By Lisa Held for Civil Eats.
Broadcast version by Mark Moran for Iowa News Service reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration


Like so many people whose lives were upended during the pandemic, Sean Dengler returned to his roots. In 2020, he went back to northern Iowa and joined his father in farming 500 acres of corn and soybeans.

As he learned the ropes, he began engaging with Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI), a unique organization that attracts out-of-the-box thinkers and tinkerers across a wide spectrum of sustainable agriculture in the Midwest. Soon, he was reading about neonicotinoids—“neonics” for short—now the most common chemicals used to kill bugs in American agriculture.

Farmers can spray them on fields, but these insecticides are also attached to seeds as an outer coating, called a seed treatment. As the seeds germinate and grow, the plant’s tissues become toxic to certain pests.

However, neonics impact beneficial insects, too, like bees and other pollinators. Newer research also shows neonics threaten birds and some mammals, suggesting potential human health impacts. In 2023, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that the three most common neonics were each likely to harm more than 1,000 endangered species. Also, neonics move through soil into groundwater, contaminating rivers and streams in the Midwest and beyond. Data from 2015 to 2016 showed about half of Americans over three years old were recently exposed to a neonic.

Dengler suspected he had been planting neonic-treated seed, but he wasn’t sure exactly which chemicals the colorful coating was meant to warn him of. He also had no idea if it would be possible for him to order seeds without the treatment. “The corn is usually either red or purple when it comes,” he said. “That’s how it’s always been. You just get it that way.”

In numerous interviews over the past year, other farmers, researchers, and industry insiders described the same scenario to Civil Eats. While the agrichemical industry claims farmers “carefully select the right pesticide for each pest and crop at issue” and “only use pesticides as a last resort,” when it comes to neonics, that is false in most cases. Nearly all commodity corn farmers receive seed coated with neonics at the start of each season; many cannot identify the chemical that’s in the coating and don’t even know if another option exists.

These findings are significant for a few key reasons.

First, the pesticide industry often calls seed treatment environmentally beneficial because it reduces the amount of insecticide applied per acre compared to spraying. This is true. But research shows that the preemptive coating of seed with neonics has resulted in farmers using insecticides, overall, on significantly more total acres than they were a few decades ago. A 2015 study published by researchers Maggie Douglas and John Tooker at Penn State University found that neonic seed treatments are now used on almost triple the area that had once been sprayed with insecticides, indicating their negative impacts could be more widely distributed.

Second, a significant portion of that use may be for nothing. In corn and soy fields, new research and evidence accumulated over the last few years suggest that widespread use of neonic-treated seeds provide minimal benefit to farmers. One study from Quebec helped convince the Canadian province to change its laws to restrict the use of neonic seed treatments. After five years and a 95 percent drop in the use of neonic-coated seeds, there have been no reported impacts on crop yields.

But based on conversations with farmers and other industry insiders, agrichemical companies that sell seeds and pesticides continue to steer farmers toward using neonics on their seeds—and sometimes, there are no other options available. “They scare the farmers and say that you’re going to lose your yield, that you’re going to have crop failure, and the whole grain sector will just collapse,” said Louis Robert, a Canadian agronomist who previously worked for the Quebec government, where he revealed pesticide-industry meddling in research on neonics’ environmental harms. “They go very far in terms of misleading people.”

At the same time, the industry has engaged in a broad, sophisticated lobbying and public relations effort to block regulation in the U.S., muddy the research waters, and even influence Google search results for neonics, all of which has been documented in depth by The Intercept.

So, while Europe and Canada have been moving away from the widespread use of neonics, the U.S. has barely budged in its approach. Neonic-treated seeds are planted on nearly 90 million acres of corn fields and more than 40 million acres of soybean fields each year. Only New York and Vermont have passed bans that include eliminating them as coatings on corn and soy seeds—and those laws do not go into effect until 2029. (Neonic treatments are common on many other seeds, including wheat, cotton, and vegetables, and farmers’ reliance on them varies across different crops. This investigation focused only on corn and soy, by far the two most widely planted crops in the country.)

