Tag Archives: Monsanto

Monsanto under investigation by at least 7 US States

According to The Organic and Non-GMO Report, April 2010 :
At least seven US state attorneys general are investigating whether Monsanto Company has abused its market power to lock out competitors and raise prices on seed. Iowa, Illinois, Ohio, Texas, Virginia, and two other unidentified states are in a working group to investigate the biotech giant.

The states are probing whether Monsanto violated laws by offering rebates to seed distributors for excluding rival seeds, imposing limits on combining the product with other genetic modifications, or offering cash incentives to switch farmers to more expensive generation of seed varieties.

The state investigations add to pressure on Monsanto. The US Justice Department is investigating the company’s marketing practices, and DuPont Company has accused Monsanto of anti-competitive practices in licensing litigation.

And Monsanto’s stock price is down more than 30%, from $93.35 in May to a 52 week low of $63.75 Friday.

Interesting developments.

Liver and kidney damage: GM crops

GM crops cause liver and kidney damage, by E. Huff, staff writer for NaturalNews.com:
A report published in the International Journal of Microbiology has verified once again that Monsanto’s genetically modified (GM) crops are causing severe health problems. A legal challenge issued against Monsanto forced the multi-national agriculture giant to release raw data revealing that animals fed its patented GM corn suffered liver and kidney damage within just three months.

Adding to the mounting evidence that GM crops are dangerous all around, this information provides a damning indictment against Monsanto which continually insists that its GM products are safe. Not only are GM crops proving disastrous for the environment, but study after study, including those conducted by Monsanto itself, is showing that GM foods are detrimental to health.

This appears to be a publication in another venue of the same results we remarked on a couple of months ago. Still bad news for Monsanto.

But they’ve got nothing to hide, right?

Monsanto only released the raw data after a legal challenge from Greenpeace, the Swedish Board of Agriculture and French anti- GM campaigners.
Oh. Nevermind.

Maybe Monsanto really is the least ethical company in the world.

DoJ vs. Monsanto Seed Monopoly

More on some welcome news,, this time from William Neuman in the New York Times:
The Justice Department began an antitrust investigation of the seed industry last year, with an apparent focus on Monsanto, which controls much of the market for the expensive bioengineered traits that make crops resistant to insect pests and herbicides.

Why?

Critics charge that Monsanto has used license agreements with smaller seed companies to gain an unfair advantage over competitors and to block cheaper generic versions of its seeds from eventually entering the market. DuPont, a rival company, also claims Monsanto has unfairly barred it from combining biotech traits in a way that would benefit farmers.

Monsanto of course claims to be unfairly maligned, and its CEO, Hugh Grant, says:

“We were the first out of the blocks, and I think what you see now is a bunch of people catching up and aggressively competing, and I’m fighting with them,” Mr. Grant said. He said farmers chose the company’s products because they liked the results in the field, not because of any untoward conduct on Monsanto’s part.

Reality seems to differ: Continue reading →

Farmers Tired of Monsanto?

Tom Laskawy wonders in Grist about Peak Monsanto? Quoting The Organic & Non-GMO Report:
Low commodity soybean prices, attractive premiums, and rising prices for genetically modified soybean seed are leading American farmers to plant more acres of non-GMO soybeans this year.

Representatives with soybean associations, universities, and grain buyers all say that demand for non-GMO soybeans is growing, leading to more non-GMO acres.

It seems Monsanto may be pricing itself out of its own market:
Besides the higher non-GMO premiums, there are other reasons for the increasing acreage of non-GMO this year. One is lower cost. “The Roundup Ready system is not as cheap as it used to be,” Shannon says.

The cost for Monsanto’s Roundup Ready GM soybean seeds has increased from $35 to $50 per bag while the cost for Roundup herbicide has increased from $15 to $50 per gallon. “A lot of farmers are upset with Monsanto,” Shannon says.

And organic demand is having an effect:
The organic food industry is also spurring demand for non-GMO soybeans, says Craig Tomera, production agronomist/crop production manager at Northland Organic Foods. “Organic food companies are switching to non-GMO soybeans until prices for organics drop and the economy improves.”
All that and mutant pigweed that Roundup doesn’t kill. So without even considering externalities (such as mutated frogs and human birth defects), it may be becoming less cost-effective for farmers to buy Monsanto. So sad.

School Food: How to Change It

The hardest part of what Jamie Oliver wants to do to fix how we eat is to reform school food. Fortunately, there’s somebody already doing it: Ann Cooper already showed us how she does that three years ago:

Well, the CDC has gone further to say that those children born in the year 2000 could be the first generation in our country’s history to die at a younger age than their parents, and it’s because of what we feed them.
And who teaches us to feed them that?
Big companies spent twenty billion dollars a year marketing non-nutrient foods to kids…. They spent 500 dollars marketing foods kids shouldn’t eat for every one dollar marketing healthy nutritious food.
She feeds school children in Berkeley. You might think that would be easy, but when she started, it was just as bad as anywhere else:
…extremo burritos, corn dogs, pizza pockets, grilled cheese sandwiches, everything came in plastic, in cardboard, the only kitchen tools my staff had was a box cutter; the only working piece of equipment a can crusher.
So she set out to fix it, and did. And if she can, we can.

Bt Brinjal Beaten Back

After nationwide protests against Bt Brinjal (eggplant), BBC reports that India does the right thing:
India has deferred the commercial cultivation of what would have been its first genetically modified (GM) vegetable crop due to safety concerns.

Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said more studies were needed to ensure genetically modified aubergines were safe for consumers and the environment.

