 Hello and welcome. I'm Lynne Fries, producer of Global Political Economy, or GPE, Newsdocs. Joining me from Montreal is guest Devlin Kuyuk. He'll be talking about a report published by Grain that is, as its title states, an agribusiness greenwashing glossary. Devlin Kuyuk is a researcher in the global program at Grain. His focus is on monitoring and analyzing global agribusiness, including land grabs. Grain is an international nonprofit organization that works to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems. Welcome, Devlin. Thank you, Lynne. Devlin, start by telling us why you and your colleagues at Grain found it was necessary to publish this kind of glossary on agribusiness greenwashing. If you look at any of the websites of the major agribusiness companies or big food companies, you'd be surprised to know that they were, what was the source of their profits? They seem to be run as almost like an NGO that is devoted to protecting the planet from all the ills that their own industrial food system is creating. They do increasingly recognize. I think they're at a point now where it's impossible to deny how the industrial food system plays a role in the climate crisis or its impacts on people's health and the loss of biodiversity. For many of the companies, rather than continue to ignore it or try to deny it, they're recognizing it. But I think that's a bit the trick there. Because in the recognition, then they're trying to then control the narrative. Where you have, I think, a growing, how do I say, a growing movement or a growing consensus even among, let's say, the scientific community that the industrial food system is the root cause of all these ills and is in the need of some major transformation and that there's growing support for agroecology and for food sovereignty as real alternatives. This is a clear threat to these food corporations because in that model of agroecology or in food sovereignty, there's really no room for corporations to profit. There's no GMO seeds to sell. There's no pesticides to sell. There's no nitrogen fertilizer to sell. For corporations, that movement towards more local food systems or more agroecological practices is a real threat to their bottom line. They have been trying to push back on this and what we get into in this report is just how much greenwashing plays into the strategy. Greenwashing is that recognition of a problem, but then you try to use misleading information and to suggest that the products that you're selling are part of the solution. So there are 10 terms presented in the glossary. Net zero, carbon offsets, nature-based solutions, zero deforestation, climate smart agriculture, agriculture 4.0 or the fourth industrial revolution, regenerative agriculture, carbon farming, bioeconomy, and last but not least, green finance. This then is what you at Grain identify as key greenwashing concepts and false solutions that are being used by food and agribusiness corporations. Yes, and some of the terms are not just being used by big food and ag alone. There are terms that are being used by corporations from other sectors as well, but they are a big part of the greenwashing that agribusiness is involved in. Anyone following UN climate change conferences as last year's COP26 in Glasgow or the upcoming COP27 in Egypt or any news coverage for that matter on climate issues will run into these kinds of terms. So let's start with the first three on the list. Net zero, carbon offsets, and nature-based solutions. So one by one, tell us why these terms are listed in your agribusiness greenwashing glossary as a misleading concept and a false solution that's being used by food and agribusiness corporations. Start with net zero. What does that refer to? Well, net zero refers to the Paris agreement, the COP in Paris from several years ago where countries agreed to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. And what that meant was that they would produce emissions, so it's supposed to mean that they would reduce emissions as close to zero as possible. And then any remaining emissions would be absorbed from the atmosphere. Now, how much would be remaining and how that would be absorbed is not defined. And certainly at this point, you know, the technologies that are being talked about and stuff is definitely not proven. But there was that. And then it was also not discussed as like, you know, if there are some emissions, well, what are those emissions for? Of course, you'd only want those to be for the most essential, essential services or needs to fulfill the most basic needs of people. But the corporations have really used that as an open door to come forward with their own idea of net zero. So in the after the Paris agreement, there was this rush of net zero plans that corporations were proposing, including corporations like Nestle from the food and agribusiness sector. And of course, all of these are voluntary. So they're not held to any kind of particular standard. And they're not really, there's no enforcement mechanism. And if you look at these, these net zero plans, one of the defining aspects of them is that almost all of the corporations, at least in the ones that I've looked at, certainly from the food and agribusiness