endocrine disrupting chemicals
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As regenerative agriculture gains momentum, report warns of “greenwashing”
Proponents of regenerative farming say the practice can mitigate harmful climate change, reduce water pollution, and make foods more nutritious as farmers focus on improving the health of soil, water, and ecosystems.
A growing number of farms and ranches around the US are achieving certification to let consumers know their grains, beef, eggs and other products as regeneratively grown. Internationally, the regenerative agriculture market has been forecast to see double-digit growth between 2023 and 2030.
But all that momentum comes with a dirty dark side, according to a new report that highlights what is becoming an increasingly contentious debate over the merits of regenerative agriculture.
The report issued Tuesday asserts that regenerative programs, which generally allow for the use of weedkillers and other chemicals, are being used to “greenwash” routine use of several dangerous pesticides on farm fields.
Corporations that sell such pesticides are entwined with the movement, incentivizing farmers financially to adopt regenerative practices, the report notes.
“With billions of dollars — and the future of our food system — at stake, we must ensure that the practice of regenerative agriculture is robust and is guarded against greenwashing,” states the April 29 report issued by Friends of the Earth (FOE), an environmental advocacy group.
Citing data from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), FOE’s report specifically targets corn and soybean production in which farmers do not till their soil to eradicate weeds as has traditionally been common practice. Such “no-till” practices are a hallmark of regenerative agriculture because tillage can have multiple negative environmental impacts, including disrupting soil microorganisms considered essential for plant health.
Corn and soybean no-till acres total more than 100 million acres, according to the FOE report. The “vast majority (93%)” of those acres rely on “toxic pesticides that harm soil health and threaten human health,” the FOE report states.
Roughly one-third of total annual pesticide use in the US can be attributed solely to corn and soy grown in no- and minimum-till systems, according to the FOE analysis of USDA data. An estimated 61% of the use involves pesticides classified as highly hazardous to human health and/or the environment, the report states.
Bayer’s bid for regenerative
Credit: Jonathan Weiss/Big Stock PhotoThe new report takes aim at some of the world’s largest agrochemical companies, including Germany-based Bayer, which bought seed and chemical giant Monsanto in 2018 and calls regenerative agriculture its “vision for the future of farming.”
“Produce More. Restore Nature. Scale Regenerative Agriculture,” the company proclaims on its website.
Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup herbicide products introduced by Monsanto in the 1970s, is the most widely used pesticide in no-till corn and soy production. The herbicide has been classified as a probable human carcinogen by world health experts, and tens of thousands of people have sued Monsanto alleging they developed cancer due to their use of the company’s glyphosate products.
As part of its push for regenerative, Bayer offers growers rewards for engaging in certain practices, including not tilling their soil and for planting “cover” crops as a means to improve soil health. Farmers can receive up to $12 per acre for combining various “regenerative agriculture practices,” Bayer pledges.
To handle weed problems in regenerative fields, Bayer recommends a mix of strategies, including “sustainable use of herbicides.”
That type of recommendation exposes the corporate hypocrisy rooted in regenerative, no-till, practices, according to FOE.
“Pesticide companies like Bayer and Syngenta have capitalized on the growing interest in soil health by promoting conventional no-till — which relies heavily on their pesticides, genetically engineered seeds, and digital agriculture platforms — as regenerative,” the FOE report states.
When asked about the FOE report, Bayer said glyphosate-based products like Roundup are helpful to farmers who are implementing sustainable farming and regenerative practices.
“Tools like Roundup are essential as more and more farmers turn to practices such as planting cover crops to reduce erosion, capture moisture and sequester carbon in the soil,” the company said in a statement. “Products like Roundup also enable farmers to adopt no-till measures that help drastically reduce the amount of carbon released by the soil through tillage.”
Syngenta says that regenerative agriculture “can underpin the transformation of our global food systems,” and that “chemical inputs” can be useful, though in reduced amounts.
In March, Syngenta announced a partnership with PepsiCo to “support and drive” farmers to transition to regenerative agriculture.
Regenerative v. organic
Credit: 🇸🇮 Janko Ferlič/UnsplashThe report comes amid growing rancor between some in the established organic industry and the burgeoning regenerative movement, as leaders on each side say their respective models are best for providing healthy food and protecting environmental and human health.
In contrast with the relatively young regenerative movement, the organic industry operates within a framework established more than 30 years ago with oversight through a national organic program within the USDA, with rules that generally prohibit synthetic pesticides and other chemicals.
