration-to-produce-winter-canola; and “Corteva announces intent to partner with bp to develop low carbon intensity bio-feedstock”, Corteva, 18 November 2024, https://www.corteva.com/resources/media-center/corteva-announces-intent-to-partner-with-bp-to-develop-low-carbon-intensity-bio-feedstock-for-aviation-fuel-production.html

55“ADM and Syngenta Group sign MoU to support low-carbon next-generation oilseeds and improved varieties to meet growing demand for biofuels and other products”, Syngenta, 28 September 2023, https://www.syngenta.com/media/media-releases/2023/adm-and-syngenta-group-sign-mou-support-low-carbon-next-generation

56See: Jennifer Clapp, “Titans of industrial agriculture. How a few giant corporations came to dominate the farm sectors and why it matters”, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2025; and AMIS, “Fertiliser series. #2/2024”, 2024, https://storage.googleapis.com/amis-9189b-strapi/1_AMIS_Fertilizer_series_Fertilizer_production_073a82c786/1_AMIS_Fertilizer_series_Fertilizer_production_073a82c786.pdf

57S&P Global, “Revisiting seed company sales and profit”, FAO, 2024, https://openknowledge.fao.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/0535a5cd-2373-414c-8758-2349227dd52e/content

58Sinofert (China) and K+S (Germany) are not included in the table, but their revenues in 2023 (US$3,070 million and US$2,943 million respectively) are not far behind Uralkali (see: Sinofert Holdings Limited Annual report 2023”, https://www.hkexnews.hk/listedco/listconews/sehk/2024/0425/2024042502498.pdf; and K+S Annual report 2023, p.58,https://www.kpluss.com/.downloads/ir/2024/kpluss-annual-report-2023.pdf). For the figures for 2020, see: Hope Shand, Kathy Jo Wetter and Kavya Chowdhry, “Food Barons 2022: crisis profiteering, digitalization and shifting power”, ETC Group, September 2022, https://www.etcgroup.org/files/files/food-barons-2022-full_sectors-final_16_sept.pdf

59Source: Companies’ annual reports 2023 and Capital IQ.

60World Bank, “World Bank’s food for 10 billion podcast: fertilizer volatility and the food crisis”, 22 July 2022, https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/podcast/2022/07/22/fertilizer-volatility-and-the-food-crisis

61GRAIN and IATP, “A corporate cartel fertilises food inflation”, 23 May 2023, https://grain.org/e/6988

62See: UNCTAD, “15th multi-year expert meeting on commodities and development, 14-16 October 2024, Geneva”, 2024, https://unctad.org/system/files/non-official-document/monika-tothova_myem2024.pdf; and IFPRI, “Global fertilizer trade 2021-2023: What happened after war-related price spikes”, 5 April 2024, https://www.ifpri.org/blog/global-fertilizer-trade-2021-2023-what-happened-after-war-related-price-spikes/

63The estimate was made by looking at the phosphate fertiliser sales reported by companies in their annual reports for 2023. It was compared with global sales amounting US$54.6 billion (Globe Newswire, “8 key trends in the global phosphate fertilizer market”, 2 January 2024, https://www.agribusinessglobal.com/plant-health/npk/8-key-trends-in-the-global-phosphate-fertilizer-market/).

64As Jennifer Clapp explains, Mosaic deployed a strong lobbying effort in order the US imposes tariffs on fertiliser imports from Morocco and Russia in 2017. This gave Mosaic control over 90% of the phosphate fertiliser market. In 2023, the US lowered tariffs on Moroccan fertilisers and raised those on Russian phosphate fertilisers (See: Jennifer Clapp, “Titans of industrial agriculture. How a few giant corporations came to dominate the farm sectors and why it matters”, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2025.

65According to K+2, its market share reached 10% in 2023 (K+S Annual report 2023, p. 37, https://www.kpluss.com/.downloads/ir/2024/kpluss-annual-report-2023.pdf).

