Soil Atlas 2024
Overuse of artificial fertiliser is bad for soils and, in the case of nitrogen fertilisers, for the climate as well. Moreover, pesticides deplete the soil of beneficial organisms. Yet these products earn big money for big companies, which influence governments, often blocking policy changes needed to protect people and the environment.
In 2023, almost 73 billion US dollars’ worth of pesticides and more than 200 billion dollars of artificial fertilisers were sold worldwide. In 2022, high market prices meant that the largest agrochemical manufacturers increased their profits significantly over the year. Both the pesticide and fertiliser industries have become more concentrated since the mid-1990s. Between 1996 and 2009, hundreds of seed and pesticide companies merged to form six major corporations. The four largest – Syngenta, Bayer, Corteva und BASF – accounted for 62 percent of the global market in 2020. The fertiliser industry has also become highly concentrated in the last two decades, with numerous mergers and takeovers giving rise to corporations like Nutrien, CF Industries, Mosaic and Yara.
The highly profitable fertiliser and pesticide business has led to a dramatic increase in production costs for farmers. In Europe, the price of nitrogen fertiliser rose by 149 percent between September 2021 and September 2022. One reason the trade is so lucrative for the corporations is that their bottom line does not account for the ecological costs that arise from the use of their products – biodiversity loss, depletion of soil organic matter, and rising soil salinity and acidity. In the European Union (EU), many pesticides are banned because of their known risks to human health and the environment. But they continue to be sold nonetheless, mainly in countries of the Global South. In 2018, EU Member States plus the United Kingdom (UK) approved the export of 81,000 tonnes of pesticides that are banned in Europe. The three top exporters were the UK, Italy, and Germany.
The Soil Atlas 2024 presents data and facts about the importance and condition of land, soils and arable land. In numerous graphics and text contributions, it provides a current insight into the condition of and threats to the soils on which we live.
In addition, corporations often use their market power to influence policies. In the EU, pesticide and fertiliser companies have for years lobbied against the European Commission’s so-called Farm to Fork Strategy, which is a key pillar of the European Green Deal. A vital element of this strategy was the proposed Regulation on the Sustainable Use of Plant Protection Products (SUR), which aimed to cut pesticide use by 50 percent by 2030. Investigative research revealed that representatives of pesticide firms and agribusiness associations met with key conservative members of the European Parliament more than 400 times between January 2020 and July 2023. Scorecards of the voting on the SUR in November 2023 show how conservative parliamentarians, who were particularly targeted by lobbyists, opposed key aspects of the pesticide reduction law. In this way, the industry contributed to the European Parliament’s rejection of the regulation. It remains to be seen whether the new Commission will make another attempt to restrict the use of toxic chemicals in the EU.
The pesticide industry gained political influence through a new strategic partnership between the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and CropLife International, an association representing the five leading pesticide companies: BASF, Bayer, Corteva, FMC, and Syngenta. This partnership, instituted by a letter of intent signed in 2020, has been criticized by numerous civil society organizations who regard it as incompatible with FAO’s support for agroecology. In May 2024, the FAO officially ended its partnership with CropLife.
At the same time, the fertiliser industry is increasingly making its presence felt at international climate policy gatherings. At the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai, the International Fertiliser Association hosted several events at the Food Systems Pavilion. Moreover, fertiliser companies OCI, OCP, Nutrien, and Yara, along with pesticide companies BASF, Bayer, and Syngenta, supported a so-called Soil Health Day at the conference, promoting themselves as contributors to improving soil health.
The pesticide and fertiliser industry has responded to growing political pressure, especially from civil society, with various strategies and is exploring new revenue streams. The fertiliser company Yara, which also operates the world’s largest ammonia trading network, has, for example, announced that it aims to decarbonise its production by reducing its emissions of carbon dioxide. It plans to use renewable energy to generate so-called green hydrogen, which will be used to produce green ammonia. For this industry transition, Yara has asked the German government for state support to convert its plant in Brunsbüttel in northern Germany, despite the fertiliser giant’s record profits. But the process of synthesising ammonia requires a lot of power, whether green or not. Instead of decarbonising fertiliser production, it would often be more cost-efficient, climate-friendly and no less productive to simply use less fertiliser. In 2022, British farmers were able to slightly raise their yields, even though they used 25 percent less mineral fertiliser than the average of the previous decade. Merely decarbonising production by changing farm production methods instead of drastically reducing the use of chemical fertiliser and pesticides would allow the industry’s core business to continue unimpeded.
Digital agriculture, on the other hand, is a completely new business model. Bayer, with its digital platform FieldView, is the current market leader, while Yara has already announced its intention to build the largest digital platform in the agricultural sector in cooperation with IBM. Multinational companies such as Google and Amazon are also pushing into this market.
Pesticide and fertiliser companies have been investing heavily in so-called precision farming. This allows GPS-guided, self-driving field robots to identify weeds and apply pesticides in a targeted way. This promises to reduce the overall amount of pesticide used. But experts warn that the digitalisation will contribute to further market concentration, as the most digital platforms are already in the hands of the leading pesticide, fertiliser and farm equipment manufacturers. These platforms, in turn, have partnerships with other corporations in related fields and in agricultural trade, and so can expand their influence over individual farm enterprises.