sector, are all based on actually increasing the sales of their highly emitting products. You know, and that's even the case with with energy companies. And then as a way to get to that net zero, what's there the claiming that they'll be able to do? They are relying heavily on offsets, what is called carbon offsets. So it's a meaning that they will invest in or their purchase credits of projects or technologies that are able to absorb carbon from the from the atmosphere. And an increasing amount of these sort of offset projects are based on land and forests. And the idea that if you say protect a forest from being deforested, or you plant trees, or you even engage in some kinds of agricultural practices that are set to store carbon in the soil, that through that you, you if a company purchases or pays for that, then they can offset their own emissions. So really, it becomes just this way for them to continue with with business as as usual. And when we looked at the net zero plan for Nestle, it was quite shocking, you could see that they were they were proposing that by 2030, so 2020 to 2030, they were going to increase the sales of their meat and dairy and other highly admitting products by two thirds over that period. And their plan for offsetting these increased emissions was going to rely on planting trees or zoning off for us covering four million hectares per year. I mean, that's every year. So I mean, it's completely unrealistic and has no no sound scientific basis. But this was one example of a net zero plant corporations are promoting. So when you looked at the net zero plan for Nestle, your research findings show that for Nestle to offset its emissions as proposed in this plan, they would have to plant trees on or zone off for conservation for million hectares of land per annum. So every year. And so it's not surprising that you would find this shocking because as noted in the report, four million hectares is more than the size of the entire home country of Nestle, Switzerland. So the numbers don't add up. Yeah, once you get into details about the numbers, it's absolutely ridiculous. I mean, I, you know, it doesn't hold any water at all. Companies are putting some money into this. So it's not just simple rhetoric, you know, there are, there is some millions or even in some cases, billions of dollars that are going towards these kinds of projects and they're starting to have an impact on the ground because you have these companies who specialize in this, you know, who are taking over, say areas or territories that where you have indigenous people and small farmers living and zoning them off and saying that they can no longer continue to practice their agriculture or their fishing or whatever it is in, in those, in those territories because they've been sold off to any or the total or whoever it is so that they can get credits for their carbon credits to keep on polluting. You know, this is something that is happening on the ground and communities are feeling the real impacts from this and we are seeing land grabs. How could all these companies be doing this? There isn't enough of a planet available to offset all their emissions. The fundamental thing that has to happen is they have to get to zero with their emissions and they know that they can't do that with their current model of production and they're, in fact, even with their, when it comes to the food system, the ultimate problem here for corporations is that this solution doesn't involve them. You know, food sovereignty and agriculture, agro-ecology do not allow for Nestle's or Cargill's or the Bayer Monsantos to continue to make the kind of profits they're making now or any profits at all, frankly. Explain more about how carbon offsets fit into all this. Yeah, again, this is part of NetZero, right? So it's the mechanism that allows a company, let's use Unilever in this case to purchase credit from some project that may be run in Gabon where they're claiming to have prevented deforestation that was going to happen and they did so for financial, you know, for financial reasons because they were promised payment for this credit. So they, you know, that's, and then Unilever gets to claim an offset for its own emissions so it can keep on polluting and conceivably this community in Gabon would get payment for having preserved their forest, which they wouldn't have done otherwise. I mean, the problem in this is it, once you get into the accounting and look what's actually happening on the ground, it were, you know, far from that rosy scenario. Usually it's a lot of consultants who get paid. They come up with some very, well, how would I, front may be too strong a term, but they come up with some very ingenious ways to make it appear as if they've been, you know, the emissions have been saved or that the carbon will be securely stored in say a protected forest. Often what we've seen too, often these models rely on actually constraining local food production. So preventing communities from say using parts of the forest for their agricultural production. So company who is engaged in, you know, the expansion of plantation oil palm plantations and say Indonesia gets to offset those emissions by forcing community say in