Over the course of three weeks in October, Civil Eats sent at least four interview requests and detailed questions to CropLife America, which represents the pesticide industry, but did not receive a response. We also sent emails to press contacts at the companies that make or sell pesticide and seed products mentioned in this story: Corteva (which owns Pioneer) and Winfield United (owned by Land O’Lakes) did not respond. A spokesperson for Syngenta directed Civil Eats to “Growing Matters” and sent a statement that reads, “Planting seeds treated with crop-protection products is a more precise way for farmers to protect their crops from early season pests and diseases. As you can see from our global Seedcare Institute website, Syngenta is a leader in providing treated seeds of the highest quality and committed to helping farmers achieve their yield goals sustainably.”

No Knowledge, No Choice

For many years, Kynetec, a global data company, asked farmers to share which insecticides were on their seeds and then provided the federal government with estimates of how many acres were being planted with the chemicals included. But because farmers were so often unable to name the specific chemicals, it was impossible to warrant a reliable data set. They stopped in 2014.

A few years later, in a 2020 paper, researchers reported in the journal Bioscience that only 65 percent of corn growers and 62 percent of soybean growers could name the seed treatment product they were using. Even if they did know the product, that didn’t mean they knew what was in it. In fact, in 15 to 35 percent of cases, corn growers incorrectly identified the pesticides included in the treatment.

It speaks to why Damon Smith’s colleagues at the University of Wisconsin’s Nutrient and Pest Management Program dreamed up a resource dubbed “What’s on your seed?” When Smith, a biologist who studies field crop diseases, started working on it around 2010, the document was a page or two long, and they updated it every few years. Today, it’s a six-page PDF that the team updates at least once a year to keep up with new seed treatments hitting the market.

Very few of those are new chemicals entirely. Most are new combinations of a neonic (or another insecticide) paired with anywhere from one to four fungicides, and maybe a nematicide, a chemical that targets pests called nematodes.

“There’s quite a few products out there, and it’s gotten increasingly complicated,” Smith said.

Sales agronomists who work for seed companies, farmers said, sell product packages based mainly on their marketed “yield potential” and are unlikely to talk up the names of pesticides included in the coating. And they emphasize the need for seed coatings as insurance against crop loss.

“The way it often gets marketed to [farmers] is, they get one chance a year to get it right,” explained Mac Erhardt, co-owner of Albert Lea Seed, a small, family-owned seed company based in Minnesota and Iowa. “The big chemical companies have been pretty successful at distributing counter-information where they show, ‘Well, if you plant naked seed, you’re giving up five bushels an acre.’” Six or seven years ago, before his company made a full switch to selling non-GMO and organic seeds, Erhardt said his contracts with big seed companies required him to treat corn seed with neonics before selling it.

With soybeans, the system works a little differently, and farmers are able to select seed treatments at the time of sale.

One Iowa farmer, who asked not to be named, compared the process to a car wash. “You can pick what you want on the screen, and then it formulates it and puts it through,” she said. Instead of exterior, interior, and a wax, it’s neonicotinoid, fungicide, and a nematicide.

Still, farmers said they almost always defer to the seed dealers and are often unaware of what the treatments they’re selecting consist of. “From a farmer’s perspective, we want a seed to be protected, so we just trust that whatever potion they put on the seed, it’s going to be okay. They’re not in the business of selling seed that will yield less, so we just put our trust in them,” she said. “If we had real choices, those that know insecticides like neonics are harmful, we’re not going to push that button.”

Fears About Speaking Out Against Treated Seeds

Pesticide companies are so entrenched in the culture of agricultural communities, asking questions about insecticides and their merits or detriments also can feel taboo. One reason this farmer did not want to be named was because she thought, with all of the seed contracts she’d signed over the years, that it was possible she had signed a non-disclosure agreement without realizing it.

For others, it’s much more personal. After Frank Rademacher, who has been farming corn and soybeans with his dad in east-central Illinois since 2018, talked about neonics to a reporter at a farming publication, another farmer yelled at him in public and accused him of hurting agriculture.

Rademacher said that many farmers he encounters have a vague, visceral sense that there may be risks associated with the colorful dust that blows into the air as the high-powered vacuum system shoots seeds into the ground and the tractor shakes and bumps around. But pesticides are so commonplace that at a forum he attended, farmers laughed about which ones cause rashes and which lead to headaches. With neonics, he said, they’re grateful to have insecticides that are not as acutely toxic as the ones their parents handled. If they try not to touch the seeds with their bare hands or breathe too much of the dust in, it feels like enough.

“The products that they were using growing up, they were just horrible,” he said of farmers in their 50s and older like his dad, who might have been exposed to insecticides like DDT, malathion, and chlorpyrifos that have now been banned or phased out. “This is kind of an invisible issue. It takes away a lot of the acute exposure, and what you trade is the long-term personal and environmental low-level exposure.”

