Established in October 1978, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation funds “ a small number of big bets that strive toward transformative change in areas of profound concern ….” The foundation appears to take no official position on crop biotechnology, but has financed several prominent environmental nonprofits that lobby against GMO and gene-edited crops, including the Tides Center, Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council.
Since 2012, the MacArthur Foundation has contributed over $1 million dollars to the Tides Center, an offshoot of the politically progressive nonprofit Tides Foundation, which views crop biotechnology as a threat to the developing world. In 2015, for example, Tides co-sponsored a report with the New Field Foundation, a wealthy nonprofit that funds anti-GMO activism in Africa. The report argued that “[t]here is a clear urgency to channel more funds to women’s agro-ecology initiatives to mitigate such threats as corporate land grabs, patented seeds, and pro-GMO policies and practices ….”
Beyond its contributions to Tides, MacArthur has donated over $13 million to the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) since 2012, anti-GMO groups that see crop biotechnology as a pandora’s box. Sierra Club describes GMO crops as “corporate-patented life forms” and adds that “[g]enes from genetically manipulated crops can spread to neighboring crops or to wild species, which can be a major disaster for the welfare of the planet and its inhabitants.”
NRDC takes a similarly hostile view of GMO crops and the pesticides they’re often paired with, arguing in April 2018 that the “EPA and Monsanto are continuing to deny cancer risks from exposure to glyphosate,” better known as Monsanto’s Roundup. In February 2018, NRDC senior scientist Jennifer Sass said this denial is the product of “an unprecedented effort largely supported and funded by a coordinated group of industry supporters of glyphosate and other chemicals.”
Financial Data
Annual Revenue: $670,812,685 (2017)
Total Assets:$6,999,766,090 (2017)
Major Recipients (total contributions 2012-present)
Environmental Defense Fund $18,350,000
Sierra Club Foundation $10,000,000
Natural Resources Defense Council $3,010,000
Tides Center $1,504,659
Union of Concerned Scientists $715,000
Friends of the Earth $250,000
Multiplier $170,000