CEO takes on the agrochemical giants
Dear friends,
Almost five years ago Ursula Von der Leyen announced the EU Green Deal. Thanks to massive mobilisations calling for urgent action, from now on European policies would be centred towards seriously addressing climate change and the collapse of ecosystems.
But then came the pushback from corporate lobbies: fossil fuel companies, chemical companies, agro-industrial companies, pesticide companies, fertilisers companies, meat production companies...you name it.
CEO worked to investigate, map, and exposing these campaigns. For example we revealed the leaked lobby-strategy against the Farm to Fork plans (a Green Deal project aimed at making food production more sustainable) of the powerful agrobiz-lobby Copa-Cogeca and Croplife Europe, , the pesticide industry’s lobby group.
This lobby strategy created an echo chamber of anti-Farm2Fork messages using partial findings from a series of academic ‘impact studies’ making claims about how the new policies would lead to productivity loss, while ignoring the many benefits they would have for people and the environment. As we discovered from leaked documents, many of these studies – weaponised as ‘objective’ – were funded by industry itself at the Dutch agricultural Wageningen University & Research (WUR).
A chorus of useful amplifiers joined the echo chamber, not least many right wing politicians who repeated over and over again the arguments provided by pesticide industries and others who used the biased studies’ findings.
In order to tackle the grave threat of the biodiversity crisis, the EU tabled a proposal for a 50 per cent pesticide reduction law. It put the pesticide industry into survival mode. Again CEO shed light on internal lobby documents from CropLife Europe showing that while it talks a big talk about backing the Green Deal, in reality it employed a wide variety of lobbying tactics to undermine ambitious, binding targets. The ‘impact studies’ carried out by research institutes like Wageningen Economic Research played a key role, as was evidenced by these lobby documents.
These coordinated corporate pushbacks, and the organised farmers’ protests, did the trick: in spring 2024 Ursula Von der Leyen announced she would withdraw the pesticide reduction law. The old distract, delay, and derail tactics from the tobacco industry had worked again.
Sadly, the damage has been done. But three years later, we can at least say that what we first revealed three years ago has been proven right all along – and there are important lessons to be learned.
Sjoukje Heimovaara, chair of the Wageningen University (WUR) Board of Governors, has just criticised the fact that WUR researchers not only carried out these ‘studies’ commissioned by agribusiness lobby groups like Croplife, but also then collaborated in PR activities of CropLife to help amplify their misleading messages.: “That should not have happened, because it creates at least the appearance of a conflict of interest,” Heimovaara acknowledged to Dutch TV documentary Zembla. According to associate professor Jeroen Candel, who specialises in agricultural and food policy, WUR makes itself vulnerable by this ‘encapsulation’ by industry: “We have been used as a public institution by a commercial party to realise their private interests. That is not a good thing.”
Hopefully this admission will make all those, whether researchers, politicians, or media who – unwittingly or not – swallowed the corporate line reflect a little and wake up to these tactics.
Meanwhile CEO continues to expose corporate lobby tactics in the agricultural sector, as we recently did with pesticide and seed multinational Bayer. We follow Bayer’s toxic trail as it maintains monopolistic control of the seed and pesticides markets, fights off regulatory challenges to its toxic products, tries to limit legal liability, and spends tens of millions of euros to lobby governments all over the world and change laws and regulations intended to protect people and planet. Talk about influence!
Our work has not gone unnoticed by our opponents. A recent Lighthouse Reports' investigation reveals that “Trump's administration tried to torpedo the EU Green Deal using influence and misinformation campaigns”.
The journalists show how in 2020 the US Government awarded a US$4.9 million lobbying contract to undermine the EU's Farm to Fork to an influencing operation run by v-Fluence and White House Writers Group. These efforts including a private social network, available to pesticide companies and their industry allies, which profiled leading critics of pesticides and GMOs worldwide, including dozens based in Europe. Among the profiles are included CEO, and our colleague Nina Holland.
We are proud to be identified as a force to be reckoned with. Because this agrochemical-industrial complex is bad for our health, for ecosystems, and for democracy itself. As our supporters, we are glad to have you on our side.
Help us to continue to fight back! Please support our work!
In solidarity,
Marcella, Belén, Kees, Nina, Bram, Karin, Vicky, Joana, Kat, Olivier, Pascoe, Kenneth, Rik and Hans