Monsanto Cutting 1,000 Jobs as Chemical Giant Takes First Annual Loss in 6 Years

[mick silver]

Monsanto Cutting 1,000 Jobs as Chemical Giant Takes First Annual Loss in 6 Years Home (http://theantimedia.org/)»Activism (http://theantimedia.org/category/solutions/activism/)»Monsanto Cutting 1,000 Jobs as Chemical Giant Takes First Annual Loss in 6 Years


Claire Bernish (http://theantimedia.org/team/claire/)
January 6, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA (http://theantimedia.org/)) St. Louis, MO — Agrichemical behemoth Monsanto plans to cut an additional 1,000 jobs to compensate, in part, for a slump in sales of its genetically-engineered corn seeds. The seeds led to a first quarter loss of $253 million — which, on the whole, represents a 17% drop in revenue.
“Monsanto has struggled in recent quarters to deal with slumping corn prices in the U.S., which have reduced demand for its best-selling product: genetically-enhanced [read: modified] corn seeds,” reported (http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/monsanto-swings-1q-loss-amid-lower-seed-sales-36115403) ABC News. “Farmers are shifting more acres to other crops after surpluses of corn and other crops, including wheat, have squashed commodity prices.”


In fact, Monsanto’s sales have fallen roughly 20% over the past year — perhaps indicative of the growing backlash against both its ubiquitous, genetically-modified crops, as well as the glyphosate-based Roundup (http://theantimedia.org/monsanto-to-face-crimes-againt-humanity-charges-at-international-criminal-court/) required to treat them. These financial hits mean the mega-corporation has been forced to restructure at a cost of between $1.1 billion and $1.2 billion — and together with the previously announced layoff (http://theantimedia.org/monsanto-to-cut-2600-jobs-as-world-rejects-its-products-and-practices/) of 2,600 people, Monsanto will now be trimming a full 16% of its total staff.
As Bloomberg reported (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-06/monsanto-posts-smaller-than-expected-loss-as-soybean-sales-rise): “Monsanto is facing the first drop in its annual earnings in six years as prices decline for its Roundup herbicide” and “lower crop prices curb farmers’ purchases of the newest genetically modified seeds.
“Monsanto’s sales of seeds and genetic licenses fell 14 percent in the first quarter. Revenue in the agricultural productivity unit, which primarily makes Roundup, tumbled 34 percent.”
Monsanto appears to be in a bit of trouble, despite its CEO, Hugh Grant’s claims that the restructuring has to do with meeting profit (http://www.wsj.com/articles/monsanto-raises-number-of-job-cuts-as-sales-slide-1452088027) goals. European and North American farmers simply aren’t buying the chemically-dependent seeds, particularly since the World Health Organization categorized (http://theantimedia.org/roundup-probably-causes-cancer-in-humans/) glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic” to humans — meaning it probably causes cancer (http://theantimedia.org/american-workers-file-lawsuit-against-monsanto-claiming-roundup-caused-cancer/).
In comparison to the same period last year, Monsanto’s revenue declined in every product category except GM soybeans.
This article (Monsanto Cutting 1,000 Jobs as Chemical Giant Takes First Annual Loss in 6 Years (http://theantimedia.org/monsanto-cutting-1000-jobs-as-chemical-giant-takes-first-annual-loss-in-6-years/)) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) license with attribution to Claire Bernish (http://theantimedia.org/author/claireb1/)and theAntiMedia.org (http://theantimedia.org/). Anti-Media Radio (http://theantimedia.org/radio/) airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org (edits@theantimedia.org).

[mick silver]