66GRAIN and IATP, “A corporate cartel fertilises food inflation”, 23 May 2023, https://grain.org/e/6988

67See: Jennifer Clapp, “Titans of industrial agriculture. How a few giant corporations came to dominate the farm sectors and why it matters”, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2025; and GRAIN, “Regenerative agriculture was a good idea, until corporations got hold of it”, 1 December 2023, https://grain.org/e/7067

68See: https://www.yara.com/knowledge-grows/growing-more-resilient-crops-with-biostimulants/; Yara Annual report 2023, https://www.yara.com/siteassets/investors/057-reports-and-presentations/annual-reports/2023/yara-integrated-report-2023.pdf; https://www.cropnutrition.com/biosciences/

69Sidhi Mittal, “PepsiCo launches regenerative potato farming programme”, 22 April 2025, https://www.edie.net/pepisco-launches-regenerative-potato-farming-programme/

70See: https://www.iobcwa.org/join-the-fight-stop-ingleside-ammonia-plant.html

71See for example: Inkota, “Green synthetic fertilisers: solution for soil, climate, water and communities or a dead end?”, 2024, https://www.inkota.de/sites/default/files/2024-12/greenfertilzer_discussionpaper_Final_%20ENG.pdf; and ODG, “The hydrogen trail”, 2024, https://odg.cat/en/publication/publication-the-hydrogen-trail/

72Nutrien Annual report 2023, https://www.nutrien.com/investors/financial-reporting. Includes: retail crop nutrients value (US$ 8,379 million, p. 52), nitrogen fertilisers value (US$ 2,450 million, p. 58), potash fertiliser value (US$3,759 million, p. 55), and phosphate fertiliser value (US$ 1,085 million, p. 60).

73The Mosaic Company Annual report 2023, p. 79, https://s1.q4cdn.com/823038994/files/doc_financials/2023/ar/2023-annual-report_final.pdf. Includes figures for net sales to external customers for phosphates (US$3,894.5 million), potash (US$3,203.1 million), Mosaic Fertilizantes (US$5,684.7 million). Excludes corporate, eliminations and other.

74Yara Annual report 2023, p. 229, https://www.yara.com/siteassets/investors/057-reports-and-presentations/annual-reports/2023/yara-integrated-report-2023.pdf. Includes the fertiliser and chemical products associated to the segments in Europe (US$3,634 million), Americas (US$5,555 million), Africa & Asia (US$2,489 million), Global plants & operational excellence (US$10 million).

75CF Industries Holdings Inc. Annual report 2023, p. 4, https://www.cfindustries.com/globalassets/cf-industries/media/documents/reports/annual-reports/cf_industries_2023-annual-report.pdf

76ICL Annual report 2023, p. 325, https://s27.q4cdn.com/112109382/files/doc_financials/2023/ar/20F-Final-2023_Accessibility.pdf. Includes potash value (US$1,973 million), phosphate solutions value (US$2,274 million), growing solutions value (US$2,047 million).

77OCP Annual report 2023, p. 16, https://ocpsiteprodsa.blob.core.windows.net/media/2024-04/Rapport%20Financier%20Annuel%202023.pdf. Includes fertiliser sales. [Exchange rate: 0.0987320919959963].

78Source: Capital IQ.

79Mineral fertilisers’ sales of MCC, EuroChem’s main production company (https://www.acra-ratings.ru/upload/iblock/a89/z8yg31w1fsja6k3hkxorny4m5t4jb7ay/20240724_EvroKHim_press_reliz_en.pdf). However, the groups figures may be higher as the Brazilian subsidiary Fertilizantes Heringer S.A. sales in 2023 amounted US$1 billion (source: Capital IQ).

80OCI Annual report 2023, p. 210, https://investors.oci-global.com/sites/default/files/2024-04/OCI-Annual-Report-2023-vf_0.pdf. Includes sales from nitrogen EU, nitrogen US and fertiglobe segments.

81Uralkali Annual report 2023, p. 9, https://www.uralkali.com/upload/iblock/196/i2noxv1ovukvqx4ipve8bwajxxxnjz5y/UralKali_annual_report_eng_full.pdf. The total sales figure may include some sales from other services and products not directly relevant to fertilisers.

