{"id":21723,"date":"2016-09-17T15:36:57","date_gmt":"2016-09-17T20:36:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=21723"},"modified":"2016-09-17T15:36:57","modified_gmt":"2016-09-17T20:36:57","slug":"monsanto-and-bayer-why-food-and-agriculture-just-took-a-turn-for-the-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=21723","title":{"rendered":"Monsanto and Bayer: Why Food and Agriculture Just Took a Turn For The Worse"},"content":{"rendered":"

Monsanto and Bayer: Why Food and Agriculture Just Took a Turn For The Worse<\/a><\/h3>\n
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\"shutterstock_439675153\"defotoberg<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Shutterstock.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

News broke this week that Monsanto accepted a $66 billion takeover bid from Bayer.\u00a0The new company would control more than 25 per cent of the global supply of commercial seeds and pesticides.\u00a0Bayer\u2019s crop chemicals business is the world\u2019s second largest after Syngenta, and Monsanto is the leading commercial seeds business.<\/p>\n

Monsanto\u00a0held\u00a0<\/a>a 26 per cent market share of all seeds sold in 2011. Bayer (mainly a pharmaceuticals company) sells 17 per cent of the world\u2019s total agrochemicals and also has a comparatively small seeds sector.\u00a0If competition authorities pass the deal, the combined company would be the globe\u2019s largest seller of both seeds and agrochemicals.<\/p>\n

The deal marks a trend towards consolidation in the industry with Dow and DuPont having\u00a0agreed to merge<\/a>\u00a0and Swiss seed\/pesticide giant\u00a0Syngenta merging with ChemChina,<\/a>\u00a0a Chinese government concern.<\/p>\n

The mergers would mean that three companies would dominate the commercial agricultural seeds and chemicals sector, down from six \u2013\u00a0Syngenta, Bayer, BASF, Dow, Monsanto and DuPont. Prior to the mergers, these six firms controlled 60 per cent of commercial seed and more than 75 per cent of agrochemical markets.<\/p>\n

Alarm bells are ringing with the European Commission putting its approval of the Dow-DuPont deal temporarily on hold,\u00a0and the US Senate Judiciary Committee is about to hold hearings on the deal due to concerns about consolidation in the industry, which has resulted in increased seed and pesticide prices.<\/p>\n

In response to the Monsanto-Bayer merger, US National Farmers Union President Roger Johnson issued the following statement:<\/p>\n

\u201cConsolidation of this magnitude cannot be the standard for agriculture, nor should we allow it to determine the landscape for our future. The merger between Bayer and Monsanto marks the fifth major deal in agriculture in the last year\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monsanto and Bayer: Why Food and Agriculture Just Took a Turn For The Worse defotoberg\u00a0|\u00a0Shutterstock.com News broke this week that Monsanto accepted a $66 billion takeover bid from Bayer.\u00a0The new company would control more than 25 per cent of the global supply of commercial seeds and pesticides.\u00a0Bayer\u2019s crop chemicals business is the world\u2019s second largest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[20,12141,13900,14315,5493,319,373,4131,624],"class_list":["post-21723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-agriculture","tag-bayer","tag-colin-todhunter","tag-commercial-seed","tag-counterpunch","tag-food","tag-gmos","tag-monsanto","tag-pesticide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21723"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21724,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21723\/revisions\/21724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}