Embrapa's event at the Climate Conference will be sponsored by giants such as Bayer, Nestlé and Syngenta, accused of practices that deepen socio-environmental damage
As the start of COP 30, the United Nations Climate Conference, which will take place in Belém from November 10 to 21, approaches, it becomes more evident what the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) and several other organizations, movements, collectives and groups have already warned: agribusiness is highlighted in the supposed search for solutions to the environmental crisis. This, in itself, sheds light on the fact that the Conference tends to become a large business counter, in which the assets will be our territories, communities and nature.
According to Embrapa itself, Agrizone is "a great showcase of technologies, science and international cooperation aimed at sustainable agriculture and combating hunger in a context of climate change". However, in practice, the space will serve as a stage for agribusiness to do business, promote its image, and increase its profits — at the cost of destroying nature, concentrating land ownership, and expelling peasant communities and traditional peoples. Under the guise of "sustainability," what we will see is the old logic of exploitation disguised as green.
Starting with its sponsors. It is unthinkable that a space intended to combat hunger and the environmental crisis would have Bayer, Nestlé, and OCP among its funders. These are three companies that act directly to deepen the environmental crisis. In 2024, Bayer had to pay more than 2 billion dollars in compensation to a man in the US who demonstrably contracted cancer due to one of its main products: the Roundup pesticide. The product is no longer sold in that country, but it circulates freely in Brazil. It is estimated that the company faces 170,000 similar lawsuits.
One of the panels that Nestlé will lead at Agrizone is called “Reshaping Food in Brazil.” This is a rather suggestive title, given that the company is already engaged in this “reshaping” – at the expense of the health of the Brazilian people. According to the company's own criteria, 54% of its sales are of products with very low healthiness ratings. In this context, it is already proven that the Swiss company adds more sugar to its products destined for Africa and Latin America.
The Office Chérifien des Phosphates (OCP) is a Moroccan state-owned company focused on phosphate extraction, which is mainly used in the production of pesticides. The company holds 70% of the world's phosphorus reserves. However, most of its production comes from the Bou Craa mine in Western Sahara, a country under colonial occupation by the Moroccan kingdom. In other words, the OCP literally maintains its production at the expense of plundering and stealing minerals that belong to the Saharan population.
Agrizone panels will be dominated by giants that plunder nature
The giants of agribusiness, the ultra-processed food industry, and mining, in addition to sponsoring Agrizone, will also dominate the space's debate panels.
Syngenta, together with Itaú bank, will coordinate the panel "Cooperation for long-term financing in the restoration of degraded areas." The question to be asked is whether the transnational is willing to restore areas that it itself degrades? After all, the company is responsible for a quarter of the market for profenofos, an insecticide used mainly in corn, soy, cotton and other crops. It turns out that this pesticide “is extremely harmful to aquatic organisms, birds and bees. It is a powerful neurotoxin (similar to sarin gas) that can affect brain development in humans, especially in children,” said Laurent Gaberell, head of agriculture and biodiversity at the NGO Public Eye, which published a report on the subject. In Brazil, Syngenta's largest market, “residues of profenofos are found in the drinking water of millions of people,” the report points out.
It is also worth remembering that Syngenta was responsible for the murder of Keno, an MST activist, in 2015, in Paraná. The murder took place in an illegal Syngenta transgenic experiment field in the city of Santa Tereza do Oeste, western Paraná, near the Iguaçu National Park. The area was occupied by about 150 members of Via Campesina. The activists were attacked with gunfire by about 40 agents from NF Segurança, a private company contracted by Syngenta. In addition to Keno's murder, Isabel Nascimento was also shot and lost sight in her right eye.
In addition to Syngenta, Natura will also be at Agrizone. The cosmetics company will lead the panel "from circular carbon to sustainable cooperation." Natura was already fined by Ibama in 2010 for biopiracy. The fine, amounting to 21 million reais, was due to "allegedly irregular access to biodiversity." Furthermore, the company was the subject of a complaint in a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry in the Federal Senate in 2023 for exploiting traditional communities in Pará. According to testimony from indigenous leaders at the time, cooperatives linked to Natura paid three reais per day for work harvesting seeds of andiroba and copaiba, typical of the Amazon. However, the cooperatives sold the liter of seeds for a thousand reais, and the company further increased this profit margin.
The ultra-processed food giant PepsiCo will be the protagonist in the panel "Every drop counts: growing potatoes in a changing climate." Residues of the pesticide glyphosate have been identified in several of the company's products, including Doritos chips. The likely health damage can begin at very low levels, as low as 0.1 parts per billion (ppb) of glyphosate. But in the company's products, levels between 289.47 ppb and 1,125.3 ppb were found. Among the consequences of glyphosate on the body are gastrointestinal disorders, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression, autism, infertility, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and gluten intolerance.
Agribusiness controls Agrizone
Although Agrizone is officially conceived by Embrapa, the actual control of the space is in the hands of agribusiness. Not surprisingly, important players in the sector here in Brazil, such as the Brazilian Agribusiness Association (ABAG), the Brazilian Rural Society (SRB), and Amaggi, will be in the spotlight.
There is no way to build concrete solutions to the environmental crisis when the main culprits of this scenario are sitting at the table, coordinating the "boardroom." In Brazil, agribusiness (and the entire industrial complex around it) are the main causes of this crisis. It is responsible for 74% of greenhouse gas emissions in the country.
All the supposed sustainable discourse maintained by those entities and companies in this sector – which will dominate the Agrizone panels – will actually serve two functions. First, to camouflage the real way agribusiness operates, which is based on the appropriation and destruction of common natural resources, as well as the exploitation of traditional peoples. Secondly, in the face of the environmental crisis that they themselves provoked, they are implementing false solutions based on the financialization of nature – as is the case with the carbon market.
For an Embrapa at the service of the people and not of companies
Embrapa is a strategic public company for the country. It suffered a profound attack during the Bolsonaro administration. However, those who defended it were not agribusiness, which was hand in hand with Bolsonaro, but the Brazilian people and its employees.
Therefore, it is essential that it is effectively focused on the interests of the Brazilian people and not under the control of transnational giants linked to agribusiness. The challenges related to food sovereignty and the fight against the environmental crisis will not come from those who profit from hunger, diseases resulting from ultra-processed foods and pesticides. But they will come from those who have been resisting the advance of capital for centuries and cultivating emancipated forms of relationship with nature.