82S&P Global, “Revisiting seed company sales and profit”, FAO, 2024, https://openknowledge.fao.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/0535a5cd-2373-414c-8758-2349227dd52e/content

83John Deere, “John Deere acquires Smart Apply”, 14 July 2023, https://www.deere.com/en/news/all-news/john-deere-acquires-smart-apply/

84John Deere, “See & Spray™ customers see 59% average herbicide savings in 2024”, 18 September 2024, https://www.deere.com/en/news/all-news/see-spray-herbicide-savings/

85See: “Syngenta Group and CNH Industrial connect digital applications to better serve farmers”,Syngenta, 13 November 2023, https://www.syngentagroup.com/newsroom/2023/syngenta-group-and-cnh-industrial-connect-digital-applications-better-serve-farmers; and InnerPlant’s website here: https://innerplant.com/join-innercircle/

86Cargill, “Cargill Regenconnect® and John Deere announce collaboration to enable new revenue streams for farmers adopting sustainable practices”, 12 July 2023, https://www.cargill.com/2023/cargill-regenconnect-and-john-deere-announce-collaboration

87Kubota, “Joint demonstration project to reduce methane emissions from paddy fields in the Philippines”, 28 February 2024, https://www.kubota.com/news/2024/20240228.html

88John Deere, “John Deere announces strategic partnership with SpaceX to expand rural connectivity to farmers through satellite communications”, 16 January 2024, https://www.deere.com/en/our-company/static/john-deere-partnership-with-spacex/

89Deere and Co. Annual report 2023, p. 32. Includes: values for production and precision agriculture operations.https://s22.q4cdn.com/253594569/files/doc_downloads/2023/12/deere-company-2023-10-k.pdf

90CNH Industrial Annual report 2023, p. 53, https://www.cnh.com/-/media/CNHi/cnhicorporate/Investor-relation/financial_information/annual_reports/2023/2023-CNH-10-K.pdf?rev=-1

91AGCO Annual report 2023, p. 47, https://ar2023.agcocorp.com/downloads/AGCO_2023_Annual_Report.pdf

92Kubota Annual report 2023, p. 17, https://www.kubota.com/ir/financial/release/data/134q4e.pdf[Exchange rate: 0.007132].

93CLAAS Annual report 2023, p. 26, https://annualreport.claas.com/2023/assets/downloads/en/CLAAS_powerful_2023.pdf[Exchange rate: 1.067923].

94Mahindra and Mahindra Annual report 2023, p. 363, https://www.mahindra.com/annual-report-FY2024/index.html[Exchange rate: 0.012457].

95SDF Group Annual report 2023, p. 3, https://www.sdfgroup.com/media/SDF_Risultati_2023_EN.pdf[Exchange rate: 1.081488].

96Bucher Annual report 2023, p. 21, https://d3v9db8ug40up8.cloudfront.net/s3fs-public/2023_01_Bucher_Annual-report_2023_EN_1.pdf [Exchange rate: 1.113604].

97YTO Group Annual report 2023, p. 315, https://doc.irasia.com/listco/hk/firsttractor/annual/2023/ar2023.pdf

98Iseki Group Annual report 2023, p. 5, https://www.iseki.co.jp/global/cms/upload/pdf/ir/preset_material_2023_all_e.pdf[Exchange rate: 0.007323].

99World market estimate from VDMA (See: CLAAS Annual report 2023, p. 25, https://annualreport.claas.com/2023/assets/downloads/en/CLAAS_powerful_2023.pdf

100Zoetis internal estimates (see: Zoetis, “A best in breed growth strategy”, 43 Annual JP Morgan Healthcase Conference, 14 January 2025, https://s203.q4cdn.com/620628704/files/doc_events/2025/Jan/14/Zoetis-JPM-Healthcare-Conference-Presentation.pdf). See also: https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2024/11/14/2980879/28124/en/Animal-Health-Global-Market-Insights-Report-2024-Featuring-Elanco-Zoetis-Phibro-Vetoquinol-Ceva-Merck-DSM-IFF-Danisco-Animal-Nutrition-Huvepharma-Dechra-Pharmaceuticals-and-Virbac.html

101CEESA, “The global animal health industry in profile 2023”, 2023, https://ceesa.eu/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=downloadpdf&pID=5543.