Organic supporters echo the FOE report, saying that certifying some farm products and brands as regenerative is deceptive because farmers practicing regenerative can, and often do, use chemical weed killers that are harmful to the soil, people and the environment.
They say that describing products as regenerative if they’re grown with chemicals gives consumers a false sense of comfort in the agricultural practices used to produce food. And they say because regenerative agriculture has no government oversight or official standards, private certification can be easily corrupted.
“The proponents of non-organic ‘regenerative’ labels are in fact greenwashing conventional ag and its use of toxic persistent pesticides as well as synthetic nitrogen fertilizers,” said Gary Hirshberg, chairman of Organic Voices, an advocacy group for the organic industry.
“It is scientifically and ethically disingenuous to claim to be regenerating soil while you are using synthetic chemicals, which harm soil microorganisms, and it is well-established science that no-till systems actually require more, not less, chemical fertilizers and pesticides,” Hirshberg said.
In contrast, academics and those pursuing growth of regenerative practices say soil health is at the root, literally, of planetary health, and even if pesticides are used, they can be used at levels much reduced from conventional farming.
They say organic farmers often till their fields to address weeds, and that practice is worse than using herbicides.
“The science is very clear on this: there is a greater net benefit to using an herbicide to enable no-till … than to avoid it altogether ifthat means resorting to tillage,” said Andrew Margenot, associate director of the Agroecosystems Sustainability Center at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Proponents of regenerative practices see them as a series of steps that may begin with no-till and use of weedkillers and other pesticides, but eventually expand to include a range of tactics, such as using “cover crops” to increase soil organic matter and limit pest outbreaks and incorporating livestock and animal manure into soil improvement efforts.
Using all the regenerative practices can eventually eliminate the need for chemicals or sharply reduce the need, proponents say.
Regenerative farming involves much more than not tilling the soil, said Gabe Brown, a North Dakota farmer, who authored a book on the benefits of regenerative and founded a certification company called Regenified to guide farmers and ranchers in the practices.
Though Brown said he is a consumer of organic foods, he believes that organic farmers who don’t use chemicals but do disrupt their soils through tilling are also harming the environment.
“One cannot claim that no-tilling alone will make a farm regenerative just like one cannot say that organic, alone, is regenerative,” Brown said. “If an organic producer tills too often it can be highly degrading. If a no-tiller uses too many synthetics, it can be degrading.”
Brown said the organic movement has “floundered” as achieving organic certification can be challenging and costly for many producers.
“The amount of interest in regenerative agriculture is truly making a difference … it’s exciting,” Brown said.
Seeking more funds for organic
Not tilling the soil is a core principle of regenerative practices, but the FOE report asserts that the impacts of tillage are not always harmful and that routine use of pesticides has greater disruptive effects on soil health than does routine tillage.
Looking just at conventional no-till corn and soy, the FOE report finds that “CO2-equivalent emissions” associated with the pesticides and synthetic fertilizers used to grow those crops are comparable to emissions from 11.4 million cars.
The FOE report recommends that instead of incentivizing no-till agriculture that allows pesticide use, Congress should increase funding for organic programs, and state, local and federal governments should allot more resources to research into technologies that can eradicate weeds without chemical weedkillers.
FOE also calls for:
- Any regenerative agriculture definitions promulgated by federal, state, or local governments, private or public regenerative certifications, or other regenerative initiatives to explicitly center and prioritize agrochemical reduction if they are going to meet their stated goals.
- Food manufacturers and retailers to set time-bound, measurable goals to phase out toxic pesticides and synthetic fertilizers and transition toward ecological, least toxic approaches along their entire food and beverage supply chains.
- The USDA to increase incentives for farms that deeply reduce or eliminate the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers and increase technical assistance to spur the adoption of practices that reduce agrochemical inputs.
“Given the urgency of the public health, biodiversity, and climate crises we face, the growing interest in regenerative agriculture must be harnessed in service of robust approaches that truly increase soil health and carbon sequestration, improve air and water quality, bolster farmers’ resilience, and protect biodiversity and human well-being,” the report states.
Regulators are underestimating health impacts from air pollution: Study
The new method, which accounts for the ways numerous chemical exposures impact the entire body, found increased risks to people’s brains, hearts, lungs, kidneys, and hormonal systems from air pollution in a community near Philadelphia. Traditional methods found no increased health risks based on the same level of pollution exposure in that community.