I hope those opposed to Bt brinjal don’t think that’s the end of the story; it will be back. But at least for now they’ve won.

Hm, I wonder if their approach would work for something else, such as bioengineered eucalyptus in the U.S. southeast? There are parallels: lack of serious studies of health effects and lack of demonstration of containment. Can Americans do what Indians just did?

Mutant Pigweed vs. Glysophate-Resistant Corn, Soybeans, and Cotton

It’s a funny thing about monocultures. They’re highly vulnerable to anything that affects that particular variety. Dr. Mae-Wan Ho writes:
The scene is set at harvest time in Arkansas October 2009. Grim-faced farmers and scientists speak from fields infested with giant pigweed plants that can withstand as much glyphosate herbicide as you can afford to douse on them. One farmer spent US$0.5 million in three months trying to clear the monster weeds in vain; they stop combine harvesters and break hand tools. Already, an estimated one million acres of soybean and cotton crops in Arkansas have become infested.

The palmer amaranth or palmer pigweed is the most dreaded weed. It can grow 7-8 feet tall, withstand withering heat and prolonged droughts, produce thousands of seeds and has a root system that drains nutrients away from crops. If left unchecked, it would take over a field in a year.

Meanwhile in North Carolina Perquimans County, farmer and extension worker Paul Smith has just found the offending weed in his field [3], and he too, will have to hire a migrant crew to remove the weed by hand.

Here’s the good news: Continue reading →

Who Owns Monsanto?

The answer in 1939 turns out to be about the same as in 2010: minority shares by its own executives, and the majority by, well:
Last week’s survey of stockholders—lavish to the point of including pictures of “typical” Monsanto stockholders in the “typical” city of Cincinnati—was frankly designed to prove that Monsanto is not owned or run by any of “America’s 60 Families.”

Outstanding as of June 1, 1938, were 1,241,816 common shares held by 4,300 men, 4,084 women, 2,708 trusts, groups, institutions. Mr. Queeny holds only 3.4% has beneficial interest in about 4.5% more through relatives and trusts. One officer of the company owns 1.47%, no others own more than .25%.

The magazine named as “stockholders, once removed,” students in 42 universities which together own 1% of Monsanto and the 25,000,000 policyholders in 72 insurance companies which together own 3%. Tucked away in a graph was the fact that 81% of the company’s shares is owned in blocks of 101 or more shares ($102-to-$104 a share last week).

So, mostly funds in 1939. And 71 years later, it’s even more so. Continue reading →

India Against Bt Eggplant

What does it take to turn a country against patented crops with adverse side-effects? In India, the eggplant may be the last straw. Day before yesterday saw Wide and vociferous protests against this genetically modified Bt brinjal:
From Gopal Ethiraj, Chennai
Chennai, 01 February (Asiantribune.com):

Mr. Jairam Ramesh, Minister of State for Environment and Forests, on Sunday had to face angry protests of farmers in Hyderabad over a move to produce the genetically modified Bt brinjal in the country. Protests and demonstrations were also held in New Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai and Thiruvananthapuram on Saturday and Sunday.

He had gone there as part of public consultations on Bt brinjal. Consultations are being held in Kolkata, Bhubaneswar, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Nagpur, Ahmedabad and Chandigarh.

The Minister, however, said a final decision on the issue would be taken in 10 days after consultations with all concerned. The Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) had last year given its nod for commercial release of Bt Brinjal and Ramesh had promised additional consultations with farmers’ groups, NGOs, scientists and other stakeholders before the release of Bt brinjal.

Demanding earlier that the government reverse its decision, farmers, scientists and NGOs staged angry demonstrations in Hyderabad and disrupted a public hearing organised by the ministry. The protestors did not allow the Minister to speak at the public consultation held at the Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture (CRIDA) in Hyderabad.

The protestors drew on the strategy and the remembrance day of the man who drove the world’s largest empire out of India:

Continue reading →

Indian Cost of Pesticides and Fertilizers

Akash Kapur writes in the New York Times about something rotten in the state of India:
By the late ’80s, the chemicals had started taking a toll. Mr. Govindan’s land dried up. Yields declined. Mr. Govindan said the quality of his crops did, too. In the old days, he told me, if you cooked too much rice for dinner you could keep it overnight and eat it the next day for breakfast. Now, rice from the fields around Molasur turned rotten overnight.

Other things had changed: labor was more expensive, the price of fertilizers and seeds had increased, and the overall cost of living had outstripped the rise in crop prices.

How bad is it?
The scientist M.S. Swaminathan, often referred to as the father of India’s green revolution, has spoken of a “disaster” in Indian agriculture. The sociologist Dipankar Gupta has written of “hollowed” villages.

According to a recent report in The Hindu newspaper, almost 200,000 farmers committed suicide between 1997 and 2009 — a national tragedy (although it is rarely treated as such) brought on by rising debt and the resulting economic and existential despair.

So is the Indian government being realistic about the problem?
Mr. Govindan wondered about something else, too. Farming had always seemed a special profession to him, with a vital, even noble, role in feeding the nation. He wondered why the country didn’t see it that way anymore. Just the previous night, he had watched Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on television, assuring the nation that it wouldn’t face food shortages. Mr. Govindan felt something didn’t add up. He pointed to the barren fields; he said you couldn’t even grow peanuts on them anymore. “I don’t understand,” he said, “Where is all the food supposed to come from?”
Well, if India follows the U.S. model, the food will come from a tiny number of agrobusinesses that will end up owning most of the land.