102See: CEESA, “The global animal health industry in profile 2023”, 2023, https://ceesa.eu/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=downloadpdf&pID=5543; and Hope Shand, Kathy Jo Wetter and Kavya Chowdhry, “Food Barons 2022: crisis profiteering, digitalization and shifting power”, ETC Group, September 2022, https://www.etcgroup.org/files/files/food-barons-2022-full_sectors-final_16_sept.pdf

103“Zoetis Inc. SEC 10-K Report”, Trading View, 13 February 2025, https://www.tradingview.com/news/tradingview:4eb76e64ed6be:0-zoetis-inc-sec-10-k-report/

104 https://marsveterinary.com/

105See: Callum Jones, “Love of animals and love of profit? Inside the $500bn pet boom”, The Guardian, 29 June 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/article/2024/jun/29/mars-pet-care-food-businesses; https://www.forbes.com/companies/mars/

106Luisa Beltran, “Candy maker Mars is the biggest vet provider in the country: Inside its sprawling operation”, Yahoo Finance, 14 January 2025, https://finance.yahoo.com/news/candy-maker-mars-biggest-vet-100000723.html

107Ross Kelly, “ Walmart to open own-branded veterinary practices “, 10 October 2024, https://news.vin.com/default.aspx?pid=210&Id=12320902&sx=269697569&n=3

108See: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/veterinary-antibiotics-market-report

109Mariano Enrique Fernández Miyakawa, Natalia Andrea Casanova, and Michael H. Kogut, “How did antibiotic growth promoters increase growth and feed efficiency in poultry?”, Poultry Science, Vol. 103, Issue 2, 2024, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psj.2023.103278.

110Michaela Herrmann and Clare Carlile, “‘Narratives of delay’: how the animal pharma industry resists moves to curb the overuse of antibiotics on farms”, 20 December 2023, https://www.desmog.com/2023/12/20/narratives-of-delay-how-the-animal-pharma-industry-resists-moves-to-curb-the-overuse-of-antibiotics-on-farms/

111See: Kenny Torrella, “Why Big Pharma wants you to eat more meat”, 1 March 2025, https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/401172/antibiotics-meat-pharmaceutical-industry-agriculture ;and Michaela Herrmann and Clare Carlile, “‘Narratives of delay’: how the animal pharma industry resists moves to curb the overuse of antibiotics on farms”, 20 December 2023, https://www.desmog.com/2023/12/20/narratives-of-delay-how-the-animal-pharma-industry-resists-moves-to-curb-the-overuse-of-antibiotics-on-farms/

112See: GRAIN, “Livestock and climate: the problem is the industrial system”, 1 October 2021, https://grain.org/e/6740; Kenny Torrella, “Why Big Pharma wants you to eat more meat”, 1 March 2025, https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/401172/antibiotics-meat-pharmaceutical-industry-agriculture

113See: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/01/21/2025-01226/new-animal-drugs-approval-of-new-animal-drug-applications-withdrawal-of-approval-of-new-animal-drug

114GRAIN & Alianza Biodiversidad, “What does factory farming have to do with the climate crisis?”, 26 March 2020, https://grain.org/e/6435. “Techno-fix” refers to a technology addressing a social or environmental problem created by an earlier technological failure (see: Hope Shand, Kathy Jo Wetter and Kavya Chowdhry, “Food Barons 2022: crisis profiteering, digitalization and shifting power”, ETC Group, September 2022, https://www.etcgroup.org/files/files/food-barons-2022-full_sectors-final_16_sept.pdf).

115Zoetis Annual report 2023, https://investor.zoetis.com/financials/sec-filings/sec-filings-details/default.aspx?FilingId=17262173

116Merck & Co. Annual report 2023, https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0000064978/4abbf601-f36f-4016-ae6f-a07650f3b571.pdf

117Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health, “Boehringer Ingelheim reports strong growth in 2023 and accelerates late-stage pipeline”, 16 April 2024, https://www.boehringer-ingelheim.com/us/media/boehringer-ingelheim-reports-strong-growth-2023-and-accelerates-late-stage-pipeline

118Elanco Annual report 2023, p. 59,https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001739104/244f001e-0ffe-47b9-9dd9-27728385becf.pdf

119Idexx Laboratories Annual report 2023, p. 48,https://www.idexx.com/files/10k20240222.pdf. Water and other sales excluded.

120Ceva Santé Animale Annual report 2023, p. 4,https://www.ceva.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/FINAL_CEVA_NFPS_23.pdf. [Exchange rate: 1.081488].

121Virbac Annual report 2023, p. 161,https://corporate.virbac.com/home/investors/financial-reports/2023.html. [Exchange rate: 1.081488].