“I think this [is a] holistic approach,” Pete DeCarlo, study co-author and a Johns Hopkins University associate professor who studies atmospheric air pollution, told EHN. “The cumulative burdens across multiple health systems for every chemical that we measure is really, really important, because we breathe everything all at once.”
Multiple chemical exposures impact multiple body parts
Credit: Faux Toe/BigStock Photos ID: 1366970The study, conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins University and Aerodyne Research Inc., a company that creates software and sensors for environmental research, differs from traditional risk models by accounting for simultaneous exposures to multiple chemicals and their potential impacts on multiple parts of the body.
Traditional regulatory approaches to analyzing health impacts from air pollution consider each chemical individually, rather than cumulatively. Limits are set based on the level of daily exposure to a chemical over a lifetime that is unlikely to cause harm. A chemical may harm different parts of the body at different concentrations, so this method uses the lowest harm-inducing concentration to begin regulation and then assumes other parts of the body won’t be affected, according to Keeve Nachman, study co-author and professor of environmental health and engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
“If we were exposed to one chemical at a time, that would be totally logical, right?” Nachman told EHN. “But the reality is that we are not exposed to one chemical at a time.”
The research team created an expanded method that would be able to better account for exposures to multiple chemicals by adding together their impacts to all parts of the body, not just the most sensitive.
The research team collected air samples from a mobile air monitor over a three-week period from communities along the Delaware River near Philadelphia that experience pollution from petrochemical refineries, municipal waste incinerators, and other industrial facilities.
Using this data, they conducted a non-cancer risk analysis for 32 volatile organic compounds, including formaldehyde, benzene, toluene, and xylenes (while some of these chemicals can cause cancer, analyzing cancer risk requires a different process).
“If we use the traditional approach to risk assessment, we don't find an elevated risk of any health endpoint in this community, nothing,” Nachman said. “So the result of using that risk assessment for making decisions would mean no change needed. We wouldn't need to intervene at all.”
But using their revised method, the researchers found increased risk of damage to the people’s brains, hearts, lungs, kidneys, and hormonal systems from the same level of air pollution exposure, which they say should prompt regulators to think differently about how industrial sites are permitted and regulated in communities across the country.
Empowering polluted communities
Heather McTeer Toney, former EPA Region 4 administrator and executive director of the environmental group Beyond Petrochemicals said this study confirms the experience of those who have been impacted by the petrochemical industry in Texas, Louisiana, and Appalachia for decades.
“We are validating what they have been saying, and that in and of itself is hope because it allows us to identify the problem,” Toney said. “And for so long people have been in and living in these spaces where people didn’t believe them.
The cumulative impact of these chemicals is “not only devastating, but generationally crushing,” Toney said. “[This discovery] should be a part of the decision-making process when we are thinking about what plant [to permit], where it’s going to go, and why we even need it in the first place.”
In an effort to make their research accessible and replicable, the researchers created a public database of the risk assessments for the chemicals they analyzed and plan to develop a tool to share in the future. DeCarlo and Nachman noted that the study has a few limitations, including the fact that they may not have a full picture of chemicals existing in the atmosphere and cannot accurately account for additional health stressors like poverty, social issues, or preexisting health conditions.
“While we think this paints a much more complete picture than the current way of looking at things, we still know that there's more things to add,” DeCarlo said. “There's more things to measure, and that would likely mean more health burden, but we're doing what we can with the data that we have right now.”
With the data they have right now, the research team believes they can make a positive impact.
“It’s a challenging time for cumulative risk research, people experiencing cumulative risk, [and] environmental injustices, but don’t lose hope,” Nachman said, reflecting on the Trump administration's efforts to roll back clean air protections, industry regulations, and public health research.
“Because I am confident that what we are helping contribute to…is a better set of methodologies that will account for these things, and that when that window opens back up for making smart policy that actually protects fenceline communities, we’re going to be ready with ways to do it.”
Editor’s note: The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Beyond Petrochemicals, and Environmental Health News receive funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies.
Community activists plead to be heard through “closed doors” outside nation’s top energy conference
As energy executives and political leaders across the nation convened for the conference in Houston, Texas this week to discuss the future of energy, representatives from the Gulf Coast, Rio Grande Valley, Ohio River Valley, and Cancer Alley highlighted the fossil fuel industry's impact in their communities.
Yvette Arellano, Fenceline Watch, addresses the crowd at the press conference while holding a sign in Spanish that reads, "Water is life."