Sean Dengler worried that even asking questions about neonics when buying his seed would upset others in his small farming community, some of whom he had known since childhood and considered friends. “My dad’s very conventional, and I don’t wanna make him feel uncomfortable in that way. It’s kind of like a peer pressure type of thing,” he said. But Dengler recognized the power that gave the industry. “It’s a good thing for big business. You get everyone on one side, and you can’t have people think differently.”

With the name of Dengler’s product in hand, Civil Eats tried to find out for him if the soybean treatment he had used contained a neonic. Because it was a newer product and wasn’t yet listed in Damon Smith’s resource, it took significant searching and emailing to track down the chemicals included. The insecticide was thiamethoxam—one of the most common neonics.

Later, Dengler got his chance to ask about what was included in his corn seed treatments. Attending a plot tour hosted by Pioneer, one of the major seed companies, he learned that the corn seed had “seven fungicide treatments and two insecticide treatments on it. That’s the first time during my farming career I heard anything about it,” he explained by email to Civil Eats.

Leaving Neonic-Coated Seeds Behind

For those who do decide to swim upstream, the current encouraging them to stay the usual course is strong.

“Even though there’s data showing that, ‘Hey, with a few tweaks, you can change your farming practices and you don’t need to use insecticides on your seed,’ [farmers] still want that protection. They don’t want that one-out-of-every-10-years problem,” said Erhardt, from Albert Lea Seed.

That rare issue is the sticking point: Neonics are very good at killing some pests that can cause serious damage to crops, and companies are quick to point to that. One industry document created by CropLife to promote neonics on seeds highlights a study that found the number of plants that survived the season increased 18 percent, and crop yield increased by 12 percent, “when neonicotinoid-treated corn seed was planted into corn fields with high wireworm populations.”

In other words, if you use neonics in a field infested with wireworm, it really helps. But using it on every field preventatively is like taking an antibiotic every day in case an infection pops up at some point. “Most of the pests that neonics really work well on are highly sporadic,” said Maggie Douglas, who is now an assistant professor of environmental studies at Dickinson College. “The question is: How many farmers are having a seedcorn maggot infestation in their field in a given year?”

Seedcorn maggots are dreaded for their ability to burrow into seeds and kill a crop off the bat. But in New York, at least, there’s a clear answer. As the campaign to pass a law banning the use of neonicotinoid coatings on corn and soybean seeds heated up, farm groups were concerned, specifically, about how they’d control the pest.

So, researchers at Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences set out to quantify how big the problem was. They set up ten one-year trials in four different locations across the state, comparing neonic-treated fields to fields planted with alternative seed treatments. After they pooled and analyzed the data, their preliminary conclusions were that there were no significant differences and that overall, “seedcorn maggots were not a factor in establishing corn” in any of their trials. (They expect to release final results from three years of trials this winter.) In Quebec, researchers did find seedcorn maggot infestations that caused damage to young corn plants, but at the end of the day, the infestations still didn’t result in yield losses.

Another big hurdle facing farmers who want to move away from neonics is that they would also likely have to switch to non-genetically modified seed, said Rademacher. “I’m not aware of any seed company that that offers untreated seed in a GMO variety,” he said.

If it was available, he would likely know. Not only does Rademacher have a degree in crop science with a focus on pest management, he also has an off-farm job as a conservation agronomist for The Nature Conservancy. In his own fields, he began implementing all kinds of conservation practices and, to ditch neonic coatings on his corn, was able to navigate the accompanying switch to planting non-GMO seed. But even a neonic-skeptical farmer would likely balk at giving up the protection against other pests that genetic modification enables. For example, if corn seed is not genetically modified to withstand glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, farmers would have to stop spraying the widely used weedkiller to avoid killing their corn.

“You’re asking people to make not just one big shift but potentially two or more big shifts,” he said. “It’s all or nothing.”

One compelling reason to make the switch is cost savings. In Quebec, a group of farmers convened by the University of Vermont last spring all said their seed costs $10–$20 less per bag now that they’re not paying for the neonicotinoid coating. In Iowa, the farmer who paid to have her soybeans coated said she was charged $2/acre—or $1,000 extra for a 500-acre field. According to U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates, seed treatment “may account for around 15 percent of the seed price.”

