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WWF apologises for human rights abuse allegations and commits to an indigenous-led approach to global conservation

Published

4 years ago

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Gland, 26 May 2021 – IN LIGHT OF EVIDENCE OF SERIOUS HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES, WWF commits to reparations for victims and to a long-term strategy which, for the first time, prioritizes indigenous people’s land rights and promotes community-led conservation across WWF-supported areas.

In January 2021, the WWF International Board began an internal revision of the remedial action taken by the organisation following the findings and recommendations of the Embedding Human Rights in Nature Conservation: From Intent to Action report. This process, supported by all 35 boards of WWF’s constituent members, has determined that WWF’s initial response to the Independent Panel’s investigation on alleged human rights abuses in and around WWF-supported areas failed to adequately compensate victims or deal with the shortcomings within WWF as well as partner organisations, that enabled these abuses. The widespread harm caused to local communities by WWF-supported conservation efforts suggests an ambitious project of reform is necessary to ensure WWF is able to protect Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs) rights everywhere we work.

“We need to radically transform the way we envision and approach conservation, moving away from “easy-fix” climate and environmental solutions that continue to harm indigenous people and frontline communities. This redesigning process must prioritize community-led conservation, placing IPLCs at the centre of conservation and land management initiatives. Indigenous people are the most effective environmental custodians which should make securing their rights over their customary lands our number one priority. It is not simply a matter of human rights and international law, but about supporting the best solution we have against this climate and ecological crisis” said Marco Lambertini, Director General, WWF International.

Conservation works best when local communities are put at the heart of it. Working to secure the community tenure of indigenous peoples and local communities will empower those best equipped to look after their local environment and is the best way to conserve all our planet’s natural wonders.

Acknowledging and apologising for The Independent Panel’s findings:

In April 2019 the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) commissioned a panel of global human rights and conservation experts to conduct a systemic review of WWF practices and provide recommendations in regards to alleged human rights abuses in and around protected areas supported by WWF in Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Republic of Congo, Nepal and India.

The report’s key findings:

  •  Allegations across the protected ares in question include multiple instances of murder, rape, torture, unlawful arrest and detention, physical beatings, corruption, complicity in poaching, and destruction and theft of personal property committed by WWF-supported ecoguards against IPLCs.
  • WWF had knowledge of alleged human rights abuses in every protected area under review and failed to investigate credible allegations of abuse in half of those protected areas.
  • WWF continued to fund, train and equip eco-guards alleged to have committed human rights abuses despite knowledge of those allegations and without taking adequate steps to operationalize safeguarding and human rights protection protocols designed to protect IPLCS.
  • Where WWF did conduct investigations into these abuses they came several years after allegations were first made and only following pressure from the media and/or civil society.
  • Where WWF was involved in the creation of protected areas, it failed to ensure the effective participation of IPLCs and thus violated their right to free,prior and informed consent.
  • The Panel found no agreement in place between WWF and the local authorities responsible for park administration to ensure the upholding of the human rights and FPIC rights of IPLCS.

An official apology

In light of these findings, we unreservedly apologise to the indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) of the areas under review, and to any other individual or community that has been subject to similar abuses in and around other WWF-supported protected areas.

Moreover, we want to take responsibility for the violent evictions of IPLCs carried out by WWF-supported ecoguards and for the impacts that their eviction from their lands has had on these IPLCs, including loss of culture and livelihoods, and increased malnutrition.

We also want to apologise to our supporters, donors, volunteers and readers for not having immediately disclosed allegations of human rights abuses in WWF affiliated parks. We have a responsibility of full transparency to all those who support and believe in our work.

Reparations

To adequately compensate victims of human-rights abuses carried out by WWF supported projects in the seven countries originally investigated in the Panel’s report, WWF have set aside $2 million dollars. The processing of reparations claims will be overseen by indigenous leaders and representatives from the communities affected.

We fear that the inadequate nature of our previous grievance procedures has prevented many other victims of human rights abuses from reporting injustices. Since we cannot at this stage be certain of the scale of abuses WWF programmes are implicated in we are setting aside a further $5 million for future claims.

Transforming our approach

The WFF international board has concluded that the scale and severity of the problems identified by the Panel in the protected areas reviewed demonstrate endemic flaws in WWF’s operational approach. These have resulted in the systematic eviction of indigenous people from their customary lands, their exclusion from leadership positions in local conservation projects and the militarisation of protected areas’ security forces.

Following the Panel’s recommendations and in compliance with our human rights commitments we have already started to take remedial action. The Management Response and initial measures taken can be found here. Below is a list of further measures we are committed to implement across all protected areas WWF supports, in order to turn the page and build a conservation model that safeguards local communities’ human rights and actively supports indigenous people’s claims to their customary lands.