Credit: Cami Ferrell for EHN
“It is our communities that are being harmed and hurt,” Yvette Arellano of the Houston environmental organization Fenceline Watch said. “It is our children that are having to play in playgrounds across the street from chemical plants and oil refineries.”
Despite attempting to purchase conference tickets at costs of up to $10,500, activists have been barred from the conference in recent years, Arellano said.
“The conference has shut out civil society from entering and understanding the projects that are coming to harm our communities,” Arellano said at a press conference at a park about 10 minutes from the convention center on Monday. “We demand transparency.”
S&P Global has not responded to Environmental Health News’ request for comment.
Health concerns and “energy additions”
In a CERAWeek session four individuals discussed climate priorities for the energy industry. From left to right, Atul Arya, senior vice president and chief energy strategist for S&P Global Commodity Insights, Bob Dudley, chairman of the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund and Ernest Moniz, founder and chief executive officer for Energy Futures Initiative Foundation.
Credit: Cami Ferrell for EHN
Some sessions at CERAWeek were devoted to climate discussions, like Monday’s session about climate change priorities featuring industry voices from S&P Global and the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI), alongside environmental advocacy groups like the Environmental Defense Fund and the Energy Futures Initiative Foundation.
The panel tackled questions about whether climate change will remain a priority for the industry and how the energy transition will continue under the Trump administration. Bob Dudley, chairman of the OGCI, repeatedly rephrased his own statements about the energy transition to “energy additions,” emphasizing the continued use of fossil fuels.
“Oil and gas operators in the U.S. alone waste $3.5 billion worth of methane a year through leaks, flaring, and other releases, enough to supply the energy needs of 19 million American homes,” Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, said in the same conference session.
Less than a mile away from the CERAWeek convention, the Buffalo Bayou flows through downtown and into the Houston Ship Channel, which facilitates global access to the “energy capital of the world” for many of the companies in attendance at the conference. According to the Greater Houston Partnership, 44 of 128 publicly traded oil and gas companies and nearly one-third of the nation’s oil and gas jobs are located in Houston. With more than 600 petrochemical facilities, this single area produces about 42% of the nation's petrochemicals.
Last year an Amnesty International report dubbed the area a “sacrifice zone,” where fenceline communities, predominantly populated by people of color, are exposed to disproportionately high levels of pollution. In these areas, chemical disasters, climate-warming emissions, and higher cancer risks are common. Several high-profile companies, including ExxonMobil, LyondellBasell, and Chevron Phillips Chemical, receive substantial tax breaks despite having poor environmental track records.
Breon Robinson with Healthy Gulf speaks to the crowd and press prior to the protest.
Credit: Cami Ferrell for EHN
“We have people who are over there who are making these decisions for our community,” said Breon Robinson, organizer for Southwest Louisiana and Southeast Texas at the environmental group Healthy Gulf, motioning toward the conference center. “They see us as scraps, they see us as a sacrifice zone … but we tell them hell no.”
Protesters arrested
Credit: Cami Ferrell for EHN
Hundreds showed up to the protest, a march from Root Square Park to Discovery Green near the CERAWeek conference
Alexis Ramírez, Corpus Christi resident and elementary music teacher, plays her bass clarinet alongside band while marching during the protest.
Credit: Cami Ferrell for EHN
“I want to spread the joy of music and the power of music through this protest for my students,” Ramírez said. “They’re going to be our doctors, our teachers, whatever they are, they are going to take care of me and you when we are old. And that’s why I’m here, to take care of them.”
The protest was escorted by dozens of police officers in vehicles and on horseback. As the protesters neared the convention center the group split in two as eight individuals interlocked arms briefly in front of traffic. After asking them to move and pressing forward with their horses, police officers arrested eight protesters, including Arellano of Fenceline Watch.
Yvette Arellano with Fenceline Watch was arrested by the Houston Police Department alongside seven other protesters.
Credit: Cami Ferrell for EHN
While many groups said their concerns existed before the presidential administration change, some expressed worry that Trump’s policy shift toward “energy dominance” will further exacerbate environmental risks with promises of fast-tracked permitting processes and the repeal of pollution and climate rules.
Despite these shifts, local activists are still calling for a just energy transition.
“We get there together, or we never get there at all,” the protestors sang. “No one is getting left behind this time.”
An individual at the protest is wearing a shirt with writing in Spanish that reads, "My neighborhood isn't for sale."
Credit: Cami Ferrell for EHN
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