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9589 |
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Date: September 16, 2016 at 10:35:02
From: mr bopp, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Monsanto and Bayer |
URL: http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/09/16/monsanto-and-bayer-why-food-and-agriculture-just-took-a-turn-for-the-worse/ |
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Monsanto and Bayer: Why Food and Agriculture Just Took a Turn For The Worse
by Colin Todhunter
News broke this week that Monsanto accepted a $66 billion takeover bid from Bayer. The new company would control more than 25 per cent of the global supply of commercial seeds and pesticides. Bayer’s crop chemicals business is the world’s second largest after Syngenta, and Monsanto is the leading commercial seeds business.
Monsanto held a 26 per cent market share of all seeds sold in 2011. Bayer (mainly a pharmaceuticals company) sells 17 per cent of the world’s total agrochemicals and also has a comparatively small seeds sector. If competition authorities pass the deal, the combined company would be the globe’s largest seller of both seeds and agrochemicals.
The deal marks a trend towards consolidation in the industry with Dow and DuPont having agreed to merge and Swiss seed/pesticide giant Syngenta merging with ChemChina, a Chinese government concern.
The mergers would mean that three companies would dominate the commercial agricultural seeds and chemicals sector, down from six – Syngenta, 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.
Alarm bells are ringing with the European Commission putting its approval of the Dow-DuPont deal temporarily on hold, and 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.
In response to the Monsanto-Bayer merger, US National Farmers Union President Roger Johnson issued the following statement:
“Consolidation 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… For the last several days, our family farm and ranch members have been on Capitol Hill asking Members of Congress to conduct hearings to review the staggering amount of pending merger deals in agriculture today. We will continue to express concern that these megadeals are being made to benefit the corporate boardrooms at the expense of family farmers, ranchers, consumers and rural economies. We are pleased that next week the Senate Judiciary Committee will be reviewing the alarming trend of consolidation in agriculture that has led to less competition, stifled innovation, higher prices and job loss in rural America… all mergers, including this recent Bayer/Monsanto deal, [should] be put under the magnifying glass of the committee and the U.S. Department of Justice.”
For all the rhetoric that we often hear about ‘the market’ and large corporations offering choice to farmers and consumers, the evidence is restriction of choice and the squeezing out of competitors. Over the years, for instance, Monsanto has bought up dozens of competitors to become the largest supplier of genetically engineered seeds with seed prices having risen dramatically.
Consolidation and monopoly in any sector should be of concern to everyone. But the fact that the large agribusiness conglomerates specialise in a globalised, industrial-scale, chemical-intensive model of farming that is adversely affecting what we eat should have us very concerned. Do we want this system to be intensified even further just because their business models depend on it?
Farmers are increasingly reliant on patented corporate seeds, whether non-GM hybrid seeds or GM, and the chemical inputs designed to be used with them. Monsanto seed traits are now in 80 per cent of corn and more than 90 per cent of soybeans grown in the US. It comes as little surprise then that people in the US now consume a largely corn-based diet: a less diverse diet than in the past, which is high in calorific value, but low in health-promoting, nutrient dense food. This health-damaging ‘American obesity diet’ and the agricultural practices underpinning is now a global phenomenon.
By its very nature, the capitalist economic model that corporate agriculture is attached to demands expansion, market capture and profit growth. And, it must be accepted that it does bring certain benefits to those farmers who have remained in agriculture (if not for the 330 farmers who leave their land every week, according to data from the National Agricultural Statistics Service).
But in the US, ‘success’ in agriculture depends on over $51 billion of taxpayer handouts to over a 10-year period to keep the gravy train on track for a particular system of agriculture designed to maintain corporate agribusiness profit margins. And such ‘success’ fails to factor in all of the external social, health and environmental costs that mean this type of model is ultimately unsustainable. It is easy to spin failure as success when the parameters are narrowly defined.