In protected areas where rights abuses have been alleged we will:

  • Commission independent indigenous peoples’ committees to review the original investigations.
  • Work alongside indigenous leaders to ensure the resolution of allegations by compensating victims and working with local authorities to prosecute the perpetrators.
  • Establish externally supervised safeguards to prevent further abuses.

In all WWF- supported protected areas and conservation initiatives we commit to:

  • Initiate independent reviews of the effects of protected areas on local communities’ rights.
  • Freeze all funding towards protected areas and other conservation initiatives where human rights abuses have been reported until allegations have been resolved, externally supervised safeguard mechanisms established, and all victims adequately compensated.
  • Adopt concrete measures to identify and hold accountable all members of the organization that have been responsible for WWF negligence, ineffective response and direct involvement in alleged human rights abuses, including staff members in individual countries, the WWF senior management team and board members.
  • Work with local and indigenous communities to co-design accessible and inclusive pathways to submit complaints and report any issues with ongoing conservation initiatives through.
  • Carry out new independent free, prior and Informed consent processes with impacted local communities in all current and proposed protected areas; empowering communities to decide how and whether they wish to work with WWF to support their own conservation efforts.
  • Use WWF influence to actively support, at local, national and international levels indigenous people’s claims over their customary lands and their efforts to secure legal ownership rights and conservation responsibilities over such territories.
  • Withdraw financial and practical support to partners and collaborators who fail to support indigenous people’s rights and claims to customary land.

Commenting on the internal revision, Pavan Sukhdev, President of WWF International, said:

“From the report’s findings it is clear that for decades our negligence, and in some instances direct involvement with episodes of violence and abuse, have caused serious emotional, physical and psychological harm to individuals and entire communities across the world. We need to acknowledge that and take responsibility for our role in these allegations. There is no excuse and a formal apology is not enough. We can and need to do better. We need to ensure that the measures that we commit to take forward go beyond minor changes and embody our first step towards a real transformation of our work and ethos.”

Open Letter to WWF

WWF, you are the most well-known environmental organisations in the world: you have great power and an even greater responsibility. However, time and again your projects have dispossessed and abused Indigenous and local communities. You claim that they endanger the ecosystems they have cared for long before you entered their lands. On the other hand, you collaborate with the very same corporations that actually destroy biodiversity, greenwashing their destructive practices. For the sake of justice and the survival of ecosystems worldwide, stop legitimising violence and human rights abuses in the name of conservation. Instead, become an ally to Indigenous people, local communities, and the Global Majority.

For too long you have been dividing humans from nature by building walls; imposing a colonial model called ‘Fortress conservation’, which places conservation in direct conflict with human rights.

You dictate who is “unauthorised” in the lands you enter. You fund, train and legitimise militarised eco-guards who violently evict local communities from their homes. You act on the dangerous and false colonial ideology that perceives human presence as a threat to the ecosystem, except if they are wealthy, predominantly white tourists. You demonise and prevent indigenous and local people from hunting sustainably to feed themselves, but have encouraged trophy hunting for super-rich tourists. This model, based on separation and colonial values, is a violent lie that supports white supremacy – it is, to put it simply, ecofascism.

Fortress conservation is putting us all in danger, as it is further destroying the connection between land and people. It is destroying the cultures who have taken care of and regenerated that land for hundreds of years. This makes you complicit in the historic colonial violence against local and indigenous communities. Their cultures hold rich and powerful counterstories that teach the interdependence and deep connection between humans, the earth and all beings, which so many of us need to rediscover.

This failure of WWF concerns us all because it directly affects both the people and the planet. A recent report by an independent panel of experts shows a shocking history of murder, rape, torture, and violence committed by the eco-guards that WWF funds, equips and manages. This report goes even further in revealing that you have had knowledge of this, yet you continue to fund them. This is simply appalling.

From the Republic of Congo to Nepal, and India to Cameroon, these are not a few ‘bad apples’ but inherent aspects of the oppressive colonial conservation model you employ, and that dominates the conservation sector. Communities are losing their lands, their homes and ways of life, threatening them with starvation, disease and the loss of their human dignity. Dividing communities from their land and livelihoods will always be violent.

Many of the people on your boards are financing, working or lobbying for some of the most environmentally destructive companies on Earth. How can the same people who are destroying the global ecosystem lead and fund its preservation? It’s absurd that we need to say this, but the people leading you should not be those profiting from ecocide.

You invest your supporters’ donations into heavily polluting industries, such as fossil fuels and agribusiness, and partner with them. You receive donations from logging and palm oil companies and let them cut through the same forests you claim to protect.