Madagascar, you know, to not use certain parts of its land for its own food production. I mean, it's entirely inequitable, unjust and frankly disingenuous. The report draws attention to how land grabbing in the global south for the massive offsetting of emissions has been called out as carbon colonialism. Explain that issue. Yes. Well, it's the same basic equation. You have companies largely from the north who are the main polluters and they are looking to take over the lands, forests, waters, territories, mainly in global south, mainly in places occupied by indigenous people and local communities in order to be able to allow themselves to go on polluting to maintain their, you know, their dominance to maintain their systems of production. So it's a kind of a strange way of looking at it now, but it's rather like the control, it still remains about the control of resources. So in this case, not to necessarily serve as raw material, but as to serve as a way to allow for these companies to keep on polluting. Dela, let's move now to the third term in the glossary, nature based solutions. This is a kind of a somewhat new word. It comes from the big conservation NGOs, but it has been increasingly used by the fossil fuel industry and by Big Food and Ag as a way to describe carbon offsets that come from forests and land. So they're in, it's not just for the climate crisis, but it can also be for biodiversity loss and these things. So it's, again, it's just a way for them to say, okay, let's look at how we can use nature to resolve the quandary that we're in, in which our profit model is to blame for the climate crisis. So how can we get around that? Well, let's look to these remaining forests. Let's look to the farm lands and see how that they can provide an offset for us so we can keep on, we can keep on. So briefly comment on grain's position that nature based solutions are rightfully described as nature based dispositions. Yes, because they involve such large areas of land. So again, the emissions that we're talking about is huge. And I'm just, again, from the food system alone, a third of all global greenhouse gas emissions come from the industrial food system. So if you think about trying to offset even just a fraction of that, it's a huge amount of land and forests that would be required. So the example of Nestle of four million hectares per year that they would need to be taking over. So this is almost all of these projects are happening in the global south. And it will involve the dispossession of people in control of their lands and territories. And as you commented earlier, this term nature based solutions came from the big conservation NGOs. Yes. I mean, for conservation groups, I think there's money in this too. And that has to be understood. And when we see a lot of the promotion around these nature based solutions is there, they are expecting that there'll be much more money for their conservation parks and various things that they're promoting. To keep this conversation at a manageable length, we'll just cover two more of the 10 terms in the glossary. So next up, talk about zero deforestation. Well, it's again, another instance of zero, not meaning zero. The reason why they don't say, you know, a stop to deforestation or no deforestation is because they understand that the expanded production of the agricultural commodities that Unilever, Nestle, Cargill, ADM, you know, all these companies depend on that's the source of their profits that that involves deforestation. I mean, that's the main driver of global deforestation. So if you get, if the demand for these commodities continues to increase that will drive forward deforestation and they've been unable to meet any of the previous commitments they've had, the idea of zero deforestation is really just to sort of carve things out and say, okay, well, you have like, you know, imagine a large forest and half of it is already deforested and then the crops that are being grown in that area or the cattle that are being raised in that area that's the good, you know, that's the good food and the anything that comes out of future deforestation in the other area, well, that's the bad food and the corporations are colonizing and taking over all of this sort of space for the good food and pushing more of the everybody else's needs into the sort of the bad area to the deforester area. So it really means that corporations just sort of capturing these areas that can be, that they, their own standards would consider not to be causing any further deforestation. So that's where you get the, this term zero deforestation but of course the, you know, there's all kinds of loopholes in it and there's, and their structural need for more commodities means that there's a constant call out that keeps happening, you know, and not a month goes by when you're not seeing another report about a particular agribusiness company who's claiming to not be involved in deforestation sourcing beef from say the Amazon or being involved in deforestation in the Serato of Brazil. I mean, it's impossible for them to continue with their model without being a part of that as well. And the devastating consequences are made all too clear in the report which notes for instance