Category Archives: Agrochemicals

Monsanto Seed Prices: Up 43%

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Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant
Bloomberg news reports:
By Jack Kaskey

Aug. 13 (Bloomberg) — Monsanto Co., the world’s largest seed maker, plans to charge as much as 42 percent more for new genetically modified seeds next year than older offerings because they increase farmers’ output.

Roundup Ready 2 Yield soybeans will cost farmers an average of $74 an acre in 2010, and original Roundup Ready soybeans will cost $52 an acre, St. Louis-based Monsanto said today in presentations on its Web site. SmartStax corn seeds, developed with Dow Chemical Co., will cost $130 an acre, 17 percent more than the YieldGard triple-stack seeds they will replace.

That’s quite a price hike! Why are they doing this?
The new seed boosts yields 5 percent to 10 percent compared with other products, partly by reducing the amount of land that must be planted with conventional corn to 5 percent from 20 percent, Monsanto said.

“They are in essence splitting the value of the extra yield 50-50,” Gulley said by telephone.

It will be interesting to see if farmers really do get such improved yields. If not, there’s a simpler possible reason for the price hike: now that Monsanto has gotten pretty near every farmer locked in to using its seed, it’s exercising its monopoly power and raising prices to increase its profit.

Meanwhile, is Monsanto splitting the costs of all the dead birds, frogs, house pets, and ill humans caused by their chemicals? Or the costs of the epidemic of obesity caused by the high fructose corn syrup that their corn is used for? Ah, no. Those would be what Bloomberg would call economic externalites, which is to say other peoples’ problems. Monsanto gets the profits; the rest of us get the problems.

Hm, maybe somebody should investigate.

-jsq

U.S. vs. Monsanto?

On August 7th, deputy assistant attorney general, antitrust division, Philip Weiser gave a speech in St. Louis, the hometown of Monsanto:
Over the last twenty years, changes in technology and the marketplace have revolutionized agriculture markets, producing some substantial efficiencies as well as concerns about concentration. Notably, farmers today increasingly turn to patented biotechnology that is used to produce seeds resistant to herbicides and insects, producing larger crop yields than ever before. At the same time, this technological revolution and accompanying market developments have facilitated the emergence of large firms that produce these products, along with challenges for new firms to enter this market.

The Antitrust Division recently evaluated a series of mergers in the agriculture industry, obtaining relief to remedy identified anticompetitive concerns. In the market for cottonseeds, for example, the Antitrust Division required Monsanto and Delta & Pine Land to divest a significant seed company, multiple cottonseed lines, and other valuable assets before allowing them to proceed with their merger. Also, because DPL had had a license allowing it to “stack” a rival’s trait with a Monsanto trait, Monsanto was also required to amend certain terms in its current trait license agreements with other cottonseed companies to allow them, without penalty, to stack non-Monsanto traits with Monsanto traits. As a result, producers of genetically modified traits gained greater ability to work with these seed companies.(11) Going forward, the Division will continue to examine developments in the seed industry.

…For many farmers and consumer advocates, we understand that there are concerns regarding the levels of concentration in the seed industry — particularly for corn and soybeans. In studying this market, we will evaluate the emerging industry structure, explore whether new entrants are able to introduce innovations, and examine any practices that potentially threaten competition.

It’s easy to read that as a warning to Monsanto that DoJ has ruled before and may again. We’ll see if it’s all talk or if any action follows.

Radical Food Rethink for Britain?

According to Peter Griffiths in Scientific American, 10 August 2009, Britain wants “radical rethink” on food production:
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain must find ways to grow more food while using less water, energy and fertilizers to help feed a growing world population and offset the effects of climate change on agriculture, the government said on Monday.
OK, that makes sense. But where’s the radical part?
Farmers will have to adopt new methods to grow bigger crops while being more careful with increasingly valuable commodities such as water and fuel for machinery and fertilizers, Benn said.
OK, less water, fuel, and petrochemical fertilizers; good. But why a few farmers growing bigger crops? As The Institute for Optimum Nutrition points out,
Good food seems to have been erased from our cultural identity, yet Britain was once considered the gastronomic centre of the world.
I would bet Britain didn’t do that by cranking out bigger crops.