To put it bluntly, WWF has a profound conflict of interest, and is working with, rather than against, those destroying life on Earth. Rather than challenging those industries, you greenwash them, allowing them to expand their destruction. It is pitiful for an environmental organisation to simply ask companies to slow down their destruction of our home: you must join the global environmental movement in demanding they stop immediately!

WWF, you have betrayed the Global Family. In frontline communities your betrayal means violence. To your supporters your betrayal means broken promises and complicity.

Your organisation has sold us the image of being the ‘good guys’ in an evil world of environmental destruction. From an early age, your iconic panda has playfully filled our cultural consciousness; clambering into our classrooms; filling our shelves with fluffy tokenistic toys, and our minds with idealised imagery of the “pristine wilderness” that serves your marketing strategy.

We entrusted you with the fight for the planet, raising tens of millions of pounds from our pockets as public donors in the UK alone. Yet rather than using this power to support the mobilisation of social and ecological movements of solidarity, you use the power of marketing; you sell us the ridiculous story that simply purchasing, petitioning and running marathons will “save the planet”! You reduce activism to mass consumption – the rotten core of the environmental crisis – making your supporters’ actions hollow and meaningless. You take the struggle for survival of life on earth and make it into a brand. You then use our money, our agency and our validation to make us complicit in outrageous acts of violence and human rights abuses against our brothers and sisters around the world. Through you, we too become tools of fortress conservation and capitalism’s violence.

However, we in the Minority World/Global North are not the real victims of your betrayal. Your failure to serve those with the capacity of preserving the ecosystems you claim to protect is your betrayal to humanity. Those communities are the heart of the resistance to ecocide.

The same people you are persecuting have been caring for the land, their home, for hundreds of years, and are essential to its flourishing. There is increasingly clear evidence on the key role of indigenous communities in already safeguarding 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity, and therefore many conservation bodies call on all organisations to support their land rights. Often Indigenous and community-managed lands have even higher biodiversity and less deforestation than national parks and wildlife reserves. They don’t only slow down degradation, but actually improve the state of the ecosystem. By ignoring these scientific facts you are harming nature – the very thing you claim to be protecting. Why are you oppressing the people who are doing conservation better than you?

WWF, you must advocate for the land and human rights of local and indigenous communities, supporting their cultural, political and ecological work. Even if a community is degrading their ecosystem, any conservation initiative must be led by a dialogue among equals working together. It must support local livelihoods, and enable community-led learning for regeneration that is based on equity and justice. Ultimately, conservation works best when local communities are empowered at the heart of their local environments.

You are already taking steps in this direction in Latin America; so why do you attack communities elsewhere? You must not simply “involve” communities in an imposed neoliberal agenda based on ‘development’ and markets – the very same things that destroy our planet.

You must rethink your role as a supporting one: you are not the protagonist in this story. Right now, in fact, you’re the villain. Effective stories of conservation must be co-written and led by the visions, decisions, knowledge and guidance of indigenous and local communities.

WWF, you know the ecological catastrophe we face: yet its urgency must not be reacted to with your current eco-fascist ‘solutions’. If we do not challenge the crisis appropriately, the suffering and deaths will be devastating. You also know that Indigenous’ and local communities’ land rights and cultures are fundamental to the health of their ecosystems, and to their resistance to the corporations that degrade them. Greenwashing and small technical fixes won’t solve this crisis: we need a transformation of our global consciousness that decolonizes the ways we understand and promote conservation. If you keep attacking Indigenous and local communities, working with polluting industries and the governments who serve them, you will continue to be complicit in the ecological catastrophe and guilty of ecofascism. You will continue to fail to represent or be in solidarity with the global environmental and social justice movement.

The best hope for our survival and flourishing is for conservationists to unite with the Indigenous resistance movement, and fight the environmental destruction of governments and industry. Whose side are you on in this struggle for the survival of life on Earth?

We will not stop challenging the WWF to radically dismantle its colonial approach to conservation, until they join us in enacting the following demands:

1- STOP THE HARM:
Immediately stop dispossessing indigenous and local communities of their land. Cease any collaboration or support to organisations and security forces that evict local communities.

2- GROUND CONSERVATION IN JUSTICE:
Transition all your fortress conservation projects to the support of genuine indigenous-led and community-led conservation. Projects must actively advocate and be based upon: recognising land rights, local knowledge, local livelihoods, and social justice. Use your platform and financial leverage to advocate these changes across the whole conservation sector.

3- BE ACCOUNTABLE:
Be accountable by giving control of project funding to local communities, through their own democratic/collective processes. Be transparent through systems of direct people-to-people communication, such as people’s assemblies, between local communities and your supporters.

