Fertilizer companies dominate climate and agriculture negotiations

Fertilizer companies are among the worst climate villains in the world and their products could be responsible for up to 10 percent of the global emission of greenhouse gases, not to mention the damage caused to waterways, soils and water. ozone layer. This is supported by a new report by GRAIN that denounces that fertilizer companies have infiltrated the main processes of defining policies on agriculture and climate, positioning chemical fertilizers as the solution to climate change and weakening support for agriculture without chemicals. Under the banner of "climate-smart agriculture," fertilizer companies partnered with other food corporations and agribusinesses to lobby for voluntary programs run by corporations that promote the use of fertilizers. Among them is the climate-smart agriculture program of Wal-Mart or the New Vision for Agriculture of the World Economic Forum. Fertilizer companies even maintain their influence within the only intergovernmental initiative that has emerged so far on climate change and agriculture. The founding members and the steering committee of the Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture, created in 2014 at the United Nations Climate Change Summit, have a strong presence of fertilizer companies, façade groups and organizations. associated with them. "Fertilizer companies, like Yara in Norway, are the Exxons of agriculture," says Henk Hobbelink, GRAIN coordinator. "They promote an agricultural model that is destroying the planet and they do everything possible to block any action related to climate change that could damage their profits." According to the GRAIN report, recent studies show that the total contribution of chemical fertilizers to climate change has been drastically underestimated. These studies suggest that nitrous oxide emissions due to the use of chemical fertilizers are between 3 and 5 times higher than those reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The outdated figures of the IPCC also do not take into account the global increases in the production of fertilizers, the increase in the use of shale gas as a raw material or the destructive impact of chemical fertilizers on organic matter, the most important carbon reservoir in the world. . "Today we can say that this year the use of chemical fertilizers will generate more greenhouse gas emissions than the total emissions from all the cars and trucks that circulate in the United States," says Devlin Kuyek, a researcher at GRAIN. "The good news is that there is a quick solution to this problem: a shift, globally, towards agroecological practices, which can achieve, without chemicals, similar yields" added Kuyek Research shows that farmers can end the use of chemical fertilizers without reducing yields by adopting agroecological practices. That was the conclusion supported by the 2008 International Assessment of the Role of Knowledge, Science and Technology in Agricultural Development (IAASTD), a three-year intergovernmental process that involved more than 400 scientists and was sponsored by the World Bank. and all the relevant United Nations agencies. "We can easily get rid of our addiction to toxic fertilizers in our food systems, when we remove the shackles that the fertilizer industry has put on representatives and international officials," says Hobbelink. "This should start by canceling the Global Alliance for Climate Smart Agriculture and pulling the lobbying group out of the COP21 talks in Paris in favor of the fertilizer industry." Access the full report of GRAIN, "The Exxons of Agriculture", available online at the following link: https://www.grain.org/e/5276 Ecoportal.net SERVINDI http://servindi.org/ If you find this note interesting, do not hesitate to share it. Your contacts will be grateful. Here you can also subscribe to our weekly and FREE electronic publication To subscribe to our Weekly News Publication, place your e-mail below These articles may also interest you