With the emergence of climate change mitigation and adaptation as very important challenges, an important discovery was that if many of the natural farming practices of traditional farming were brought back this would also contribute a lot to climate change mitigation and adaptation by doing away with the bulk of fossil fuels in farming including those used in chemical fertilizers, avoiding various poisonous agro-chemicals, by increasing the organic content of soil, by reducing costs of farmers, by promoting mixed farming with many more trees and in other ways. Hence the already strong case for natural farming, combing much of traditional farming with some improvements, based essentially on the same principles, very suitable for more self-reliant communities of small farmers, became stronger in the context of the urgency of climate change mitigation and adaptation.
However big business interests did not like these happy possibilities at all as their aim is only to increase their own control and profits. Hence it is with their very narrow and selfish vision that they started distorting the reality and presenting a false version consistent with their pursuit of excessive control and very high profits.
As these giant multinational companies combining agriculture, seed, agrochemical and food interests and seeking collaborations with other multinationals in related areas, also enjoying a close relationship with governments and politicians, particularly in some western countries but also elsewhere, have used their vast funds to spread their false discourse, thankfully several small organizations have also appeared to protect the real interests of small farmers and environment protection. One of the most sincere and persistent of these organizations is GRAIN. Among its various very useful reports, special mention may be made here of two—a report dated 10.2. 23 titled ‘The Corporate Agenda Behind Carbon Farming’ and another report dated 24.2.22. titled ‘From Land Grab to Soil Grab.’
These reports tell us—“If you live in Africa and you’ve heard of or experienced a “carbon farming” project, it has likely involved a land grab for a large-scale tree plantation. Across much of the global South, an increasing number of companies are taking over large areas of land to establish tree plantations and claim carbon credits that they can sell on international carbon markets. This is the case in Niger, where the US-based company African Agriculture Inc recently acquired two 50-year leases over a total of two million hectares to plant pine trees for carbon credits. A similar experience is unfolding in the Republic of Congo, where French energy giant Total is planting 40,000 hectares of acacia trees for carbon credits, depriving local communities of their farmland for the next 20 years.”
However “in countries where industrial agriculture dominates, such as the US, Brazil or Australia, ‘carbon farming’ is about tweaking entrenched practices to claim that carbon is being sequestered in the soil and to then sell carbon credits. This form of “carbon farming” is also now starting to be pushed onto smaller farmers in different parts of the global South, such as India.”
Explaining this further GRAIN says that a programme promoted by the global seed and pesticide giant Bayer provides an example of how this entrenched path to ‘carbon farming’ is being used to advance the agendas of agribusiness corporations “About a decade ago, the notorious pesticide and seed company Monsanto made a controversial take-over of a digital agriculture company called the Climate Corporation. Through that acquisition it developed one of the first major digital agriculture platforms, which is now called Climate FieldView.”
“FieldView is essentially an app that collects data from satellites and from sensors in farm fields and sensors on tractors and then uses algorithms to advise farmers on their farming practices — when and what to plant, how much pesticide to spray, how much fertiliser to apply, etc. The company says FieldView is already being used on farms covering over 24 million hectares in the US, Canada, Brazil, Argentina and Europe.
“To be part of Bayer’s Carbon Program, farmers have to be enrolled in Bayer’s FieldView digital agriculture platform. Bayer then uses the FieldView app to instruct farmers on the implementation of just two practices that are said to sequester carbon in the soils: 1) reduced tillage or no-till farming and 2) the planting of cover crops. Through the app, the company monitors the implementation of these two practices and estimates the amount of carbon that the participating farmers have sequestered. Farmers are then supposed to be paid according to Bayer’s calculations and Bayer uses that information to claim carbon credits and sell these in carbon markets.”
What are the real implications of such a program? Who gains and who loses? “GRAIN explains, “Bayer is the big winner here. It gets increasing control over farmers, dictating exactly how they farm and what inputs they use. Getting more farmers to use reduced tillage or no-till is of huge benefit to Bayer. The kind of reduced tillage or no-till promoted by Bayer requires dousing fields with tonnes of its RoundUp (glyphosate) herbicide and planting seeds of its genetically-engineered Roundup resistant soybeans or hybrid maize.”
“Bayer also intends to profit from the promotion of cover crops. The very month that it launched ForGround, it took majority ownership of a seed company developing a gene edited cover crop, called CoverCress. Seeds of CoverCress will be sold to farmers who are enrolled in ForGround and the crop will be sold as a biofuel.”
