As food manufacturers begin to more widely acknowledge and address the material risk of climate change and biodiversity loss, they must also acknowledge the role pesticides play.

Pesticide-intensive agriculture not only poses significant health risk to farmers, farm-adjacent communities, and consumers, but also threatens farms’ climate resiliency by reducing the ability of soil to store water and carbon. Additionally, pesticides threaten biodiversity by harming organisms above and below ground and helping pesticide-resistant weeds and insects proliferate. As concerns about pesticides have evolved, shareholders continue to urge companies to require farmers in their supply chain to report synthetic pesticide use, adopt strategies that reduce their need in the first place, and shift to regenerative farming.

Regenerative agriculture is one of the strategies As You Sow encourages, so companies can reduce their need for pesticides. Its adoption has helped change the pesticides landscape over the last few years, reducing the environmental and economic impacts of farming. Its practices include building soil health and sequestering carbon, lowering agricultural-related emissions, and reducing the use of synthetic pesticides.

As You Sow’s 2019 “Pesticides in the Pantry” report found only one of 14 companies surveyed (General Mills) had implemented a regenerative agriculture program, and three had public goals to reduce chemical pesticide use in the supply chain. Two years later, our 2021 Report found 12 companies out of 17 have regenerative farming programs, and seven aim to reduce pesticides in key supply chains. This significant increase shows how shareholder advocacy can create change.

At a recent webinar for the release of the 2021 report, Steven Rosenzweig, PhD, Senior Agricultural Soil Scientist at General Mills, showed images of two farms after a climate change-induced mega-storm. All the soil washed away from the one practicing industrial agriculture while the regenerative agriculture farm soaked up the flood water and was quickly back in business. He noted that General Mills is aggressively pressing its farmers to shift because the company needs supply chain resilience.

As You Sow continues to engage food manufacturers and retailers and this year has filed resolutions with Archer-Daniels-Midland and B&G Foods, two major companies that scored low on the report, urging them to disclose pesticide use data in their supply chains. These resolutions emphasize that pesticide use reporting is an essential first step to evaluate and reduce pesticide risk, which can come from litigation on health and environmental damages, increasingly less effective crop production, lowered resilience in the face of climate change, and reputational harm.

Through corporate engagement, As You Sow encourages companies to adopt and expand comprehensive regenerative agriculture programs that reduce material risk and create lasting economic benefits. This protects yields from the growing impacts of climate change and protects consumers and farm-adjacent communities from exposure to chemicals that are known carcinogens.

Ariana Guilak
Environmental Health Program Coordinator, As You Sow