Moreover, the exporting of the Green Revolution paradigm throughout the globe has been a boon to transnational seed and agrochemical manufacturers, which have benefited from undermining a healthy, sustainable indigenous agriculture and transforming it into a profitable enterprise for global capital.
And not just profitable for global capital – but its company managers too. For example, a few months ago, according to Reuters, Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant could receive more than $70 million if Monsanto were to be taken over by Bayer. At the time, Monsanto said it was open to engaging in further negotiations with Bayer after turning down its $62 billion bid. The report shows how Grant’s exposure to shares and options meant he had an incentive to hold out for the highest possible sale price, which would not only be in the interests of shareholders but also increase the value of his holdings. Other senior figures within Monsanto would also walk away with massive financial gains.
These corporate managers belong to a global agribusiness sector whose major companies rank among the Fortune 500 corporations. These companies are high-rollers in a geo-politicised, globalised system of food production whereby huge company profits are directly linked to the worldwide eradication of the small farm – the bedrock of global food production, bad food and poor health, inequitable, rigged trade, environmental devastation, mono-cropping and diminished food and diet diversity, the destruction of rural communities, ecocide, degraded soil, water scarcity and drought, destructive and inappropriate models of development and farmers who live a knife-edge existence and for whom debt has become a fact of life.
A handful of powerful and politically connected corporations are determining what is grown, how it is to be grown, what needs to be done to grow it, who grows it and what ends up on the plate. And despite PR platitudes about the GMO/chemical-intensive model just being part of a wider mix of farming practices designed to feed humanity, from India to Africa indigenous models of agriculture are being squeezed out (through false argument and deception) as corporate imperialism puts pay to notions of food sovereignty.
We should be highly concerned about a food system increasingly dominated by companies that have a history (see this on Monsanto and this on Bayer) of releasing health-damaging, environmentally polluting products onto the market and engaging in bribery, cover-ups, monopolistic practices and what should be considered as crimes against humanity?
Despite the likes of Hugh Grant saying the Monsanto-Bayer merger will be good for farmers and “broader society”, most of all it will be good for shareholders and taxpayer-subsidised, state-assisted company profit. That’s the type of hegemonic rhetoric that’s been used down the ages to disguise the true nature of power and its beneficiaries.
It’s not so much the Monsanto-Bayer deal is a move in the wrong direction (which it is), but increasing consolidation is to be expected given the trend in many key sectors toward monopoly capitalism or just plain cartelism, whichever way you choose to look at it. It’s the system of industrialised, capital-intensive agriculture wedded to powerful players whose interests lie in perpetuating and extending their neoliberal economic model that is the real problem.
“We have justified the demise of family farms, decay of rural communities, pollution of the rural environment, and degradation of soil health as being necessary… The problems we are facing today are the consequence of too many people… pursuing their narrow self-interests without considering the consequence of their actions on the rest of society and the future of humanity.” Professor John Ikerd, ‘Healthy Soils, Healthy People’
So what is the solution? We could start here.
Colin Todhunter is an extensively published independent writer and former social policy researcher based in the UK and India.
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[9597] [9592] [9595] [9594] [9590] [9596] |
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9597 |
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Date: September 19, 2016 at 08:36:16
From: Petra, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Monsanto and Bayer - Dairy GMO Initiative |
URL: With Measure M, Sonoma County’s GMO foes seek to bolster organic agriculture |
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There's a new measure coming up in Sonoma County regarding GMO's and dairy and what was curious about this one is this:
"McClelland fears the dairy could lose its coveted certification as an organic milk producer should pollen from a bio-engineered crop grown by a neighbor drift onto her family’s ranch. She and a number of other organic farmers in Sonoma County are supporting Measure M, a November ballot measure that proposes to ban genetically modified crops and seeds from being grown or used in unincorporated areas of the county."