That got Dengler’s attention. With a degree in finance, he was particularly interested in opportunities to cut costs on the farm, and he was intrigued by a PFI farmer who conducted his own field trials on neonics. The results showed that the treatment applied to his soybean seeds might not be necessary: The farmer planted beans without the coating, the plants stayed healthy, and crop yields didn’t drop.

“When you tie in the environmental impact of the seed treatment on the soybeans, I was like, ‘I’ll even take a bushel or two less, just because I believe that I’m doing the right thing,’” he said. While he couldn’t see how to do it with corn, he started opting out of neonic treatments on his soybean seeds.

After harvest ended, he reported that all but one of his soybean fields yielded better than last year. But a clear takeaway on whether his choice to forgo neonics had an impact would be tough, he said. For one, growing conditions were better this season. Both years were dry, and wet conditions are often what precipitate early-season insect issues. So far, based on the lack of a clear difference, he said adding the neonic treatments “doesn’t seem worth the pay or environmental impacts.”

Meanwhile, Rademacher is a few years in. Since planting seeds without neonic coatings, he said his yields might vary a few bushels here or there, but it’s nothing significant.

However, he didn’t just change his seeds and continue farming the same way. Instead, he’s investing in an entirely different method of pest control. “As counterintuitive as it seems, our system is to promote insects. We have no tillage, so we don’t destroy their houses every year, and we provide year-round habitat via cover crops,” he said. Each small change adds up, and now, he and his dad are seeing significant numbers of beneficial insects returning, which keeps the bad guys in check.

In fact, the research that first spurred Douglas’ interest in neonics was on this very topic: In the lab, she accidently discovered that neonics were killing the beneficial beetles that prey on the slugs destroying Pennsylvania farmers’ yields—but not the slugs themselves. The discovery led her to a research trial that ultimately found that in their specific region, neonic treatments could actually reduce yields.

Further north, Quebeçois farmers have the biggest head start. During the University of Vermont panel, one said he had learned a simple trick since ditching neonic seed treatments: He waits to see when his neighbor—an organic farmer—is ready to plant, and he follows his lead. That simple adjustment allows him to sidestep early season pest risks.

For agronomist Louis Robert, the success of the Quebec government’s decision to move away from neonics on corn and soy seeds is apparent not in what’s being said, but in the silence. After five years, farmers aren’t talking about crop failure at their local meeting places, he said, and he hasn’t seen any media coverage of the neonic ban. Farmers can apply to use neonic-treated seed if they document a need, but almost no one’s doing so, he added.

“The most reliable proof is that it’s not even a matter of discussion anymore,” Robert said. “Today, as we speak in 2024 in Quebec, over half of the corn and soy acreage doesn’t carry any insecticide, and we’re going to have a fantastic year in terms of yield. So, the demonstration is right there in front of you.”


Lisa Held wrote this article for Civil Eats.


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By Grey Moran for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Zamone Perez for Virginia News Connection reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

Last August, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food & Safety Inspection Service, the federal team responsible for ensuring the safe and accurate labeling of the commercial meat supply, issued letters to several dozen meat producers to inform them of antibiotics detected in beef. This isn’t an unusual finding — antibiotics are widely used on industrial animal farms — yet the meat sampled was on track to be sold as “antibiotic-free,” “raised without antibiotics” or a similar label promising that the animals were never administered antibiotics.

These letters, recently obtained by the advocacy group Farm Forward through a Freedom of Information Act request, reveal that the world’s largest meat producers — JBS, Cargill, and Tyson — raised cattle that tested positive for antibiotics prohibited under USDA-approved labels advertising the beef as free of antibiotics.

“This strongly suggests that the US antibiotic-free beef supply is deeply contaminated and deeply deceptive to American consumers,” Andrew deCoriolis, the executive director of Farm Forward tells Sentient.

The USDA’s Food & Safety Inspection Service found that 20 percent of the samples under this label tested positive for antibiotics, raising questions about how widespread mislabeling is in the U.S. commercial beef supply. These findings were announced last August, but the names of the companies which tested positive for antibiotics were not made publicly available until recently, as part of a new report released by Farm Forward questioning the validity of this popular label.

“It does seem to violate the nature of the label,” says Keeve Nachman, the associate director of the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. Nachman is not concerned about immediate health impacts — consuming antibiotic residue does not cause an immediate illness, but contributes to the rise of antibiotic resistant bacteria — though he is concerned about the broader lack of transparency around antibiotic use on farms and how that contributes to longer-term antibiotic resistance in humans and animals.

