Big Ag

Challenging Land Use and Abuse In Allamakee County

November 14, 2024 Dave Rollo, Resilience. Strategize! Big Ag, Factory Farming, Iowa, Land defenders, Land Rights, Mining

Allamakee County lies in the northeast corner of Iowa, bordering Minnesota and Wisconsin. It is part of a three-state region that, unlike most of the upper United States and Canada, escaped glaciation during past ice ages. This geological oddity is immediately obvious to visitors by the dramatic terrain of bluffs, hills, and valleys. Expansive plains characterize most of the rest of Iowa, where miles-thick glaciers moved over the land like a bulldozer, lowering elevated areas, filling in depressions, and depositing rich, deep till. In contrast, the unglaciated northeast of Iowa, referred to as the Paleozoic Plateau for the geologic era of ancient sea bed limestones visible at the surface, contains thin soils and exposed bedrock.

Mapped: How Big Industries Hope To Sway The UN Biodiversity Talks

October 30, 2024 Hazel Healy and Rachel Sherrington, DeSmog. Educate! Activism, Big Ag, Big Pharma, Biodiversity, Colombia, COP16, Environment, Finance and the Economy, Food and Agriculture, Pesticides, Social Justice, United Nations (UN)

Under thundery tropical skies, and amid ever more dire warnings on the precarious state of the world’s ecosystems, the United Nations Biodiversity Conference is unfolding in Colombia. This year’s summit, known as COP16, follows on from the last biodiversity conference held in Montréal in 2022, when negotiators struck an historic deal – the equivalent of the Paris Agreement on climate change – to “halt and reverse” nature loss. Now, government representatives from nearly 200 countries, along with scientists, Indigenous groups, and environmental activists, are gathered in the southern city of Cali to negotiate how to put this plan into action: protect earth’s habitats and the people who depend on them.

Industrial Fishing Undermines World’s Greatest Carbon Sink

October 24, 2024 Sophie Kevany, DeSmog. Educate! Aquaculture, Big Ag, Carbon sequestration, Environment, Fishing, Food

Fish is often sold as the perfect climate-friendly dinner: highly nutritious and lower carbon than other forms of protein. But new research is increasingly bringing some of these eco marketing claims into question. In part, because industrial fishing – scientists and campaigners say – is weakening the ocean’s ability to act as a carbon sink. Over the last 60 years, the ocean, forests and other natural carbon sinks have absorbed over half of all man-made emissions, slowing down global warming. Yet, as temperatures rise, scientists warn such processes could be on the brink of collapse.

Big Ag Uses ‘Regenerative Agriculture’ To Mask Business-As-Usual

October 23, 2024 Rachel Sherrington, DeSmog. Educate! Big Ag, False Solutions, Food and Agriculture, Report

During September’s Climate Week in New York City, the world’s major food companies lined up to share their pro-nature credentials, claiming that they are embracing “regenerative agriculture” practices that will reduce their massive carbon footprint. However, a new report finds that multinational food and ag companies – such as Cargill, Bayer and Unilever – which are using the term, have barely changed how they do business. A total of 30 major agriculture companies were analysed in the report, which was released in September by the New Climate Institute. It found that while around 80 percent of the firms were heavily referencing the phrase “regenerative agriculture” in their climate and sustainability strategies, only a third had targets, and many lacked specifics on how plans would be implemented, or applied them to just small subsets of their total operations.

Big Ag’s Road To Brazil

September 24, 2024 Rachel Sherrington and Hazel Healy, DeSmog. Educate! Big Ag, Brazil, climate crisis, COP30, emissions, Energy, Food and Agriculture, G20, New York (NY)

This week, as business and government leaders, investors and campaigners gather for New York Climate Week, DeSmog is relaunching its big agriculture series, which will scrutinise the power of food and farming companies. Agriculture used to play second fiddle to energy when it came to global warming, considered as a nice-to-have. But as global heating continues apace, emissions associated with food are rising fast. Nitrous oxide – a planet-heating gas nearly 300 times as potent as CO2 when measured over 100 years – is accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere at unprecedented levels. Levels of methane – another powerful greenhouse gas critical to reducing emissions – have soared since the start of the decade and are showing “no hint of decline”.

Big Food, Big Profits, Big Lies

June 11, 2024 Veronica Riccobene, Portside. Educate! Big Ag, Corporatism, Food and Agriculture, Inflation

As food costs have skyrocketed for Americans, some of the country’s biggest chains and grocery brands, including General Mills, PepsiCo, and Tyson, have blamed the price hikes on supply chain issues and economywide inflation. But behind the scenes, these companies have expanded profits and quietly authorized billions of dollars in lucrative stock buyback programs and dividend payouts to shareholders.

Over 600 Attacks Against 20,000 Human Rights Defenders In 2023

May 9, 2024 The Canary. Educate! Big Ag, Human Rights Defenders, Mining, Violence

Mining, big agribusiness, and the fossil fuel sectors have unleashed an astronomical spate of attacks on human rights defenders (HRDs) throughout 2023. Crucially, perpetrators linked to companies and projects in these sectors account for the majority of over 600 attacks across the course of the year. This is according to a new damning report by the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC). Staggering scale of attacks against human rights defenders On Tuesday 7 May, the BHRRC published its annual briefing on attacks against HRDs. Alarmingly, the data recorded 630 attacks which directly impacted an estimated 20,000 people. In particular, these were those involved in speaking out against business-related harms during 2023.

