17
Oct
Petroleum Industry Celebrates Global Fertilizer Day Despite Health Threats and Sustainable Alternatives
(Beyond Pesticides, October 17, 2025) Earlier this week, on October 13, the fossil fuel industry, commodity crop groups, and their political allies celebrated Global Fertilizer Day. The industry is celebrating the widespread (and growing) use of petroleum products, including synthetic, nitrogen-based and fossil-fuel derived fertilizers. As a response to industry claims that petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers are critical to ensuring global food security, Beyond Pesticides and a broad coalition spanning civil society, scientists, farmers, farmworkers and working people are pushing back against toxic chemical dependency and advancing organic land (agricultural and nonagricultural) management as cost-effective, productive, and protective of health and the environment.
A review last year in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) highlights the urgent need to address the widespread chemical pollution stemming from the petrochemical industry, underscoring the dire implications for public health. Tracey Woodruff, PhD, author and professor at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), emphatically states, “We need to recognize the very real harm that petrochemicals are having on people’s health. Many of these fossil-fuel-based chemicals are endocrine disruptors, meaning they interfere with hormonal systems, and they are part of the disturbing rise in disease.” (Watch Dr. Woodruff’s talk to the 41st National Forum, Fossil Fuels and Toxic Chemicals, last year.)
Earlier this year, a cohort of leading climate scientists and environmental justice leaders, including Robert Bullard, PhD, published a report in Oxford Open Climate Change, warning about the continuous use of fossil fuels across the global economy and its contribution to existential and “interlinked crises that jeopardize the breadth and stability of life on Earth.” The authors specifically delve into the latest peer-reviewed science on adverse effects of synthetic agrochemicals and propose solutions, including “more localized organic agriculture are [some] of the farming systems we must adopt as a society to increase food security and mitigate agriculture’s impact on the global climate crisis and biodiversity decline.”
The growing awareness and acknowledgement by the scientific community of organic regenerative agriculture and criteria as a solution to the interlinking health, biodiversity, and climate crises is built on decades of legacy activism not only by pioneering farmers, but farmworkers, and farmworker justice groups who have been calling for food systems to transition away from poisonous products.
Agrochemicals, Adverse Effects, and Organic and Agroecological Solutions
The study’s authors are experts at research institutions and nonprofits organizations, including Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute and Environmental Health Program, Texas Southern University Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice, Boston University School of Public Health, Cawthron Institute, University of California, Berkley, School of Public Health, Harvard University Department of the History of Science, Oregon State University Forest Ecosystems & Society, Conservation Biology Institute, and University of Montana Environmental Studies Program.
In the study’s section on agrochemicals, the authors emphasize the dependency on fossil fuels in the food system with astounding statistics. They write: “Agrochemicals, consisting mainly of synthetic chemical fertilizers and pesticides, are widely used in modern-day industrial agriculture. An estimated 99 [percent] of synthetic chemicals are derived from fossil fuels [381], with synthetic pesticides and nitrogen-based fertilizers derived mainly from petroleum, fracked gas and coal [324, 382, 383].”
There are several other important figures to consider in terms of the history of petrochemical dominance in the conventional food system:
- “In 2015 alone, the USA used over 26 billion pounds of nitrogen fertilizer [384]. With just over 80 pounds of nitrogen fertilizers used per acre of cropland on average [385], that translates to approximately 322 million acres of land in the USA treated with this fossil fuel product.
- “In 2021, around one billion pounds of pesticides were used in US agriculture in over 1.3 billion acre-treatments, which accounts for the number of US acres treated with pesticides multiplied by the number of applications made to that acreage [386].
- “The USA is the world’s third largest user of nitrogen-based fertilizers [387] and the second largest user of pesticides [388], indicating that it is a significant driver of the demand for fossil fuel-derived fertilizers and pesticides.”
