Fossil Fuel Companies Ramp Up Influence In The Food System

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Political leaders have failed to confront the driving force behind the climate crisis: the fossil fuel industry. As a result, fossil fuel producers are now free and clear to reinvent their oil and gas holdings in many sectors, such as the food system. In fact, the fossil fuel industry is investing heavily in petrochemicals to make plastics, pesticides, and fertilizers in order to lock-in the dependence of food systems on high-carbon energy.

Of all the foods produced by the industrial food chain that are co-dependent on fossil fuels, the standout is the ultra-processed food sector. With fossil fuels lending a helping hand, ultra-processed foods are often the cheapest and most profitable to produce and sell, contributing to a global epidemic of diet-related ill-health.

As outlined by Anna Lappé in a recent editorial on Civil Eats, the food system already is responsible for an estimated one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions, and fossil fuels are used throughout the food system. The industry benefits from $7 trillion in subsidies annually, making inputs like synthetic fertilizer and pesticides artificially low cost and accessible to farms across geographies and social classes.

• 42% of the food system fossil fuel consumption comes from processing and packaging stages, largely driven by the global fascination with ultra-processed food.
• 38% of the fossil fuel consumption in the food system emerges from retail consumption and waste.
• The rest is from industrial inputs like pesticides and fertilizer and agriculture production. In fact, synthetic nitrogen fertilizer and pesticides are fossil fuels in another form, making them a rarely recognized but significant driver of the climate crisis, according to Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL).

Fossil fuels make it possible to grow crops in vast monocultures using pesticides instead of biodiversity to deter insects. Industrial farms apply energy-intensive synthetic fertilizers that deplete natural soil health and fertility. Monocultures of corn and soybeans are needed for Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). The CAFO system, with its dependence on vast amounts of feed crops, has many knock-off climate effects.

Research has long highlighted the public health cost of local impacts of CAFO pollution, including considerable degradation of the direct environment and ecosystems, loss of terrestrial and aquatic wildlife and their habitats, and adverse impacts on local populations’ health. A 2024 International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health report on CAFOs in the US highlights a disturbing truth: large-scale industrial farming is poisoning our air, water, and communities — 21,000 CAFOs in the US produce up to 1.6 million tons of waste annually.

This isn’t just animal excrement we’re talking about — it’s a toxic mix of pharmaceuticals, pesticides, heavy metals, and endocrine-disrupting chemicals.

The Case Study of Potatoes

Lappé explains how a seemingly simple snack food like a bag of potato chips is symbolic of so many problems with the fossil fuel sector’s stronghold on the food system. I remember visiting Prince Edward Island on a summer vacation and seeing the vast fields of potatoes. It was only when I talked to a local potato farmer that I learned how just a few varieties of potatoes are brought to market these days. Fast food chains like McDonald’s want the largely blemish-free and uniform-sized Russet Burbank, Ranger Russet, Umatilla Russet, and the Shepody varieties.

Yet growing vast monocultures of a crop like potatoes requires massive amounts of energy, as Lappé points out.

• Petroleum-based pesticides from fungicides to herbicides are needed to hold back weeds, and this group includes synthetic fertilizers.
• Irrigation and farm equipment are powered by fossil fuels. Only a few electric vehicles are in everyday use on factory farms.
• Most processing facilities still rely on non-renewable energy to power the machinery for sorting, washing, trimming, slicing, blanching, frying, and seasoning.
• Fossil fuels provide the raw materials for the plastics in packaging.
• Internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVS) transport farm products to distribution centers and supermarkets, corner stores, and vending machines.

The petrochemicals used in fertilizer’s manufacture are responsible for some 34% of energy used in potato crop production, yet they aren’t counted in the total emissions for the food sector according to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), or in national emission inventories governments share with the United Nations.

As we make the switch to clean energy and transportation, petrochemicals are on track to be the largest driver of world oil demand. In fact, global oil demand rose seasonally in the fourth quarter of 2024, boosted in part by abundant petrochemical feedstocks. The International Energy Agency forecasts that by 2050 half of all oil and gas will be used for petrochemicals. Based on current levels, 40% of that will be going into our food system in the form of plastics and fertilizers. The CIEL, a nonprofit environmental organization, warns that, as sectors like transport are decarbonizing, the fossil fuel industry has its sights on the food system, particularly through increased use of petrochemicals.

Despite receiving little public attention to date, the agricultural sector is one of the most significant users of intentionally added microplastics. The deliberate dispersion of microplastics in the environment through the application of plastic-coated fertilizers and pesticides is one of the most direct and preventable sources of growing microplastic pollution in agricultural soils. These plastic-coated agrochemicals directly introduce microplastic into the environment and potentially into the food supply. It also compounds the health and environmental hazards posed by agrochemicals themselves.

Final Thoughts

Science shows that the climate crisis contributed to the severity of the California wildfire damage in January. Yet the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the consummate climate research institution, is being dismantled before our eyes. Food and Watch Watch condemns this and other cuts, noting, “At a time when our food, water, and climate are all in crisis, these cuts are cruel and dangerous.” They say that Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s actions against our most basic environmental and public health protections are “abhorrent, and they put all our shared food, water, environment, and health in danger.”

We can look to organizations like CEIL, which  collaborates with farmers to promotes natural agroecological practices such as crop rotation, legume cultivation, and the use of beneficial insects, fungi, and organic manure instead of chemical additives. Such a shift to agroecological production systems means that farms are less reliant on external inputs, replacing residual needs with environmentally friendly solutions such as bio-fertilisers and on-farm pest management practices.

Let’s not allow the fossil fuel industry to take advantage of the vacuum of leadership right now in the US and seize even more control over the food system. As Lappé argues, “We must collectively work to prevent the industry from using the food system as an escape hatch, a new market for oil and gas as the public demands decarbonization in other parts of the economy.”