{"id":39912,"date":"2025-10-17T00:01:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T04:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beyondpesticides.org\/dailynewsblog\/?p=39912"},"modified":"2025-10-17T12:36:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T16:36:07","slug":"petroleum-industry-celebrates-global-fertilizer-day-despite-health-threats-and-sustainable-alternatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beyondpesticides.org\/dailynewsblog\/2025\/10\/petroleum-industry-celebrates-global-fertilizer-day-despite-health-threats-and-sustainable-alternatives\/","title":{"rendered":"Petroleum Industry Celebrates Global Fertilizer Day Despite Health Threats and Sustainable Alternatives"},"content":{"rendered":"

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(Beyond Pesticides<\/em>, 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<\/a>) 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. \u00a0<\/p>\r\n

A review<\/a>\u00a0last year in the\u00a0New England Journal of Medicine<\/em>\u00a0(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, \u201cWe need to recognize the very real harm that petrochemicals are having on people\u2019s 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.\u201d\u00a0(Watch Dr. Woodruff\u2019s talk to the 41st<\/sup> National Forum, Fossil Fuels and Toxic Chemicals<\/a>, last year.)<\/p>\r\n

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<\/em><\/a>, warning about the continuous use of fossil fuels across the global economy and its contribution to existential and \u201cinterlinked crises that jeopardize the breadth and stability of life on Earth.\u201d The authors specifically delve into the latest peer-reviewed science on adverse effects of synthetic agrochemicals and propose solutions, including \u201cmore localized organic agriculture are [some] of the farming systems we must adopt as a society to increase food security and mitigate agriculture\u2019s impact on the global climate crisis and biodiversity decline.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

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.<\/p>\r\n

Agrochemicals, Adverse Effects, and Organic and Agroecological Solutions<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

The study\u2019s authors are experts at research institutions and nonprofits organizations, including Center for Biological Diversity\u2019s Climate Law Institute and Environmental Health Program, Texas \u00a0Southern 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.<\/p>\r\n

In the study\u2019s section on agrochemicals, the authors emphasize the dependency on fossil fuels in the food system with astounding statistics. They write: \u201cAgrochemicals, 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].\u201d<\/p>\r\n

There are several other important figures to consider in terms of the history of petrochemical dominance in the conventional food system:<\/p>\r\n