Modification of Biogeochemical Flows
Transgressed: nitrogen and phosphorus flows are among the seven boundaries breached in the 2025 Planetary Health Check. The Foodrise report finds surplus nitrogen now more than double what the planet can sustain.
Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
Why shareholder democracy is necessary
The nitrogen and phosphorus flooding rivers, aquifers, and coastal dead zones originates overwhelmingly in industrial agriculture, and the corporate chokepoints are concentrated. Yara, CF Industries, and Nutrien alone produced 34.6 percent of global nitrogen fertilizer in 2022. The Foodrise report documents the industry spending millions lobbying to block regulation while its delegates at UN climate talks tripled between COP26 and COP30. FAO finds agriculture is now the biggest source of water pollution in many countries, with nitrate the most common groundwater contaminant. US farm and fertilizer lobbies including the Farm Bureau and the Fertilizer Institute litigated the Chesapeake Bay nutrient limits for five years. Owners of fertilizer, meat, and food company shares can force nutrient standards through supply chains and end the lobbying. Investor resolutions at Tyson Foods on feed-driven water pollution show the mechanism in use. The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility and Ceres organized 45 investors managing 1.2 trillion dollars to engage Cargill, JBS, Perdue and Smithfield on manure handling and fertilizer runoff, core drivers of nutrient overload. What corporate change cannot reach is large. Hundreds of millions of mostly unlisted farmers decide actual application rates, governments design the input subsidies that encourage overuse, and municipal sewage adds a further stream. Owners therefore remove a necessary obstacle and supply a necessary input, while governments and farmers must also act.
How this was scoredNecessary
Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
- Planetary Health Check 2025, Planetary Boundaries Science Lab / Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, 2025-09-24
- Nitrogen fertiliser giants should be as infamous as Shell and BP for environmental devastation, according to new report exposing industry's harms, Foodrise, 2025-12-03
- Pollutants from agriculture a serious threat to world's water, FAO, 2018-06-20
- American Farm Bureau et al v. EPA, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, 2016 (accessed 2026-08)
- ABHMS Refiles Water Stewardship Resolution with Tyson Foods, Investor Advocates for Social Justice, 2017-09-14
- Leading Investors Press Meat Producers to Tackle Water Pollution Risks, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, 2016-11-21
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Co-coordinated with Ceres a November 2016 letter from 45 investors managing 1.2 trillion dollars asking Cargill, JBS, Perdue and Smithfield to adopt water stewardship policies covering animal waste storage and fertilizer runoff from feed production.
Co-coordinated the 2016 investor letter to four large meat producers on water pollution from manure and feed fertilizer, following shareholder proposals at Tyson, Hormel, Pilgrim's Pride and Sanderson Farms.
Filed proposals at Tyson Foods in 2018 for a water stewardship policy with nutrient management requirements across feed suppliers, and in 2026 for disclosure of steps to address harms from waste lagoons in its pork supply chain.
Tyson Foods Inc: Disclosure of Waste Lagoon Harm Mitigation Practices, As You Sow, 2025-08
3 campaigns on record
Report on steps the company is taking to address environmental and human health harms, including nitrogen and phosphorus pollution, from waste lagoons at owned facilities and in its pork supply chain.
Result: 2.5 percent of all votes and 11.0 percent of independent shareholders at the February 5, 2026 meeting
Tyson Foods Inc: Disclosure of Waste Lagoon Harm Mitigation Practices, As You Sow, 2025-08
Adopt a water stewardship policy to reduce contamination risks at company facilities, contract farms and feed suppliers, including leading practices for nutrient management and goals on nitrate contamination.
With American Baptist Home Mission Society
Result: 15.8 percent
Assess water pollution impacts from operations and supply chains and adopt water stewardship policies covering permitted releases, safe storage and management of animal waste, and minimizing fertilizer runoff from animal feed production.
With 45 institutional investors managing 1.2 trillion dollars
Result: not stated in source
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is Doughnut Economics's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.