Remainder at link
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9592 |
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Date: September 18, 2016 at 02:57:59
From: Polydactyl in N. Bay, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Monsanto and Bayer |
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'It’s not so much the Monsanto-Bayer deal is a move in the wrong direction (which it is), but increasing consolidation is to be expected given the trend in many key sectors toward monopoly capitalism or just plain cartelism, whichever way you choose to look at it. It’s the system of industrialised, capital-intensive agriculture wedded to powerful players whose interests lie in perpetuating and extending their neoliberal economic model that is the real problem.'
I think instead of 'monopoly capitalism' or just plain 'cartelism', we can now officially call if for what it is, good old FASCISM! It seems humans don't evolve their social systems over time, they simply repeat them, depending on the needs of whatever human groups have established themselves as an 'alpha wolf clan (no offense to wolves), with impunity, LOL. Of Kings and Queens, Emperors, Attila-the-Hun's, and leaders of various religious charges for power and survival in the past, everyone but a well organized, advantaged few (and followers) will bow down like good serfs.
Are we simply repeating history? The combination of Monsatan and Bayer will be a perfect partner of the global depop, eugenicist dreams. Populations do compound and grow swiftly as they become larger and larger so either fertility becomes very difficult for many or we are led to aggression, to depopulate and reduce the competition for food and resources ('reality' is digitally distributed and propagandized to support some very old aggressive solutions to perceived social/resource problems). My take is that humans would continue to aggressively wipe each other out, even if there were plenty of food and populations were suddenly decimated thereby reducing population pressures. In other words, we've got nastier tools and more people to do the nasties to take control in the same way aggressive (and some whacko) visionaries have done in the past.
Everything that is happening now on a global stage suggests we are being set up for a harvest, imo. It's not like this hasn't been acknowledged, planned, and envisioned long ago, following two world wars. For those not involved in this long term planning for depop, all the mergers and war manipulations (headed by the U.S. and the super powers under a U.N. based global control plan) contribute to the propaganda of the elite while suppressing information and any inkling of an uprising against said beast. Who frames the arguments, wins the arguments. Every word, every detail of our hearts and minds is on the chopping block, as cannon fodder to feed this larger vision of global control. Zuckerberg, Gates, Bayer, Google, etc., all these kind of corporate folks, thoroughly embrace the globalist plans, albeit fascist in their very formation and protected from disbursement or collapse as they are enfolded in 'big picture' global plans of TPP, artificial intelligence, and surveillance to make sure everyone is on the same page (and for your protection, of course- :). What looks like global divisions and derision between the super powers I think is probably an illusion. It's more like good cop, bad cop, and the super powers jockeying for who does what to whom and what part they will play in the control of the 'human domaine'.
What is amazing is that none of these people has any plans to detox or decontaminate any part of the world or cares about improving the health of the worldwide serfs who are dependent on them. After all there are too many serfs so if we lose a few or many more, it does not matter when you have a global population that increases, to the tenth power, every generation past a certain number. It will be a matter of survival of the fittest in what's coming. Perhaps there is an idea that once we are globally downsized then we can work on cleaning up all the sulfur dioxide, all the pesticides, GMO plants running amok across the countryside, and all the radiation releases from 500+ NPP's on the planet (that seem to have meltdowns, 1 every ten years, unlike what the nuclear propaganda tells us). Or, maybe the elite really are planning on underground cities to protect them from the surface poisonings. Perhaps there is an idea that we will create super humans from machine AI and human cells to form less sensitive, more survivable life forms?
Pesticides and GMO seeds, what a combination to do the global job of thinning the herds- :( Yet, I keep thinking there was another way but that involves engaging people with real information and letting them decide what is the best way to deal with population in their own countries and/or cities. At this time, we simply don't know how to, not rinse and repeat old history. I hope I'm WRONG. No matter what happens, the great culling has begun from chemical and nuclear toxicity.