4- END TOXIC RELATIONSHIPS:
Stop the conflict of interests with those destroying ecosystems: cut financial links with large corporations; fire board members from polluting industries; use your platform to mobilize people to take action and demand an end to corporate ecocide.

Signed by:

Organisations:

  • Survival International
  • Centre for the Anthropology of Sustainability, University College London
  • Association Okani
  • Pan-African Living Cultures Alliance (PALCA)
  • Integrated development Initiatives in Ngorongoro (IDINGO)
  • Front Commun pour la Protection de l’Environnement et des Espaces Protégés
  • Ole Siosiomaga Society Incorporated (OLSSI), SAMOA
  • Fondation Internationale pour le Développement l’Education l’Entreprenariat et la Protection de l’Environnement (FIDEPE)
  • Pastoral Peace Reconciliation Initiative (PPRI)
  • XR Anti-Oppression Circle
  • Rogerio Cumbane/MAKOMANE-ADM (Association for Community Development)
  • XR Internationalist Solidarity Network (XRISN)
  • Skogsupproret (Forest Rebellion)

People:

  • Arturo Escobar (Professor of Anthropology)
  • Katy Molloy (Flourishing Diversity)
  • Fe Haslam (Global Justice Forum – GJF)
  • Francis Shomet Olenaingi’sa
  • Fiore Longo – Survival International
  • Cathryn Townsend
  • Fiu Mataese Elisara – Executive Director of OLSSI
  • Romao Xavier – Programme and Advocacy Coordinator
  • SHAPIOM NONINGO – Technical Secretary GTANW
  • Jose Ines Loria Palma – President of the San Crisanto Foundation
  • Elena Kreuzberg – Consultant on Environmental Issues
  • Maurizio Farhan Ferrari – Senior Policy Adviser on Environmental Governance
  • KOAGNE Clovis – Coordinateur Général Fondation Internationale pour le Développement l’Education l’Entreprenariat et la Protection de l’Environnement (FIDEPE)
  • Milka Chepkorir
  • Samuel Nangiria
  • Kofi Mawuli Klu (XRISN)
  • Esther Stanford-Xosei
  • Jerome Lewis

Original Source: redd-monitor.org

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SPECIAL REPORTS AND PROJECTS

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

Published

2 months ago

on

August 28, 2025

By

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.
click on image for better resolution
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
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].
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.
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].
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,
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].
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].
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$54.6 billion (Globe Newswire, “8 key trends in the global phosphate fertilizer market”, 2 January 2024, https://www.agribusinessglobal.com/plant-health/npk/8-key-trends-in-the-global-phosphate-fertilizer-market/).
64As Jennifer Clapp explains, Mosaic deployed a strong lobbying effort in order the US imposes tariffs on fertiliser imports from Morocco and Russia in 2017. This gave Mosaic control over 90% of the phosphate fertiliser market. In 2023, the US lowered tariffs on Moroccan fertilisers and raised those on Russian phosphate fertilisers (See: Jennifer Clapp, “Titans of industrial agriculture. How a few giant corporations came to dominate the farm sectors and why it matters”, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2025.
65According to K+2, its market share reached 10% in 2023 (K+S Annual report 2023, p. 37, https://www.kpluss.com/.downloads/ir/2024/kpluss-annual-report-2023.pdf).
66GRAIN and IATP, “A corporate cartel fertilises food inflation”, 23 May 2023, https://grain.org/e/6988
67See: Jennifer Clapp, “Titans of industrial agriculture. How a few giant corporations came to dominate the farm sectors and why it matters”, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2025; and GRAIN, “Regenerative agriculture was a good idea, until corporations got hold of it”, 1 December 2023, https://grain.org/e/7067
69Sidhi Mittal, “PepsiCo launches regenerative potato farming programme”, 22 April 2025, https://www.edie.net/pepisco-launches-regenerative-potato-farming-programme/
71See for example: Inkota, “Green synthetic fertilisers: solution for soil, climate, water and communities or a dead end?”, 2024, https://www.inkota.de/sites/default/files/2024-12/greenfertilzer_discussionpaper_Final_%20ENG.pdf; and ODG, “The hydrogen trail”, 2024, https://odg.cat/en/publication/publication-the-hydrogen-trail/
72Nutrien Annual report 2023, https://www.nutrien.com/investors/financial-reporting. Includes: retail crop nutrients value (US$ 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).
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
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].
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
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/
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
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
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).
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
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]
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.
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
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).
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/
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

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

Published

3 months ago

on

July 24, 2025

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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.

 

“The people have said ‘No to carbon’”

 

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

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

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4 months ago

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July 12, 2025

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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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