A Faustian bargain?
The writer holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne and is the author of Development, Poverty and Power in Pakistan, available from Routledge
Six weeks ago, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) announced its new strategic partnership with CropLife, an association of the largest agribusiness firms in the world. While this collaboration is being lauded by some, it has also stirred up a lot of concern.
The FAO’s decision to collaborate with the pesticide industry is certainly part of a much broader trend. The development sector is a crowded field, with more development actors finding themselves competing for scarce donor funds. As a result, NGOs and even multilateral development agencies have increasingly begun looking toward the private sector for access to financing and other resources.
The FAO move to partner with CropLife also seems to be compelled by the need to gain access to more capital, newer technologies to help boost agricultural productivity and resilience to climate change. CropLife’s website claims that it, too, was motivated to begin a strategic partnership with the FAO so that its affiliated companies could do their bit to further the goal of delivering sustainable food systems and help achieve the UN’s SDGs.
Many detractors, however, see this partnership as a departure for the FAO’s mandate to promote safe and sustainable forms of agriculture which can address hunger and rural poverty while conserving natural environments. CropLife, however, represents the interests of its corporate members, including the world’s largest agribusiness firms such as BASF, Bayer Crop Science, Corteva Agriscience, FMC and Syngenta.
CropLife describes its work in lofty terms by claiming its affiliates provide “crop protection” and “plant biotechnology” which advance sustainable agriculture. Yet, its critics claim that CropLife products (such as pesticides and herbicides, some of which are used in conjunction with genetically modified seeds) have caused serious harm to the environment and human health. Numerous studies have documented widespread prevalence of acute pesticide poisoning. Syngenta’s herbicide paraquat is considered an acutely toxic pesticide linked to Parkinson’s disease and other health problems. Banned in Europe since 2007, this herbicide has continued being exported and widely used in countries like China and Pakistan.
Farm workers in many poor countries are often exposed to pesticides without any protection. For instance, women and children picking pesticide laden crops like cotton is a common phenomenon in Pakistan, as in many other so-called ‘developing countries’ where harvester use is uncommon.
The UN’s own Special Rapporteurs on the Right to Food have highlighted the unethical practice of pesticide firms for using aggressive marketing tactics, influencing policymakers, and undermining scientific evidence to sell more of their products.
Hundreds of civil society organisations, and academics from over 60 countries, have called on the FAO to reconsider its alliance with CropLife. They fear that CropLife’s strategic partnership with the FAO will enable its affiliated companies to gain respectability and greater legitimacy under the guise of their affiliation with the FAO.
The FAO has responded by asserting that it remains committed to the removal of highly hazardous pesticides, and its scope of engagement with CropLife partnership is to ensure effective pest management, and to minimise the risk of pesticides.
In the past, FAO has been wary about the use of pesticides. It has described the reliance on hazardous pesticides as a short-term fix which undermines the rights to adequate food and health. Several FAO initiatives have been formulated to explicitly try and minimise external inputs and conserve genetic diversity. Whether FAO’s partnership with CropLife will compromise this UN agency’s ability to demand phasing out poisoning pesticides or promoting alternative agro-ecological alternatives remains to be seen. However, CropLife’s business strategists will probably not miss this opportunity of leveraging their partnership with the FAO to boost their own product sales and profits.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 11th, 2020.
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