– Big agrobusinesses are co-opting regenerative agriculture, distorting it to fit a business-as-usual agenda as a greenwashing tactic.
– True regenerative agriculture originates from and is led by BIPOC, peasant, and Majority World farmers and food workers, not large agrochemical companies from the Global North.
– Regenerative agriculture seeks to mimic the dynamics of a natural ecosystem and does not include monoculture or chemical input for fertilization.
– There is no one-size-fits-all approach, as it’s adaptive to the local environment and community.
– Agrochemical companies like Yara strive for the opposite: to control every aspect of nature to maximise yields and increase profits.
– Dependence on continuous chemical input is not regenerative!
– Yara is one of the biggest producers of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers in the world.
– Synthetic nitrogen fertilizers contribute to more than 20% of greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture, is entirely dependent on fossil fuels, depletes the soil, hinders carbon sequestration, and harms local biodiversity.
– Yara is Europe’s biggest corporate buyer of fossil gas and has spent €11.8bn on corporate lobbying in the EU from 2011-19.
– Although Yara uses a narrative of an urgency to “feed the world”, we don’t actually have a food shortage crisis, we have a food price crisis—and the fertilizer industry is profiting hugely from our current increased cost of living.
– Yara also uses this justification to spread their poison in the Global South, where farmers are pressured into synthetic fertilizer dependence.
– The “regenerative agriculture” that Yara promotes depletes the soil, only increases crop yield for a limited time before creating a dependence on synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, drastically decreases biodiversity both in the soil and surrounding environments, and leaves farmers trapped and indebted.
– ASEED actively campaigns against misinformation about sustainable agriculture spread by corporations such as Yara.
Sources:
A fertiliser cartel holds the global food system hostage – by GRAIN
Yara: Poisoning our soils, burning our planet. A profile of EU lobbying by the Norwegian fertilizer company – by Corporate Europe Observatory
Yara: the fertiliser giant causing climate catastrophe – by Corporate Watch
Report: Fertilizer responsible for more than 20 percent of total agricultural emissions – by The Fern
‘Sustainable isn’t a thing’: why regenerative agriculture is food’s latest buzzword – by The Guardian
What is Regenerative Agriculture? – video
