About
Pesticides, Syngenta, neither here nor anywhere else!
Syngenta is a Swiss agrochemical giant that was acquired in 2017 by the Chinese state-owned conglomerate ChemChina. It is the world's top seller of pesticides and the third-largest seller of commercial seeds, with a patent portfolio exceeding 10,000. The company generates more than $33 billion a year in revenue — nearly 40% of it from pesticides that are carcinogenic or harmful to bees, many of which are already banned in Europe.
In 2020, the Syngenta Group also acquired an Israeli generic pesticides firm, whose products have been used and developed in illegal Israeli settlements and sprayed along the border wall to destroy vegetation, affecting Palestinian fields and water sources.
We know their names: paraquat, thiamethoxam, chlorothalonil, atrazine, diquat — poisons born in Syngenta's laboratories. These and other, lesser-known substances are killing living things across more than 90 countries where Syngenta has extended its reach.
We have been fighting for years
Pesticides kill, more and more, for far too long — but above all they kill farm workers. The few multinationals that profit from this continue to poison the land and the people who live on it. For years we have been gathering evidence, sounding the alarm, and carrying forward our fight: filing claims for recognition of occupational diseases, legal appeals, field investigations, vigils at contaminated water intake points, demonstrations, and support for contaminated people.
And yet we are not being heard.
As health scandals multiply, public authorities and European institutions continue to favor an agricultural model dependent on pesticides, and to legislate accordingly. In doing so, they are installing chemical insecurity across the entire population. That is why, in France, several collectives of farmers and pesticide victims have launched a campaign of action to disarm pesticide production infrastructure in our territories and to promote a different kind of agriculture. Our actions take various forms: shutting down production sites, break-ins, blockades, occupations. Last November, 500 of us, farmers, agricultural workers, people affected by agrotoxins, blockaded a BASF production site to denounce chemical colonialism. That site produces fipronil, a substance banned for agricultural use in Europe but exported en masse to Brazil.
Why we are going to Saint-Pierre-la-Garenne
A site that contaminates permanently
As part of this campaign, and to broaden the possibilities for participation, we are organizing a large-scale mass action against a Syngenta production site in northern France. This site is a symbol of everything we are fighting against. For decades, Syngenta has produced dangerous pesticides there, in Saint-Pierre-la-Garenne, in the Eure department. The result: the groundwater near the site is heavily polluted. Illnesses in the area around the site are on the rise, and for years no building permits have been issued in the neighborhood. Workers have ongoing legal cases against the site. At the heart of the plant there is also an experimental seed center, where large volumes of proprietary seeds are chemically treated before being distributed.
We want to be clear: industrial pesticide production is inseparably linked to the control of seeds, and both are linked to farmers' loss of autonomy. We refuse to let seeds be patented and genetically modified by these companies, while we have been selecting our own seeds for generations to preserve the cultivated biodiversity essential to food sovereignty.
Who is really behind all this
Syngenta, along with BASF, Bayer-Monsanto, and Corteva, dominates a sector organized as an oligopoly. Since being bought back in 2017 by ChemChina, the company has occupied a central position in the world pesticide and seed market. This economic power is built on strong industrial concentration: while Syngenta is controlled by the Chinese state-owned conglomerate ChemChina, the other three giants in the sector — BASF, Bayer-Monsanto, and Corteva — are publicly traded, with major shareholders including funds like BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, Capital Group, and Fidelity. This system weakens peasant farming and maintains a structural dependence on chemical inputs, at the cost of making populations sick and the progressive disappearance of farmers.
On the blackmail of jobs
When we raise these issues, companies often wave the specter of job losses and relocation. Our answer is clear. We support industrial conversions that are useful to both workers and farmers, but we do not want this kind of production, neither here nor anywhere else. The mobilisations planned in other countries on October 3rd will carry the same demand, and the same international solidarity.
What we are demanding
Only one path is possible: transforming the agricultural model. We want to farm, feed ourselves, and make a living from our work without poisoning ourselves. We refuse to let our land be grabbed and its fertility destroyed by agribusiness multinationals. We oppose the patenting of farmers' seeds and the reduction of cultivated biodiversity to a commodity. Agroecological alternatives to pesticides already exist; what is missing is the political will to remove the economic obstacles that maintain dependence on agrochemicals. We must break free from a liberal system that pushes prices down and forces most farmers to use pesticides massively as a means of short-term survival in the international market.
Changing things through collective action. United, our anger is powerful.
On October 3, 2026, we will be present, in France and in all the other territories that wish to join our fight, to put an end to the impunity of the pesticide industry. To end chemical insecurity, the expression of collective anger is essential. We demand that responsibility be established for the contamination of water, soil, and bodies; that the most toxic productions cease; that workers be justly compensated and supported in the conversion of these sectors.
The silence, like Syngenta's crimes, must end.
A global fight, and we need you
Through this action, we want to shine a light, on a global scale, on the destructive impact of the Syngenta empire. We believe that the fight against agrochemical products must, above all, be led by farmers, and must have an international scope.
We are already in contact with movements around the world and are reaching out to others. Each collective is free to organize as it sees fit; what matters is acting together, on the same day, against the same enemy.
If you are a farmer, a worker, someone who has fallen ill, or simply someone who rejects this system, organize where you are, or come to Saint-Pierre-la-Garenne with us.