Sci-fi add-on:
Pretty soon there will be 'text to skull' messages telling everyone that they are healthy and everything is fine, lol, i.e., 'THEY LIVE'! No worries, you'll barely notice, your freedom of choice, control of your own health, and fertility is gone. You will still be able to sit in front of your computer and eat artificial food laced with the toxic environments that surround you, still able to shop 'til you drop, visit Disney's 'It's a Small, Small World', work like a moveable cog in the digitally financed global corporations under trade agreements that restrict individuals from changing regulations, and so on. No biggie...!
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[9595] [9594] |
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9595 |
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Date: September 18, 2016 at 08:24:30
From: chatillion, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Monsanto and Bayer |
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>>>being set up for a harvest
This has all the hallmarks.
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9594 |
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Date: September 18, 2016 at 05:36:23
From: JohnL, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Monsanto and Bayer |
URL: http://www.earthboppin.net/talkshop/wows/messages/26617.html |
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http://www.earthboppin.net/talkshop/wows/messages/26617
.html
PolyD,. what you wrote reminded me of the thread you
started about P-X (video of full moon rising) and what
Ed Dames suggested about the interaction of aliens and
humans. The above links to my response.
In the above post, you wrote:
Or, maybe the elite really are planning on
underground cities to protect them from the
surface poisonings. Perhaps there is an idea that we
will create super humans from machine AI and human
cells to form less sensitive, more survivable life
forms?
Pesticides and GMO seeds, what a combination to do the
global job of thinning the herds- :( …..No matter what
happens, the great culling has begun from chemical and
nuclear toxicity.
“underground cities” was what was predicted biblically.
At first they might have tried to go to outer space, at
least colonizing the moon or big space satellites – but
the technology was very limited for just getting there,
let alone living there.
Around 1995, between jobs and working at a temporary
dBase IV-RPG2 job in Hillsboro (near Portland), I
played the latest computer adventure game, “Under a
Killing Moon” with detective Tex Murphy in 2042
uncovering a plot to set up satellites for secret
habitation, away from an earth that had experienced
nuclear war devastation and radiation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_a_Killing_Moon
From what I vaguely remember, detective Murphy got into
one of the satellites and found that there were young
children uncontaminated by the nuclear radiation on
earth. Maybe that was why Reagan pushed the satellite
and star wars (SDI) programs so fast, until the space
shuttle Challenger disaster.
So underground cities with stored food might be Plan B
in case of a possible nuclear war and Monsanto
pesticide-pestilences.
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9590 |
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Date: September 16, 2016 at 12:42:26
From: pamela, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Monsanto and Bayer |
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I guess we can just send letters of firing our Reps who go for this nonsense. As to Hugh Grant- not the movie actor- what a walking dead man he is! -Just send letters to them from all of our districts/states. Real letters- not e-mail. "You are fired!"
“Consolidation 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… For the last several days, our family farm and ranch members have been on Capitol Hill asking Members of Congress to conduct hearings to review the staggering amount of pending merger deals in agriculture today. We will continue to express concern that these megadeals are being made to benefit the corporate boardrooms at the expense of family farmers, ranchers, consumers and rural economies. We are pleased that next week the Senate Judiciary Committee will be reviewing the alarming trend of consolidation in agriculture that has led to less competition, stifled innovation, higher prices and job loss in rural America… all mergers, including this recent Bayer/Monsanto deal, [should] be put under the magnifying glass of the committee and the U.S. Department of Justice.”
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[9596] |
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9596 |
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Date: September 19, 2016 at 07:06:29
From: Polydactyl in N. Bay, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Monsanto and Bayer |
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Real letters to Reps with 'You're Fired!' - GREAT IDEA.
This IS a good time to get more expressive to the Reps that let
these carp mergers pass, without looking at unintended
consequences down the road. Also the pork barrel voting process
that is the way Reps negotiate, with favors, perks, and bribes
attached that have nothing to do with the rest of a bill's topic is a
bad business model for deciding anything, IMO.
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