What Are ‘Food Barons’ And Why Should You Care?

April 30, 2024 Charlie Hope D’Anieri, Portside. Educate! Big Ag, Food and Agriculture, History, Monopolies

I’ve known Austin Frerick since 2019, when he was a researcher at the Open Markets Institute. After he became a fellow at Yale’s Thurmond Arnold Project, another anti-monopoly thinktank, we collaborated to report a feature for Vox on “The Hog Barons.” He’s gone on to expand this idea to a full book, titled Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry, that provides a portrait of our food system through stories of its oligarchs. Austin enlisted me for some editorial consultation while the book was under contract, and today I asked him a few questions about the book and how it helps us understand American food system.

Farm Organizations Announce National ‘Enough Is Enough Tour’

April 22, 2024 Farm Action. Organize! Big Ag, Congress, Farm Bill, Farmers, Food and Agriculture

Sixteen farm organizations announced the launch of the national Enough Is Enough Tour in protest of government policies that drive consolidation of the food system into the hands of the largest multinational corporations to the detriment of farmers and ranchers. With Congress preparing to debate the farm bill during prime planting and calving season, restricting farmers’ and ranchers’ ability to bring their voices to Washington D.C., farm groups will gather at events in at least five states to call on members of Congress to deliver a bill that levels the playing field.

US Banks ‘Sabotaging’ Climate Targets By Financing Meat And Dairy

April 6, 2024 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. Educate! Banks, Big Ag, Carbon emissions, climate crisis, net zero, Report

A new study has found that 58 banks in the United States are “sabotaging” their own net-zero commitments by providing financing to meat, dairy and animal feed corporations. Research for the report, Bull in the Climate Shop: Industrial livestock financing sabotages major U.S. banks’ climate commitments, was conducted by U.S. environmental nonprofit Friends of the Earth and Profundo, a research group based in the Netherlands. From 2016 to 2023, $134 billion in loans and underwriting was provided to meat, dairy, food processing, animal feed and agri-commodity corporations by 58 U.S. banks, according to the report.

The Livestock Industry Has Side-Stepped Scrutiny Again

March 14, 2024 Michaela Herrmann, DeSmog. Educate! Big Ag, Congress, Food and Agriculture, Livestock, Regulations, SEC

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) made headlines around the world this week by voting to move forward with rules that will require public companies to disclose climate-related business risks to investors. Some lawmakers have welcomed the mandate from the U.S.’s most powerful financial regulator, which will now force firms to share at least some emissions data. But climate and environment campaigners are concerned about loopholes in the new rules, which have failed to include “Scope 3,” i.e. indirect, greenhouse gas emissions.

Meat Industry Using ‘Misinformation’ To Block Dietary Change

March 3, 2024 Clare Carlile, DeSmog. Educate! Big Ag, Big Meat, Food and Agriculture, Media, misinformation, Report

The agriculture sector has spent millions of dollars on discrediting plant-based diets, a new report has claimed. The report, published by the consumer advocacy organisation Freedom Food Alliance on Thursday (29 February), found that multinational meat companies and lobby groups were using industry-funded research, public ad campaigns and educational materials to sway public opinion on meat and dairy. The Disinformation Report: Harvesting Denial, Distractions & Deception suggests that the industry is sidestepping accountability for its role in greenhouse emissions.

Prisoners Are A Hidden Workforce Linked To Popular Food Brands

February 3, 2024 Margie Mason and Robin McDowell, New York Amsterdam News. Educate! Big Ag, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Food and Agriculture, Prison Labor, Slavery, Wages, Worker Rights

Angola, LA - A hidden path to America’s dinner tables begins here, at an unlikely source – a former Southern slave plantation that is now the country’s largest maximum-security prison. Unmarked trucks packed with prison-raised cattle roll out of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, where men are sentenced to hard labor and forced to work, for pennies an hour or sometimes nothing at all. After rumbling down a country road to an auction house, the cows are bought by a local rancher and then followed by The Associated Press another 600 miles to a Texas slaughterhouse that feeds into the supply chains of giants like McDonald’s, Walmart and Cargill.

Sequestering Carbon In Soils Isn’t Enough To Offset Livestock Emissions

February 3, 2024 Paige Bennett, EcoWatch. Educate! Big Ag, Carbon emissions, Carbon sequestration, climate crisis, Farming

A new study highlights the risk of depending on soil carbon sequestration as a way to offset the emissions produced from raising livestock. The study found that offsetting the methane and nitrous oxide emissions from the global livestock industry would require 135 gigatonnes (135 billion metric tons) of carbon stocks. According to the authors, that amount is nearly double the carbon stored in managed grasslands globally. Some regions would require an increase in carbon sequestration in the soil of up to 2,000% to match livestock emissions. The findings were published in the journal Nature Communications.

At COP28, Family Farmers Who Feed The World Went Unheard

December 19, 2023 Ibrahima Hathie, DeSmog. Educate! Big Ag, COP28, Farmers, Food and Agriculture

In the run-up to this year’s COP28 summit in Dubai, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres railed against the scourge of global hunger and climate devastation fuelled by farming. “Global food systems are broken, and billions of people are paying the price,” he said – and he was right. Our food system is responsible for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet fails to feed the world, with a tenth of humanity experiencing hunger. For years, this issue has been sidelined at climate summits, but at COP28 it was catapulted to centre stage, with an entire day of the agenda dedicated to food and agriculture.

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