“You can see in the evolution of Bayer’s programmes that, for corporations, carbon farming is all about increasing their control within the food system. It’s certainly not about sequestering carbon. Bayer’s programme has a short term focus, as it only requires a 10 year guarantee of sequestration. It also has a very low level of verifiability, as checks will be carried out mainly from a distance, through estimates based on data collected by the FieldView app, not regular soil tests. And it is not about generating a new revenue stream for farmers, either. As we can see with the move to ForGround, any benefits are going to go to Bayer and other corporations.”
In addition “the world’s largest agrochemical companies want to use carbon credit programmes as a smokescreen for the emissions of big oil, food and tech corporations.
“Faulty carbon sequestration schemes reinforce a model of industrial agriculture and food that erodes soils and is responsible for over a third of global greenhouse gas emissions.
“Farmer organisations and civil society groups in several countries are struggling to stop governments from passing legislation that would make these corporate carbon farming schemes core parts of national emission reduction plans.
“Only through a vast programme of agro-ecology, land redistribution and the re-localisation of food systems can we effectively build carbon back into the soils and cut emissions in the food system.
“Industrial agriculture is much like a sprawling mine. To get big yields, lands are mined of nutrients and then increasing amounts of chemical fertilisers are added to make up for the loss. The chemical fertilisers themselves are produced by mining minerals and extracting fossil fuels elsewhere.”
Hence it is clear from the analysis of GRAIN that by promoting the views of giant MNCs false solutions actually harmful for environment and for small farmers are advanced while attention is diverted from genuine reforms that are truly needed—agro-ecology and real efforts to help small farmers and to help the rural landless to become small farmers.
As GRAIN explains, there are ways to farm without depleting soils, but, over the years, agribusiness corporations and governments have side-lined such alternatives. “Small farmers with the knowledge, practices and seeds to maintain healthy soils have been pushed off of their lands and criminalised. Researchers exploring ways to reduce fertilisers by building up plant root systems or soil biodiversity have been marginalised, underfunded and shut down. Meanwhile, millions of hectares of fertile forests, savannahs and peasant farmlands and pastures have been cleared to make way for sterile plantations growing only a few chemically-dependent varieties of commodity crops.”
“The result is a catastrophic loss of soil organic matter– the building block of healthy soils. Over half of the soil organic matter in the world’s agricultural soils has already been lost, with over 2 billion hectares of farmland badly affected. It translates into declining crop yields, increasing pollution of water systems from fertiliser run-off, and because soil organic matter is mainly composed of carbon, the release of enormous amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.
“Yet, the main culprits behind this soil catastrophe are now recasting themselves as soil saviours. Over the past couple of years, nearly all of the biggest corporate players in agribusiness have launched or joined initiatives to restore carbon in agricultural soils.
“The reason is simple; there is now money to be made from storing carbon in the ground. Governments and corporations are desperate to find ways to avoid making real cuts to their fossil fuel emissions and are willing to pay others to sequester carbon so they can continue burning fossil fuels.
“The carbon farming programmes that corporations are hastily pushing are fraught with problems. They amount to a big soil grab. These programmes are designed to green-wash pollution and consolidate control over food and agriculture in the hands of a small number of corporations, whose activities are increasingly integrated through digital platforms.”
The false narrative of big MNCs should be understood, or else it will harm environment in a big way. As GRAIN explains, “It isn’t possible for soils to absorb enough carbon to significantly offset global fossil fuel emissions. Soil carbon sequestration can in no way substitute for immediate and deep reductions in fossil fuel emissions.
“Another major problem with these corporate programmes is the lack of permanence. While cuts to fossil fuel emissions are real and immediate, there is no guarantee that the carbon sequestered by carbon credit farming will not be released back into the atmosphere. Most carbon credit farming programmes last ten years when carbon needs to be stored for at least 100 years to meaningfully make a difference to global warming. Once the programme ends, land can be converted to a parking lot or ploughed up and doused with chemical fertilisers without any penalty.
“There is also the issue of the greenhouse gases these carbon credit farming programmes generate. Nearly all the programmes focus narrowly on quantifying carbon sequestered in the soil and do not consider the overall emissions that industrial farming produces. They do not factor in the amount of chemical inputs a farm applies or the amount of fossil fuels burnt running tractors and other machinery, or the increased emissions that can result from the first years of transition to no-till. They do not account for the emissions produced by their remote verification systems either– from the energy needed to store the data these systems generate to the aeroplanes or satellites they use to monitor farms. And they are based on tweaks to a model of industrial agriculture that depends heavily on chemical inputs and that supplies a hugely wasteful and polluting corporate food system.”
These important aspects of various deals being promoted by MNCS should be well understood as being very harmful for small farmers as well as for environment, and this understanding is particularly much needed in countries of the Global South,
Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include ‘Man over Machine’ and ‘India’s Quest for Sustainable Farming and Healthy Food’.