Regarding corporate concentration in agribusiness, ETC Group and GRAIN assembled the following statistics on the degree of monopolization in the sector as of 2025:
- Four firms maintain control of half the global commercial seed supply and pesticide markets—Bayer, Syngenta, Corteva, and BASF;
- Two firms control 42 percent of the global commercial seeds market, with Bayer controlling 23 percent of the total market;
- Two companies control 40 percent of the global pesticides market, with Syngenta controlling approximately one quarter;
- Six companies supply 62 percent of the world’s potash fertilizers; China, Morocco, U.S., and Russia supply over 70 percent of global total phosphate fertilizers.
Pesticides that are sprayed and become airborne significantly disrupt ecological balances and affect nontarget species that are crucial for maintaining biodiversity, according to an article in Environmental Pollution. In this review of studies throughout countries in North and South America, Europe, and Asia, among others, researchers from Germany, Norway, the United Kingdom, and Poland reinforce the science about pesticides’ direct effect on species and the cascading effects of pesticide drift through various trophic levels within food webs that lead to overall devastating population effects. (See Daily News here.)
A comprehensive study released in Journal of Cleaner Production in August 2023 identifies the potential for organic agriculture to mitigate the impacts of agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the fight to address the climate crisis. The authors determined that “a one percent increase in total farmland results in a 0.13 percent increase in GHG emissions, while a one percent increase in organic cropland and pasture leads to a decrease in emissions by about 0.06 percent and 0.007 percent, respectively.” (See Daily News here.) Another study in Conservation Genetics showcases the negative effect of chemical-intensive, conventional farm management on insect populations when compared to organically managed meadows. The researchers find that the diversity and biomass of flying insects are higher with organic land management by 11 percent and 75 percent, respectively. (See Daily News here.)
A study published in European Journal of Agronomy, based on a 16-year, long-term experiment (LTE), finds that organic crops (cotton production with wheat and soybean rotations) in tropical climates are competitive with chemical-intensive (conventional) practices when evaluating resilience (to weather and insect resistance), input costs, and profitability. The underlying assumption that continuous pesticide use is an effective weapon in a never-ending war against insects, weeds, and fungal diseases is not borne out by the facts on economic viability, externalities, and sustainability of chemical-dependent farming operations. While organic systems faced reduced yields due to pest pressures from pink bollworm infestations, their relative decline is much smaller than that of the chemical-intensive operations. (See Daily News here.) Peer-reviewed research published in European Journal of Agronomy determines that “organic farming equals conventional yield under irrigation and enhances seed quality in drought, aiding food security.” (See Daily News here.)
Call to Action
To advance principles of land management that align with nature, Beyond Pesticides is convening the 42nd National Forum, The Pesticide Threat to Environmental Health: Advancing Holistic Solutions Aligned with Nature, bringing together scientists and land managers working to recognize and respect the ecosystems on which life depends. Scheduled to begin on October 29, 2025, 1:00-3:30 pm (Eastern time, US), the virtual Forum is free to all participants. See featured speakers! Register here.
The Call to the Forum, states:
We are all affected by how land is managed, food is grown, and nature is protected. Different experiences and perspectives may bring us to care about health and the environment and the devastating adverse effects of pesticides and toxic substances. However, ensuring a livable future requires us to cultivate a collective concern about daily decisions on the management of our personal and community spaces, the practices used to grow the food we buy, and the care that we as a society give to complex and fragile interrelationships that sustain the natural world on which we depend.
Additionally, Beyond Pesticides has developed and actively maintains the Keeping Organic Strong resource hub, a one-stop shop for you to learn about changes in organic regulations. There is currently an opportunity for the public to weigh in on the integrity of national organic standards, as the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) convenes to discuss key issues and allowed materials in organic agriculture. Public Comment Webinars are scheduled to be held on October 28 and 30, 2025, from 12 pm to 5 pm EDT, pending updates on the government shutdown.
For more background, see Keeping Organic Strong and the Fall 2025 issues page. The Fall NOSB meeting will be held both in person in Omaha, Nebraska, and virtually, via live-stream from November 4, 2025, to November 6, 2025.
All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.