These faulty labeling practices result in a “mischaracterization of the magnitude of antibiotics being used in agriculture,” Nachman says. It’s been estimated that 70 percent of medically-important antibiotics sold in the U.S. — those used to treat human infections — are used to produce meat, dairy and other animal-sourced products. The difference between what’s presented on labels and actual use means the public may not understand the urgency. “It is going to mean that we don’t have the full appreciation of the pressure our agricultural industry puts on the ability of those drugs to resolve human infections,” says Nachman.

The World Health Organization calls antimicrobial resistance “one of the top global public health and development threats,” responsible for millions of deaths every year. The problem is only going to get worse, according to public health experts. The misuse and overuse of antibiotics — both in humans and farm animals (who often receive the same antibiotics) — leads bacteria to develop more resistant genes that then fail to respond to the medically necessary use of these drugs.

The USDA’s Food & Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) sent a total of 27 letters to offending meat companies, advising them to “conduct a root cause analysis to determine how antibiotics were introduced into the animal and to take appropriate measures to ensure future products are not misbranded.” FSIS sampled between one and four cattle carcasses per processing facility, which were randomly selected as part of a 2023 initiative. In the letters, FSIS stated that it would “not take immediate enforcement action in response to individual test results.”

“USDA is continuing to review policies and actions taken by the previous administration,” a FSIS spokesperson told Sentient in an e-mail, in response to questions about whether they intend to take any follow-up enforcement or policy actions. “FSIS remains committed to ensuring the safety of the nation’s food supply and protecting public health.”

deCoriolis points to the USDA’s lax oversight of this voluntary certification program, which requires that companies submit documentation to receive the USDA’s approval for use of this label. The USDA relies on self-reported information to validate these and many other claims, including humanely-raised and free range claims.

Meat brands are required only to submit written statements attesting to their process for ensuring antibiotics are not part of their meat supply chains. As deCoriolis sees it, the certification process is vulnerable to exploitation — companies can charge a higher price for meat sold as antibiotic-free but there is not enough oversight to ensure compliance.

“Despite the USDA knowing that this label claim is, in many cases false, they continue to approve the label without requiring testing to verify the claim,” continued deCoriolis. ”From our perspective, this is the USDA deliberately maintaining labeling policies that allow meat companies to mislead the public. And the effect of that is the USDA is giving meat companies a consumer liability shield to protect them from consumer protection laws.”

The Federal Meat Inspection Act (FMIA) and Poultry Products Inspection Act (PPIA) set the federal legal frameworks for meat and poultry product labeling, which refers to the language on the back or front of meat packaging in grocery stores. Previously, courts have held that if the manufacturer’s labels are approved by the USDA, they can be legally used for advertising — effectively giving the USDA the final say on what winds up on meat labels.

Following these test results, the USDA updated its guidelines to “strongly encourages the use of third-party certification to substantiate animal-raising or environment-related claims,” but the agency fell short of actually requiring third-party verification. The updated guidelines were announced in August under President Biden’s administration, and there has not been any further action in this vein under USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins.

Sentient reached out to every meat producer that received a letter to see if they had followed the USDA’s recommendations in conducting a root causes analysis to determine how antibiotics entered their food supply, or any other additional measures.

According to FSIS’s letter, inspectors identified monensin — an antibiotic that is banned in the European Union as a growth promoter in farm animals — in animal carcasses sampled at Swift Beef Company in Greeley, Colorado, a subsidiary of JBS USA, one of the largest meat companies in the world. JBS USA claims beef sold under its Aspen Ridge brand come from cattle that “have never received growth promotants of any kind.”

In an e-mail to Sentient, Nikki Richardson, JBS USA’s Head of Corporate Communications, wrote that “the product impacted in this instance was identified at the facility and never made it into the food supply.” She also wrote that JBS USA conducted an audit following this incident. No evidence of either statement was provided. Sentient asked if the company would be willing to provide Sentient with “the results of the audit, for the sake of consumer transparency,” but Richardson did not reply.

Similarly, FSIS detected monensin in an animal carcass at a Cargill facility in Fort Morgan, Colorado and tulathromycin (used to treat bovine respiratory illnesses) at a separate Cargill facility in Wyalusing, Pennsylvania. Chuck Miller, the global external communications lead for Cargill, replied that the company has not violated any regulatory requirements.