122Phibro Animal Health Corporation, Annual report 2023 -2024, https://investors.pahc.com/financials/sec-filings/default.aspx

123Dechra Annual report 2023, (1 July 2022 – 30 June 2023),https://www.dechra.com/corporate/corporate-home[Exchange rate: 1.204523]

124Vetoquinol Annual report 2023, https://www.vetoquinol.com/en/publications?f%5B0%5D=publication_type%3AAnnual%20Report

125Sources: https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2024/11/14/2980879/28124/en/Animal-Health-Global-Market-Insights-Report-2024-Featuring-Elanco-Zoetis-Phibro-Vetoquinol-Ceva-Merck-DSM-IFF-Danisco-Animal-Nutrition-Huvepharma-Dechra-Pharmaceuticals-and-Virbac.html; and Zoetis, “A best in breed growth strategy”, 43 Annual JP Morgan Healthcase Conference, 14 January 2025, https://s203.q4cdn.com/620628704/files/doc_events/2025/Jan/14/Zoetis-JPM-Healthcare-Conference-Presentation.pdf

126See: FAO, “World Food and Agriculture – Statistical Yearbook 2024”, 2024, https://doi.org/10.4060/cd2971en (p. 16); https://www.cognitivemarketresearch.com/chicken-market-report; and https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/eggs-market-108483.

127See: https://www.tysonfoods.com/; https://ew.group/es/growing-excellence-through-innovation-es/; https://www.hendrix-genetics.com/en/. They are also the main suppliers to major chicken producers such as JBS, BRF, CP Group, Shandong Yashgen and BRF (Tak, Mehrosh, et al., “Identifying economic and financial drivers of industrial livestock production. The case of the global chicken industry”, 2022, https://www.issuelab.org/resources/40548/40548.pdf).

128See: Sumayya Goga, Simon Roberts, “Multinationals and competition in poultry value chains in South Africa, Zambia, and Malawi”, August 2023, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/375864070; Dani Sher, “Broiler chickens: Who are they and how long do they live?”, Farm Forward, 13 March 2023, https://www.farmforward.com/news/broiler-chickens/ ; and Simon Usborne, “The £3 chicken: how much should we actually be paying for the nation’s favourite meat?”, The Guardian, 24 November 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/food/2021/nov/24/the-3-chicken-how-much-should-we-actually-be-paying-for-the-nations-favourite-meat

129Source: Capital IQ. Hubbard S.A.S is a subsidiary of Aviagen Group Holding, Inc.

130 https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/production/commodity/0115000

131United States District Court, Northern district of Illinois Eastern Division, “End-user consumer plaintiffs’ fifth consolidated amended class action complaint”, 2020, https://overchargedforchicken.com/assets/Docs/1.%20Redacted%20Fifth%20Amended%20EUCP%20Complaint.pdf(p. 114)

132Sumayya Goga and Teboho Bosiu, “Governance of poultry value chains. A comparative perspective on developing capabilities in South Africa and Brazil”, 2019, CCRED Working Papers Series 2019/10, https://www.competition.org.za/s/IDTT-2-Poultry-Working-Paper-9.pdf

133See: https://www.thepoultrysite.com/news/2025/03/china-expands-domestic-broiler-genetics-gain; https://openknowledge.fao.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/5fcbf357-eac5-4e22-84ce-ec0936d5fb52/content; https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/production/commodity/0115000; https://www.agripost.cn/2025/02/17/chinas-broiler-industry-in-2024-white-feather-broilers-gain-market-share-as-yellow-feather-chickens-decline/. Grandparent stock refers to primary breeding animals whose offspring (called parent stock) are the final generation of breeding birs. Then the offspring of the parent stock becomes the production animals used for chicken meat production and other poultry products (https://apps.fas.usda.gov/newgainapi/api/Report/DownloadReportByFileName?fileName=Poultry%20and%20Products%20Annual_Beijing_China%20-%20People%27s%20Republic%20of_CH2024-0108.pdf).

