Tag / Syngenta

by Frank Maduri

Tip Of The Iceberg: Syngenta Settlement With Corn Farmers

The settlement that was announced last week and awaits the approval of the court system involving a class action lawsuit by corn farmers against the agricultural chemical juggernaut, Syngenta, is just the tip of the iceberg involving international concerns over genetically modified crops.

The suit dealt with a strain of modified corn that Syngenta sold to the farmers under the guise that it was going to be grown for export to China. However, the big issue was that China had not approved that strain of GMO corn and Syngenta did not get approval prior to negotiating the deal with the farmers.

Ultimately, China rejected the import of millions of tons of the genetically modified strain of corn called Agrisure Viptera. This tremendous amount is what caused the settlement numbers in this case to multiply significantly.

The settlement is over $1.5 billion and, according to Reuters, would be the largest class action settlement for an agriculture case in American history. This whole case represents a larger problem with the conglomerates running the seed industry, with GMO containing products, and with the import and export of certain staple crops within the food supply.

Syngenta is now owned by ChemChina, in a merger that was well publicized recently and heavily debated because of the implications of Chinese ownership of a company which supplies products which are integral to the American food supply.

It should be noted that ninety percent of the U.S. corn crop supply is genetically modified.

This sadly, is one piece of a giant patchwork of international export deals involving GMO staple food sources, not only corn. It includes wheat, soybean, and sugar beet crops as well. It is nearly impossible to find a mainstream food product without the “made with genetic engineering” disclaimer on the label.

The international laws around GMO food products make for even more unknown variables. There are certain countries that do not require the disclosure of ingredients that are GMO containing and do not label crop sources that are genetically engineered.

The push for organic foods and organic staple crops is making a resurgence in some parts of the world but the main issue is that the farmland is already tainted from GMO seeds that it is very difficult to impossible to use that land for organic crops.

The seeds are already genetically altered for so many crops that even if a farmer used organic products to preserve and sustain the crops they would inherently contain GMOs. The most effective way to deal with GMOs is at the seed level and growing less crops of corn for ethanol use.

However, this also is easier stated than put into tangible action. The agricultural seed industry is dominated by a few conglomerates: Monsanto, DuPont, and Syngenta. Monsanto controls over one quarter of the entire seed industry globally, and those three companies account for almost half of the entire global seed industry, which is a staggering figure.

That level of control into the hands of so few companies is a setback to any substantive progress being made with non-GM seeds. Then, consider further that all three of those enormous companies are in transition: Monsanto is in merger talks with Bayer, DuPont has merged with Dow, and Syngenta was merged with ChemChina in a $43 billion deal.

Some companies have taken the “Safe Seed Pledge” promising to not use GMO ingredients in their seeds, but they are used in smaller scale amounts for gardening and not for mass production. The scale up for the demands of the food supply make the reductions in GMO crops problematic.

The genetically modified trend is growing to impact fish and other livestock as well. It is presenting some moral and ethical questions along the way.

In a time period where social media and the internet has made for increased transparency, the international trade deals and ambiguous labeling laws for genetically engineered or modified foods make it incredibly difficult for people to know what they are eating.

The import of genetically modified ingredients is a whole other avenue where food products could become infiltrated with GMOs. The link between certain ingredients and genetic modification has been well established and internationally it is difficult to find alternate sources.

The United States got into the GMO crop scenario so deeply it is going to be hard to reverse course at this point. The European Union, by contrast, does not allow the sale of GMO food and produces it on a small percentage of their farmland for export purposes only.

The settlement by Syngenta over the failed exports to China is just one trade deal gone wrong. It is just one piece to the puzzle, it is the tip of the iceberg in a maze of deals centered on GMO products. The rest of those pieces will fall in future and the public questions about GMOs will continue and sadly the answers are not very promising.

by Frank Maduri

European Union Votes To Ban GMO Crops

The majority of countries in the European Union voted to ban crops made with two different types of genetically modified maize on Monday. However, the measure failed passage because the countries that voted against the measure did not represent 65% of the population of the EU, a requirement to defeat this proposal from moving further in the legal process.