“Cargill complies with USDA and FSIS regulatory requirements to ensure safe and compliant products enter the market,” stated Miller, in an email to Sentient. “I would also like to reinforce that there has been no evidence that meat with antibiotic residue levels in excess of regulatory standards entered the food supply.”

Tyson did not respond to a request for comment. However, Tyson has scaled back on its previous pledge to raise beef without antibiotics, following previous public scrutiny of these labeling claims. 

There are shortcomings to FSIS’s testing program. The tests performed didn’t distinguish between selective antibiotic use to treat an illness and constant low-dose exposure to antibiotics administered directly into the animals’ feed. While both are prohibited under the labeling program, the excessive, chronic use of antibiotics poses a much more serious risk to public health, contributing to the development of antibiotic resistance. 

“If a cow is selectively treated for penicillin two years ago and gets harvested, that’s one thing. But if it’s been constantly exposed to a drug, over and over again, leading up to 30 to 60 days prior to the time it was harvested, that’s going to be a whole other level of residue,” says Marshall Bartlett, the co-founder of Home Place Pastures, a cattle and pig farm and processing house in Como, Mississippi. FSIS’s letters don’t indicate the level of residue. 

FSIS found that one of Bartlett’s cattle tested positive for penicillin, which is commonly used on small farms to selectively treat illnesses. He performed the root cause analysis as recommended, tracing it back to a nearby producer who sells him cattle, who forgot to tag that animal to indicate that it could no longer be sold under the labeling program. “The producer was very apologetic and understood,” says Bartlett. 

Out of all of the meat producers, Bartlett is the only one who said he performed this analysis and was willing to share the results. He hopes that the USDA expands and refines its testing for antibiotics use. “As far as we’re concerned, we’re really committed to transparency and figuring this out, trying to be an advocate for local farmers in our supply chain,” he says.


Grey Moran wrote this article for Sentient.


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By Dawn Attride for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Mark Richardson for Arkansas News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

It's no secret that industrial animal agriculture is draining our planet's resources and is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions - responsible for somewhere between 12 and nearly 20 percent of climate pollution. On a personal level, reducing meat consumption and adapting to a plant-forward diet are one of the most effective forms of climate action. When it comes to more systemic solutions however, lawmakers and development banks have favored interventions that tend to be tech-based, or human manufactured. These solutions, like dairy digesters that convert manure into biogas, or synthetic feed additives that reduce methane emissions from livestock, also tend to be hotly contested by a certain swath of environmentalists.

While such technologies promise to curb emissions, the reality is not so simple - and they also may do little to combat agriculture's stress on water, soils and biodiversity. These strategies often don't address issues like soil health or the deforestation of land - at least not directly.

A new report makes the case that the best way forward may lie in investing in nature-based solutions, rather than technological ones. The findings were published by The Farm Animal Investment Risk and Return Initiative (FAIRR), an investor network covering risks and opportunities in the global food system.

Investing in Nature Take Time, but Benefits Ecosystems

A nature-based solution uses natural techniques and ecosystems to address environmental challenges, such as planting trees or restoring wetlands to capture carbon.

The new FAIRR report is the "first of its kind" in developing a framework to attract investment for long-term climate solutions in a way that considers the whole planet holistically, Sajeev Mohankumar, senior technical specialist of climate and biodiversity at FAIRR, tells Sentient.

"Industrial farming produces more calories and produces more product per unit area because they are so efficient and their only goal is to maximize profit. But what we wanted to emphasize in this report is that that is not the only system of agriculture -- it also has to deliver for the animals in terms of welfare, human health and planetary health. That's where nature-based solutions come into play," he says.

FAIRR evaluated 22 on-farm interventions (12 nature-based, 10 tech-based) often cited to address agriculture's climate and nature risks. They found that nature-based solutions such as hedgerows (rows of shrubs that act as a carbon sink and reduce soil erosion) and silvopasture (integrating trees into grazing pastures) had a greater positive impact collectively on emissions reductions, biodiversity, freshwater use and the flow of nutrients across ecosystems. "Nature-based interventions can deliver 37 percent of the mitigation required to meet 2030 climate targets, along with significant nature co-benefits," the report states.

