Syngenta doesn’t sell sustainability. It sells the story of it. 

It’s one of the world’s largest agrochemical firms—born from the merger of Novartis and AstraZeneca’s agribusiness arms, now owned by ChemChina. It sells seeds, pesticides and promises. And increasingly, it sells itself as a climate solution. 

But this is not transformation. It’s rebranding. Syngenta’s model hasn’t changed. It still pushes chemical-intensive farming, proprietary hybrids and monoculture logic. What’s changed is the language: regenerative agriculture, climate smart, sustainable intensification. The poison is the same. Only the label is new. 

Take paraquat. A highly toxic herbicide linked to thousands of farmer poisonings and deaths across India. Banned in more than 50 countries. Still sold in India. Syngenta is one of its largest manufacturers. 

In 2020, India’s Ministry of Agriculture proposed banning paraquat, citing health risks and lack of antidote. But the ban never materialised. Industry lobbying, led in part by Syngenta and its affiliates, stalled the process. The company argued that paraquat was safe when used properly. Apparently, training, not prohibition, was the answer. 

The burden is shifted to the farmer. The chemical stays on the shelf. And the deaths continue. 

Syngenta now frames itself as a sustainability leader. Its corporate roadmap outlines four priorities: higher yields with lower impact, soil regeneration, rural prosperity and sustainable operations. It speaks of ‘regenerative agriculture’ and ‘nature-positive farming’. It partners with The Nature Conservancy and the World Economic Forum. 

But its core business remains unchanged. It still sells atrazine, banned in the EU. It still promotes hybrid seeds that require chemical support. It still pushes input-intensive models that degrade soil, reduce biodiversity and lock farmers into cycles of dependency. 

This is not regeneration. It’s reputation management. And it’s working. 

In India, Syngenta runs various corporate social responsibility programmes: rural market upgrades, solar electrification, youth training and water access. These projects are real. They improve lives. But they also serve a deeper function: to embed the company in rural communities, deflect criticism and secure social licence. 

A firm that sells paraquat also installs solar panels. A firm that promotes pesticide use also funds health camps. The contradiction is not resolved. It’s papered over. This is not corporate responsibility. It’s strategic philanthropy. And it’s expanding. 

The Green Revolution didn’t just change what farmers grew—it changed how they thought about farming. Syngenta’s model continues that legacy. It reframes farming as a chemical equation: inputs in, yields out.  

Syngenta’s ‘Good Growth Plan’ claims to train millions of farmers in sustainable practices. But these practices often revolve around safe pesticide use—not reducing dependency. The goal is not agroecology. It’s market expansion. 

And the state plays along. Syngenta partners with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) (India’s top body for agricultural research and education), state governments and international donors. It co-authors training manuals. It sits on advisory boards. It helps shape what counts as ‘best practice’. And it does so without scrutiny. It’s capture by invitation. And it narrows the future. 

Agroecological alternatives are framed as niche. Indigenous seeds are sidelined. Farmer-led innovation is ignored. The path forward is paved with proprietary inputs, digital compliance and climate branding. The farmer is told ‘adapt or be left behind’. 

Syngenta sells carbon credits, drought-tolerant hybrids and ‘climate-smart’ packages. It positions itself as part of a solution. But the solution looks a lot like the problem. 

The same firm that degrades soil now offers soil regeneration. The same firm that promotes monocultures now speaks of biodiversity. The same firm that lobbied against pesticide bans now funds sustainability summits. 

The future of food is being written by those who caused its crisis. 

Syngenta doesn’t just sell chemicals. It sells the idea that chemicals are inevitable. That farming without them is naïve. That sustainability means managing toxicity, not moving beyond it. 

But this is the enclosure of possibility—wrapped in the language of regeneration, delivered through partnerships and enforced by protocol.  

The agri biotech sector is engaged in a corporate hijack of agriculture while attempting to portray itself as being involved in some kind of service to humanity. 

A couple of years ago, Syngenta CEO Erik Fyrwald called for organic farming to be abandoned. He claimed rich countries had to increase their crop production—but organic farming led to lower yields. Fyrwald also called for gene editing to be at the heart of food policy in order to increase food production. He stated that people are starving due to organic agriculture. 

Writing on the GMWatch website, Jonathan Matthews responded by saying the conflict in Ukraine and food-related supply chain disruptions had emboldened Fyrwald’s scaremongering.  

In effect, Fyrwald’s comments reflected the industry’s determination to undermine the European Union’s Farm to Fork strategy, which aimed by 2030 not just to slash pesticide use by 50 per cent and fertiliser use by 20 per cent but to more than triple the percentage of EU farmland under organic management. 

Such goals represent an existential threat to the likes of Syngenta, which led to a carefully orchestrated attack on the EU strategy. 

Mathews quoted research that shows genetically engineered crops have no yield benefit and drive substantial increases in pesticide use. The newer and much-hyped gene-edited crops look set to do the same. 

Syngenta was among the corporations criticised by a 2017 UN report for “systematic denial of harms” and “unethical marketing tactics”. Selling highly hazardous pesticides is at the core of Syngenta’s business model. 

Fyrwald is far from an objective observer. He is compelled to promote corporate value capture, patents and market penetration while denigrating threats to profit margins. 

Bayer sells dependency, Amazon sells inevitability, Microsoft builds the stack, Gates builds the script, BlackRock governs through capital and so on. Each firm speaks a different dialect. But the grammar is the same. It is the grammar of control. 

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The above article is taken from Colin Todhunter’s new open-access book Digital Harvest: Unmasking the Corporate Enclosure of Food, which can be read or downloaded here. 

Renowned author Colin Todhunter specialises in development, food and agriculture. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is the author of the following books:

Power Play: The Future of Food  

Sickening Profits: The Global Food System’s Poisoned Food and Toxic Wealth  

Food, Dispossession and Dependency. Resisting the New World Order 

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