The crops in question as part of this measure were the Pioneer brand and another from Syngenta. The EU has been consistent in their resistance to genetically modified food and to crops utilizing genetically engineered seeds for both human and agriculture use such as to feed livestock.

The rules regarding these particular proposals seem to work against the union itself from a political and policy point of view because even if a majority of the countries vote against a specific policy, in this case being GMO seeds/crops, the motion can still carry if the more populated member countries vote in favor of it.

It would stand to reason that the citizens of the smaller or less populated countries would certainly have some frustration or anger over that voting mechanism within the structure of the E.U. at this point. The European mindset toward rejecting genetically engineered or modified food ingredients has been consistent over the course of the past several years, and they have been far more successful than the anti-GMO lobbying efforts have been in the United States.

Moreover, that is not meant to be an indictment on the anti-GMO movement in the U.S., because in my view, they have been tireless in their efforts toward further transparency in food product labeling and ingredient disclosure. The movement has even gained some victories in the past 18 months or so, in the declarations on the labels for food products from major manufacturers of nationally distributed brands.

The anti-GMO movement has been successful on the state level in gaining new legislative action regarding the use of genetically engineered products in a variety of applications from food production to agricultural use. The growth of new brands that are organic and non-GMO and their subsequent success in the marketplace is evidence of a growing trend in America away from processed and modified food to more natural and healthier food choices.

However, despite the policy victories and despite the change in the consciousness of the general American consumer, the new Administration in Washington threatens to rescind some of those legislative changes regarding the ingredients in food products. This includes the policy enacted by the previous Presidential Administration requiring food companies to disclose if the product contains any genetically engineered ingredients.

In my prior article about Campbell Soup Company and their decision to disclose those ingredients prior to the change which would make that disclosure mandatory, the stock market and shareholders alike had some trepidation on how it would affect sales at the company. The disclosure has resonated with the consumer especially in the case of their soup products, where there was some shock value to the presence of genetically engineered ingredients.

In the current context of GMOs in the food industry, there are some factions that feel that a rollback of the disclosure policy would damage the overall movement for the non-GMO interests. Then, there are others who maintain that the consumer now knows which companies and products contain GM ingredients, and will likely avoid them in their future purchase patterns. The other fact remains that once a purchase pattern is changed, most consumers do not revert back to a prior pattern for product selection.
In the context of the current situation in Europe, all of this comes within the backdrop of some major shifting and consolidation activity within the agricultural seed and crop protection industries. The largest players in those industry segments: Monsanto, Dow, DuPont, and Syngenta are all the subject of merger and acquisition activity at this point.

Monsanto is in the process of being potentially purchased by German corporate titan, Bayer. Dow and DuPont are in the process of merging together to form one goliath sized company and that merger just went before some E.U. regulators and is in regulatory review in the United States as well. DuPont is in the process of selling off some business units to FMC at this time to meet regulatory approval.

Syngenta is in the review process of being acquired by a Chinese corporation, which has left some within the Western economies feeling uneasy for a variety of reasons. The potential for the Chinese to gain access to specific technologies and processes that could impact the “playing field” in that industry segment is one issue. The concerns over quality control and product assurance/ product safety when it comes to the reputation of Chinese companies for bending the rules on certain protocols is an anxious proposition when it comes to the products used to grow food.

The European Union as a governing body must be facing pressure from an economic standpoint to start utilizing more genetically modified products from a cost efficiency point of view as well as a crop protection standpoint. The lobby from the corporations involved must be significant as well or else these types of proposals would not even be under consideration.

The EU currently uses GMO products but only certain types of products are approved for each type of main staple crop. The food produced from those crops is subject to very strict testing and regulations. The political movement by the union in recent years is to provide the member states with more latitude to determine how they will regulate GMO crops.

This current vote on EU crops represents the first new GMO crop products to be considered in almost twenty years. The measure, when or if it is passed, will only affect nine countries and some regions in Belgium and England. The other 19 members of the EU have banned GMO crops from being grown within their borders.

The future of genetically modified crops in the EU is going to be interesting especially given the backdrop of the major consolidation activity within the seed and agricultural/crop protection industries currently. Those companies will get even larger and more influential, and the resistance from the citizens and governments in the members states of the EU will have to ramp up their defenses to continue to resist the policies from being altered.