134See: Shen Weiduo and Zhao Juecheng, “Chinese homegrown poultry variety breaks decades-long monopoly by developed countries”, 23 July 2023, Global Timeshttps://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202307/1294882.shtml; “Domestic broilers expand market share in China – and head overseas”, eFeedLink, 13 January 2025,https://www.efeedlink.com/contents/01-13-2025/0d8ad06d-4c87-4922-8140-901d5b579a99-a001.html

135See: https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202307/1294882.shtml; https://gov.uz/en/vetgov/news/view/40232; https://tribune.com.pk/story/2490756/china-exports-first-batch-of-broiler-eggs;

136 https://www.fao.org/poultry-production-products/production/breeding/en/

137For example, in 2017, Tyson Foods invested in Buchan Ltd, who owns the distributor Cobb Africa, based in Mauritius, and Irvine’s units in Botswana, Mozambique and Tanzania (see: https://www.just-food.com/news/tyson-and-ex-ceo-donnie-smith-invests-in-african-poultry-business/?cf-view).

138See: Sumayya Goga, Simon Roberts, “Multinationals and competition in poultry value chains in South Africa, Zambia, and Malawi”, August 2023, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/375864070; https://comesacompetition.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Website-Notice-MHM-Africa-Poultry-Final.pdf; https://www.cbh.africa/our-story/

139Hy-Line International’s revenue for 2023 is not available, but Novogen reported US$14 million (Capital IQ).

140See: https://www.hendrix-genetics.com/en/about/our-company/corporate-governance/; https://www.hendrix-genetics.com/en/about/our-company/; Basel Musharbash, “Fowl Play: How Chicken Genetics Barons Created the Egg Crisis”, 12 March 2025, https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/fowl-play-how-chicken-genetics-barons. [Exchange rate used to convert the company’s revenue from Eur to USD is: 1,081488].

141See: FAO, “World Food and Agriculture – Statistical Yearbook 2024”, 2024, https://doi.org/10.4060/cd2971en (p. 18).

142See: https://m.efeedlink.com/contents/10-03-2023/2bd8ee3b-3f18-4842-8948-c9a4018d9e08-0511.html#:~:text=China%27s%20poultry%20layer%20industry%20is%20partially%20reliant,the%20production%20capacity%20to%20produce%20twice%20the; https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/N-VWGnOKnRCCBiaNV8bZXA

143See: Basel Musharbash, “Hatching a conspiracy: A BIG investigation into egg prices”, 7 March 2025, https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/hatching-a-conspiracy-a-big-investigation; Basel Musharbash, “Fowl play: How chicken genetics barons created the egg crisis”, 12 March 2025, https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/fowl-play-how-chicken-genetics-barons; Farm Action, “Farm Action calls for an investigation into skyrocketing egg prices and restricted supply”, 12 February 2025, https://farmaction.us/farm-action-calls-for-an-investigation-into-skyrocketing-egg-prices-and-restricted-supply/

144 https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/ResearchInsight/animal-genetic-industry.asp

145Idoko-Akoh, A., Goldhill, D.H., Sheppard, C.M. et al. “Creating resistance to avian influenza infection through genome editing of the ANP32 gene family”. Nat Commun 14, 6136 (2023), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-41476-3

Source: Grain

SPECIAL REPORTS AND PROJECTS

Maasai demand Volkswagen pull out of carbon offset scheme on their lands

Published

3 months ago

July 24, 2025

witnessradio.org

Maasai Indigenous people in Tanzania have called on Volkswagen (VW) to withdraw from a controversial carbon credits scheme which violates their rights and threatens to wreck their livelihoods.

In a statement, the Maasai International Solidarity Alliance (MISA) denounced the “loss of control or use” of vital Maasai grazing grounds, and accused VW of making “false and misleading claims” about Maasai participation in decision making about the project.

Many Maasai pastoralists have already been evicted from large parts of their grazing lands for national parks and game reserves, with highly lucrative tourist businesses operating in them. Now a major new carbon-credit generating project by Volkswagen ClimatePartner (VWCP) and US-based carbon offset company Soils for the Future Tanzania is taking control of large parts of their remaining lands, and threatening livelihoods by upending long-standing Maasai grazing practices.

The Maasai have not given their free, prior and informed consent for the project. They fear it will restrict their access to crucial refuge areas in times of drought, and threaten their food security.

Ngisha Sinyok, a Maasai community member from Eluai village, which is struggling to withdraw from the project, told Survival: “Our livestock is going to be depleted. We will end up not having a single cow.” Asked about VW’s involvement in the project, he replied, “It is not a solution to climate change. It is just a business for people to make money using our environment. It has nothing to do with climate change.”