how quote an area of forest equivalent to 27 football fields is destroyed every minute and the rate of deforestation in Brazil's Amazon hit a record high in the first half of 2022. Brazil's a good case. I mean, what, what led to the expansion of all this commodity production and deforestation in Brazil was the inflow of money, was the construction of infrastructure, you know, it was the building up of trade routes and all that was done by these corporations who are now claiming that they're, you know, they're now claiming zero deforestation. All of which goes to say that foods produced with the agricultural commodities that as you say are driving deforestation are being brought to market by food and agribusiness corporations under deforestation label. So with a green image. Yes, and that's the idea. I mean, you, you, you label all your products with these kinds of claims and there's very little that's being done in terms of accountability on them. And overall, you know, even if you could show that you, you know, the specific commodity wasn't sourced from an area that was deforested, it's the overall growth that these corporations are involved in that is behind the main driver of deforestation. So they are, you know, they are implicated. They are responsible whether or not they, you know, a particular batch of corn that they acquired caused any deforestation. Let's talk next about climate smart agriculture, which as put in the report is a term that agribusiness corporations devised about a decade ago. And this term is used to counter growing support from agroecology and international forums on agriculture and climate change. Yes, absolutely. Within the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, there was a sort of growing recognition and support for agroecology. There was also a major World Bank study that had also concluded, you know, that that agroecology in the move away from industrial agriculture practices was necessary. So you have gaining momentum for the term and for what it implied. And there was really a deliberate effort, I'd say by certain countries, notably the United States, but also by some of the largest fertilizer companies in the world, including YARA and some other corporations to try to head this off. And then they came up with the term climate smart agriculture, which means absolutely nothing. But that became the focus of several international events. I've been used as a title. There was then, you know, effort to do all these reports about it without ever really stating what it was. And if you looked at it, it was really just dressing up the old green revolution model in new clothing. The revolution model basically depends on, you know, these seeds, uniform varieties of seeds that rely on a huge amount of chemical fertilizers in order to produce yields. And they're also dependent on chemical pesticides. So that is, you know, the bread and butter of agribusiness. And you point out the role of some of the world's largest fertilizer companies as key actors in what you say is this deliberate attempt to ramp up agribusiness greenwashing. Yes. And they don't get enough attention. I think, you know, it's easy to point out a lot of the oil companies or even some of the bigger food and ag companies. But often the fertilizer companies are left out of that. And that's, it's unfortunate because they, you know, a company like Yara is very active in all these efforts around greenwashing and all these different lobby groups that exist and the very different coalitions that exist that are trying to give a space for industrial agriculture as a solution to the climate crisis. Early on, Grained warned that the fertilizer industry's role in climate change was poorly understood and severely underestimated. I was quite struck by some statistics released on this issue by Grained back in 2015 which I'll quickly cite some of those statistics. This is from an article titled The Exxons of Agriculture. Quote, we now can say that the use of chemical fertilizers this year will generate more greenhouse gas emissions than the total greenhouse gas emissions from all of the cars and trucks driven in the United States. We did some more recent calculations on that and looking at the specific numbers when it came to production of nitrogen fertilizers and the emissions that come from the use of nitrogen fertilizers which accounts for a large part of it. And we found that just nitrogen fertilizer alone accounts for one out of every 40 tons of greenhouse gas emissions globally, annually. It's a huge factor in the climate crisis. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to produce these fertilizers. You can't really think of addressing or getting towards whatever they would to zero by 2050 without a real change and a real transition away from chemical fertilizers. We're going to have to leave it there. I'll just note for viewers that the glossary with a one-page explainer and links to further reference docs for all 10 terms is available online at grain.org under the title of an Agribusiness Greenwashing Glossary. Once again, many thanks to our guest, Grain's Devlin Kujuk. Thank you, Devlin. Thank you, Lynn. And from GPE NewsDocs in Geneva, Switzerland, thank you for joining us.