Pesticide companies are caught up in a fierce competition for survival. In the current context of global mergers and restructurings, transnational corporations need to continuously increase their sales of synthetic pesticides in every possible corner of the world. An extremely well-funded corporate PR machine ensures that any negative information about the public health and  environmental impacts of insecticides, herbicides, fungicides and other pesticides is met head on, minimised, ridiculed, or dismissed as unscientific. Substantial evidence for the harm caused by pesticides – and industry’s aggressive defence of its products – is now widely available in the literature, and was recently highlighted at the emblematic Monsanto Tribunal in The Hague.

During agroecological transitions the future of the pesticide industry and its employees will also need to be fundamentally re-thought, – as part of a process of de-growth in harmful activities that creates meaningful work and sustainable livelihoods.