Nature-based solutions are touted as offering more holistic rewards, but can take time to show impact, which can be difficult to sell to investors. "I think there is a lack of knowledge in terms of connecting some of the financial returns to environmental outcomes," Mohankumar says. "This involves changing the behavior of farmers and tying them into a long-term contract...it takes a long time to yield benefits."

For example, technology like synthetic animal feed additives reduce methane emissions from livestock by roughly 10-30 percent, but offer few co-benefits for nature. Hedgerows, by comparison, reduce emissions but also have positive environmental benefits, such as reducing soil erosion and curbing nutrient runoff into water. On the other hand, hedgerows need to be planted in large quantities, and require a long timescale of up to 10 years to sequester significant amounts of carbon.

A Ticking Climate Clock Requires Thoughtful Solutions

Nature-based solutions have another added benefit: they tend to boost climate resilience, often in a more cost-effective way, according to a recent review of over 100 peer-reviewed articles. Sixty-five percent of studies found that nature-based solutions were better at reducing disaster risk, and 71 percent of studies found that they were more cost-effective than tech-based ones.

Currently, the majority of on-farm intervention investment flows toward technological advances, which, FAIRR says is "concerning." This is because tech-based climate interventions "are more likely to be aligned with intensive livestock production practices, and lead only to incremental emissions reductions relative to the long-term systemic changes from implementing nature-based interventions." In other words, these solutions cut down on emissions a little, without addressing the problems caused by industrial food systems, like poor animal welfare or water pollution.

Not every climate researcher sees a clear preference for technology or nature-based solutions. Sentient asked Richard Waite, director for Agriculture Initiatives, Food, Land and Water Program at the World Resources Institute (WRI), to take a look at FAIRR's research, with which he was not involved. Waite was a co-author of a 2019 report from WRI that recommended a suite of solutions to meet the challenge of feeding even more people on the planet - 9.7 billion by 2050 - without draining natural resources and driving up global temperatures to an unhealthy degree.

"This report looks at many interventions that are commonly cited when talking about reducing agriculture's impacts on climate and nature. It recommends more investment in nature-based solutions, while also noting that such interventions may lower food production," Waite tells Sentient.

"In our world of increasing food demand linked to agricultural expansion and deforestation," says Waite, "we must be very careful to assess any tradeoffs related to shifting to agricultural systems or practices that produce less food and require more land."

When it comes to food systems, tradeoffs can have significant consequences. For instance, shifting a factory farm to a regenerative beef operation could mean more space for farm animals to roam. That sounds like a better scenario for farm animals. But research has also shown that regenerative cattle ranches use twice as much land to produce the same amount of food. If Americans and other Global North populations were to continue to eat meat at even close to the same levels they do now, there is simply not enough farmland to shift all industrial farms to regenerative operations. And trying to make that shift would undoubtedly result in more emissions and more deforestation.

For Waite and WRI, a mix of solutions is key. "Our own research suggests that both tech-based and nature-based solutions will be essential to feeding 10 billion people by 2050, while protecting nature and the climate."

The Bottom Line

Fierce debates over climate solutions seem to be going strong, yet global temperatures - and food system emissions - continue to be heading in the wrong direction. If countries are serious about meeting their climate goals, they will likely need to consider comprehensive solutions that account for impacts to both climate and nature.


Dawn Attride wrote this article for Sentient.


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A recent poll by the National Wildlife Federation showed Texas farmers and ranchers benefit from voluntary conservation programs from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and many would like to see the programs expand.

Respondents said the funding helps improve their bottom line and protect soil and water.

Aviva Glaser, senior director of agriculture policy for the federation, said Texas producers use the programs in various ways.

"Prescribed grazing and brush management and range planting were very popular practices," Glaser pointed out. "There's been the Working Lands for Wildlife program that has helped with the Monarch butterfly decline through voluntary measures the farmers (and) ranchers are doing with the help of this funding."

She noted only 5% of the more than 500 farmers and ranchers polled disagree with increasing long-term funding from the USDA.

Almost 70% of producers said designating funds specifically to help farmers adopt climate smart agriculture practices is a good use of federal money.

Glaser pointed out the wildlife federation has created a mapping tool which shows how much federal funding each state has received and outlines how farmers and ranchers are using it.

"That could be a range of different practices," Glaser observed. "Practices like cover crops or grazing management or it could be a conservation easement. It could be putting in a buffer strip."

More than eight in 10 producers support passage of a new Farm Bill. The legislation is supposed to be renewed every five years but the last version was passed in 2018.