Another Maasai man, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, said: “They use their money to control us.” A third said: “Maasailand never had a price tag. In Maasailand, there is no privatization. Our land is communal.”

Survival International’s Director of Research and Advocacy, Fiona Watson, said today: “The carbon project that Volkswagen supports violates the Maasai’s rights and will be disastrous for their lives, all so the company can carry on polluting and greenwash its image. It takes away the Maasai’s control over their own lands and relies on the false and colonial assumption that they are destroying their lands — which is not supported by evidence.

“The Maasai have been grazing cattle on the plains of East Africa since time immemorial. They know the land and how to manage it better than carbon project developers seeking to make millions from their lands.”

VW’s investment in the project, whose official name is the “Longido and Monduli Rangelands Carbon Project”, is believed to run to several million dollars, and has contributed to corruption and tensions in northern Tanzania, according to MISA’s report on the project.

An adjacent project in southern Kenya, also run by Soils for the Future, is beset with similar problems, and has already sparked resistance from local communities.

Survival International’s Blood Carbon report revealed that the whole basis for these “soil carbon” projects is flawed, and unsupported by evidence. Survival documented similar problems with the highly controversial Northern Kenya Grasslands Carbon Project. That project suffered a blow in a Kenyan court and was suspended and put under review by Verra, the carbon credit verification agency, for an unprecedented second time.

Source: Survival International

SPECIAL REPORTS AND PROJECTS

Seizing the Jubilee moment: Cancel the debt to unlock Africa’s clean energy future

Published

3 months ago

July 12, 2025

witnessradio.org

Africa has the resources and the vision for a just energy transition, but it is trapped in a financial system structured to take more than it gives. In this blog, we outline how debt burdens and climate impacts are holding the continent back, and looks at the role of institutions that shape the global financial order, like the World Bank, African Development Bank and IMF. As these institutions and governments meet in Seville for FfD4, we urge them to heed people’s calls for reform: cancel the debt, redistribute the wealth, and fund the just transition. — By Rajneesh Bhuee and Lola Allen

With 60% of the world’s best solar energy resources and 70% of the cobalt essential for electric vehicle batteries, the African continent has everything it needs to power its development and become a global reference point for sustainable energy production. That potential, however, remains largely untapped; Africa receives just 2% of global renewable energy investment. As the UNCTAD Secretary-General Rebeca Grynspan warns, too many countries are forced to “default on their development to avoid defaulting on their debt.”

The cost of servicing unsustainable debts, layered with new loan-based climate and development finance, leaves governments with little fiscal space to invest in clean energy, health or education. In 2022 alone, African countries spent more than $100 billion on debt servicing, over twice what they spent on health or education. Add to this the $90 billion lost annually to illicit financial flows, and the reality is stark: more money leaves the continent through financial leakages (also including unfair trade and extractive investment) than comes in through productive, equitable and development-oriented finance.

These are not isolated problems. They reflect a financial system that has been built to serve global markets rather than people. Between 2020 and 2025, four African countries defaulted on their external debts, that is, they failed to make scheduled repayments to creditors like the International Monetary Fund or bondholders, triggering fiscal crises and, in several cases, IMF interventions tied to austerity measures. Pope Francis’ Jubilee Report (2025) and hundreds of civil society groups argue that these defaults reflect the deeper crisis of unsustainable debt. Meanwhile, 24 more African countries are now in or near debt distress. None have successfully restructured their debts under the G20 Common Framework, a mechanism launched in 2020 to facilitate debt relief among public and private creditors. The Framework has been widely criticised for being slow, opaque and ineffective. According to Eurodad, without urgent systemic reforms, up to 47 Global South countries, home to over 1.1 billion people, face insolvency risks within five years if they attempt to meet climate and development goals.

How debt undermines the just energy transition

Debt has become both a driver and a symptom of climate injustice. Countries that did the least to cause the climate crisis now pay the highest price, twice over. First, they suffer the impacts. Second, they must borrow to rebuild.

This is happening just as concessional finance disappears. The US has withdrawn from the African Development Fund’s concessional window (worth $550m), yet maintains influence over private-sector lending. It has also opted out of the UN Financing for Development Conference (FfD4), a historic opportunity to confront the injustice of our financial system. Meanwhile, European governments, though now celebrating themselves as defenders of multilateralism, played a key role in weakening the outcome of FfD4, slashing aid budgets, redirecting funds toward militarisation, and systematically blocking proposals for a UN-led sovereign debt workout mechanism. With rising insecurity and geopolitical tensions, these actions send a troubling signal: at a moment when global cooperation is urgently needed, many Global North countries are stepping back from efforts to fix the very system that is preventing climate justice and clean energy for much of the Global South.