How about more small farmers, as well, plus urban gardens?

Monsanto Farm Bill: HR 2749

Here’s something that’s widely opposed by both the right and the left: the so-called “Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009”. And for many of the same reasons, including:
  • HR 2749 would impose an annual registration fee of $500 on any “facility” that holds, processes, or manufactures food. Although “farms” are exempt, the agency has defined “farm” narrowly. And people making foods such as lacto-fermented vegetables, cheeses, or breads would be required to register and pay the fee, which could drive beginning and small producers out of business during difficult economic times.
  • empowers the Dept. of Health and Human Services to micro-manage the raising and harvesting of crops (you might have assumed that Congress would’ve handed the U.S. Dept of Agriculture this terrible power.)

Here’s how your representatives voted when this thing passed the House. The vote didn’t break down neatly by party lines. However, if you look at the cartogram, it looks like city Representatives tended to vote for it, while rural ones tended to vote against. Maybe some rural reps realized that this bill isn’t about safety: it’s about Monsanto and big argribusiness driving small farmers out of business. There’s still time to stop it in the Senate, or when it comes back to the House after being reconciled with whatever the Senate passes.

Monsanto Cropdusters

Monsanto Does ‘Dust and Ditch’ Destroying Local Organic Farm, and a farmer trying to sue discovers a shell corporation which promptly goes bankrupt:
A fellow cropduster, Bob Howard didn’t see what the big deal was.

“If everything was Roundup Ready it would be the greatest thing in the world, if they would all go to Roundup Ready or all go back to conventional farming it would sure be a lot easier on us.”

It’s stunning that someone so obviously shortsighted was able to obtain a pilot’s license. His apathy toward his community and flagrant self-centered simple-mindedness are indicative of the unconscious conspiracy to which so many are a party. They have all been bamboozled into believing in “Better living through chemistry.” So much so, in fact, that the methods most farmers have used for a mere few decades are called “conventional,” and the few who practice farming as it was done for millennia are the outliers. Monsanto’s website even claims that they are “Growing yield sustainably.”

Yeah, what’s the big deal? Who needs the birds and the bees, and the frogs and the fish, and humans not coughing and getting respiratory diseases from the dust.

Roger Ebert review of Food, Inc.

bilde.jpeg A brief excerpt:
All of this is overseen by a handful of giant corporations that control the growth, processing and sale of food in this country. Take Monsanto, for example. It has a patent on a custom gene for soybeans. Its customers are forbidden to save their own soybean seed for use the following year. They have to buy new seed from Monsanto. If you grow soybeans outside their jurisdiction but some of the altered genes sneak into your crop from your neighbor’s fields, Monsanto will investigate you for patent infringement. They know who the outsiders are and send out inspectors to snoop in their fields.

Food labels depict an idyllic pastoral image of American farming. The sun rises and sets behind reassuring red barns and white frame farmhouses, and contented cows graze under the watch of the Marlboro Cowboy. This is a fantasy. The family farm is largely a thing of the past. When farmland comes on the market, corporations outbid local buyers. Your best hope of finding real food grown by real farmers is at a local farmers’ market. It’s not entirely a matter of “organic” produce, although usually it is. It’s a matter of food grown nearby, within the last week.

Remember how years ago you didn’t hear much about E. coli? Now it seems to be in the news once a month. People are even getting E. coli poisoning from spinach and lettuce, for heaven’s sake.

Why are Americans getting fatter? A lot of it has to do with corn syrup, which is the predominant sweetener. When New Coke failed and Coke Classic returned, it wasn’t to the classic recipe; Coke replaced sugar with corn sweeteners.

High fructose corn syrup, bringing obesity, diabetes, and heart disease to a third or more of the U.S. population.

Perhaps it’s time to do something about this.

Before you say “there’s nothing we can do” consider that even Wal-Mart has changed its food buying habits due to customer demand. We vote every time we buy food, and the one thing big corporations don’t want to lose is customers.