A role for the AfDB?

The African Development Bank (AfDB), under incoming president Sidi Ould Tah , has made progressive commitments of $10 billion to climate-resilient infrastructure and $4 billion to clean cooking. Between 2022 and 2024, one in five (20%) of its energy dollars were grants, far exceeding The World Bank ‘s 10% and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) ‘s 3.8%. The AfDB has also backed systemic reform: for example, calling for Special Drawing Rights (SDR) redistribution, launching an African Financial Stability Mechanism that could save up to $20 billion in debt servicing, and consistently advocating for fairer lending terms.

Yet, even progressive leadership struggles within a broken system. Recourse’s recent research shows that AfDB energy finance dropped 67% in 2024, from $992.7 million to just $329.6 million. Of this, a staggering 73% went to large-scale infrastructure like mega hydro dams and export-focused transmission lines, ‘false solutions’ that bypass the energy-poor and displace communities. Meanwhile, support for locally-appropriate, decentralised renewable energy systems such as mini-grids, solar appliances, and clean cookstoves plummeted by over 90%, from $694.5 million to just $61 million, with only five of 13 projects directly addressing energy access in 2024.

Africa received just 2.8% of global climate finance in 2021–22, and what is labelled as “climate finance” is often little more than a Trojan horse: resource-backed loans, debt-for-nature swaps, and blended finance instruments that shift risk to the public while offering little real benefit to local communities. These mechanisms, promoted as “innovative” or “green”, often entrench financial dependency and fail to deliver meaningful change for energy-poor or climate-vulnerable groups.

Meanwhile, initiatives that could build green industry and renewable capacity across Africa are falling short in both scale and speed. Flagship projects, such as the EU’s Global Gateway, have failed to drive green industrialisation in Africa, and carbon markets continue to delay real emissions reductions, subsidise fossil fuel interests, and entrench elite control over land and resources.

Mission 300: Ambition or another missed opportunity?

In this constrained context, the AfDB and World Bank launched Mission 300, an ambitious plan to connect 300 million Africans to electricity by 2030. Pragmatic goals like electrification are crucial, but the story beneath the surface of Mission 300 raises concern. Far from serving households, many projects under the initiative appear more aligned with export markets and large-scale energy users, echoing decades of infrastructure that bypasses those most in need.

Mission 300 can still be transformative, but only if it centres people, not profits. Energy access must begin with those who need it most: women and youth, especially in rural communities. Across Africa, many women cook over open fires, walk hours to gather fuel, and care for families in homes without light or clean air. This is not just an inconvenience, it is structural violence and policy failure.

Yet most energy finance still flows to centralised grids, mega-projects, and sometimes fossil gas (misleadingly called a “transition fuel”). These do little to address energy poverty. Locally appropriate decentralised renewable energy solutions, solar-powered appliances, clean cookstoves, and mini-grids can deliver faster, cheaper, and more equitable impact. Mission 300 must invest in such solutions, without adding to existing debt problems. It should support national policy design, for example, by ensuring that energy policy is responsive to women’s needs, making use of gender-disaggregated data and community consultation.

The Jubilee: A year for action

In a year already marked as a Jubilee moment, African leaders have demanded reform: including a sovereign debt workout mechanism and a UN Tax Convention to end illicit financial flows. Yet as AFRODAD has documented, these demands were blocked at the FfD4 negotiations by wealthy nations—notably the EU and UK—even as climate impacts grow and fiscal space shrinks.

This is not just about finance. It is about reclaiming sovereignty. The incoming AfDB president and all the multilateral development banks face a choice: continue financing extractive, large-scale projects that serve foreign interests, or invest in decentralised, gender-responsive, pro-people solutions that shift power and ownership.

Africa has the resources. What it needs is fiscal space, public-led finance, and global rules that prioritise people and planet over profit. The Jubilee call is clear: cancel the debt, redistribute the wealth, and fund the just transition.

Source: Recourse through LinkedIn Account Recourse.

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