A senior scientist at MIT has declared that we are facing an epidemic of autism that may result in one half of all children being affected by autism in ten years.
First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2015/01/26/mit-states-that-half-of-all-children-may-be-autistic-by-2025/Seneff, who made these remarks during a panel presentation in Groton, MA last week, specifically cites the Monsanto herbicide, Roundup, as the culprit for the escalating incidence of autism and other neurological disorders. Roundup, which was introduced in the 1970’s, contains the chemical glyphosate, which is the focal point for Seneff’s concerns. Roundup was originally restricted to use on weeds, as glyphosate kills plants. However, Roundup is now in regular use with crops. With the coming of GMO’s, plants such as soy and corn were bioengineered to tolerate glyphosate, and its use dramatically increased. From 2001 to 2007, glyphosate use doubled, reaching 180 to 185 million pounds in the U.S. alone in 2007.If you don’t consume corn- on- the -cob or toasted soybeans, however, you are hardly exempt from the potential affects of consuming glyphosate. Wheat is now sprayed with Roundup right before it is harvested, making any consumption of non- organic wheat bread a sure source for the chemical. In addition, any products containing corn syrup, such as soft drinks, are also carrying a payload of glyphosate.According to studies cited by Seneff, glyphosate engages “gut bacteria” in a process known as the shikimate pathway. This enables the chemical to interfere with the biochemistry of bacteria in our GI tract, resulting in the depletion of essential amino acids .Monsanto has maintained that glyphosate is safe for human consumption, as humans do not have the shikimate pathway. Bacteria, however, does—including the flora that constitutes “gut bacteria.”It is this ability to affect gut bacteria that Seneff claims is the link which allows the chemical to get on board and wreak further damage. The connection between intestinal flora and neurological functioning is an ongoing topic of research. According to a number of studies, glyphosate depletes the amino acids tyrosine, tryptophan, and phenylalanine, which can then contribute to obesity, depression, autism, inflammatory bowel disease, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.Monsanto disagrees. The food and chemical giant has constructed a webpage with links to scientific studies pronouncing the safety of glyphosate (http://www.monsanto.com/products/pages/roundup-safety-background-materials.aspx).Other science writers have also taken up the Monsanto banner, scoffing at the scientific studies that prompted Seneff to make her claims. “They made it up!” pronounced Huffpost science writer Tamar Haspel, in an article thin on analysis but heavy on declarative prose (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tamar-haspel/condemning-monsanto-with-_b_3162694.html).Others, such as Skeptoid writer and PhD physicist Eric Hall, take a more measured approach, and instead focus on the studies which prompted the glyphosate concerns. According to Hall, Seneff is making an error known as the “correlation/causation error,” in which causality is inaccurately concluded when there exists only the fact that two separate items—in this case, the increased use of glyphosate and the increased incidence of autism—may be observed but are not, in fact, directly related.Seneff’s pronouncements focus specifically on the glyphosate issue. As we know, there are other potential tributaries which may be feeding the rise in autism and also causing age-related neurological conditions, such as Alzheimer’s. These may include contents of vaccines, aluminum cooking ware as well as other potential sources for chemical consumption.Some individuals, such as M.D. and radio host Rima Laibow have speculated on the intentionality behind this ostensible chemical siege against our gray matter. Laibow believes that the impetus may be to create an entire class of autistic individuals who will be suited only for certain types of work.This harks back, eerily, to Aldous Huxley’s classic Brave New World, in which individuals were preprogrammed from “conception” for eventual placement in one of five groups, designated as Alpha, Beta, and so on down to Epsilon, based on their programmed brain power. In Huxley’s dystopian world, this class delineation by intellectual ability enabled society to function more smoothly.Whatever may driving the autistic/Alzheimer’s diesel train, one thing is for certain: the spectre of half of our children coming into the world with significant brain damage constitutes a massive and undeniable wound to humanity. The rate of autism has skyrocketed from roughly one in every two thousand in the 1970’s to the current rate of one in every sixty eight. Alzheimer’s has become almost universal in the elderly. Seneff’s predictions can only be ignored at grave risk to the human race.Janet C. Phelan, investigative journalist and human rights defender that has traveled pretty extensively over the Asian region, an author of a tell-all book EXILE (http://www.thebookpatch.com/BookStore/exile/a02d07e3-82ae-4dab-942b-bed32f224566?isbn=9781620309575), exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook (http://journal-neo.org/)
First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2015/01/26/mit-states-that-half-of-all-children-may-be-autistic-by-2025/

[mick silver]

January 8, 2016 Monsanto + Syngenta: Agribusiness Giants Get Even Bigger (http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/01/08/monsanto-syngenta-agribusiness-giants-get-even-bigger/)
by Carmelo Ruiz (http://www.counterpunch.org/author/carmelo-ruiz/) by









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A merger between agricultural biotech giants Monsanto and Syngenta is becoming likelier by the minute. The proposed merger has generated much commentary and speculation in the business world as well as among anti-GMO activists since the resulting corporation would control 45% of the global seed market and 30% of the agrochemical market (1).
In 2015 the US-based Monsanto tried to buy Syngenta twice, and was twice spurned by the European corporation. But Monsanto is not the only suitor. Syngenta has also been courted with similar buyout bids by Germany’s BASF and Asian corporate colossus ChemChina.
For Monsanto, getting Syngenta’s management to agree to this transatlantic deal is more important than ever in light of the November 2015 merger agreement between two US chemical and agribusiness giants: Dow and Dupont. The resulting behemoth will be split into three companies, with one of them specializing in farm technologies, combining the agricultural businesses of both. Dow Agrosciences, Dow’s agricultural division, has 10% of the world agrochemical market and 4% of the commercial seed market. And Dupont has, through its Pioneer subsidiary, 21% of the world commercial seed market and 6% of the agrochemical market.
These two mergers would mark the culmination of an aggressive process of corporate consolidations and acquisitions that has been four decades in the making. Back in 1981 there were over 7,000 seed companies, most of them family-owned, and none controlled over 1% of the market. Nowadays, six transnational corporations own 63% of the global seed market and 75% of the agrochemical market. The Big Six are Monsanto, Dow, Dupont, Syngenta, Bayer and BASF.
These corporations insist that their mergers are necessary in order to achieve the economies of scale needed to feed a growing world population and to address the ever more urgent challenge of climate change. But the Canada-based ETC Group begs to differ: “Ag mega-mergers threaten to undermine the basis of our food supply and jeopardize efforts to build climate resilience. Allowing more farm inputs to fall into fewer hands is a recipe for disaster.”
According to agricultural scientist and analyst Charles Benbrook, these mergers mean that farmers will have less choice when procuring corn and soy seed, higher seed prices, and an increase in the use of genetic engineering technologies that are ever less effective in dealing with weeds and pests. (2)
“The near-term financial performance of the new company will be determined by how fast the next generation of corn and soybean seeds can be brought to market, seeds that are genetically engineered to resist multiple herbicides”, says Benbrook. “The farm-sector financial squeeze will tighten, as another chunk of net farm income is passed on to the technology developers and input suppliers. There will be, after all, new profit targets and lots of new debt that needs servicing.”
One of Monsanto’s main motivations for finding a partner real fast is the fact that its flagship product, glyphosate (brand name: Roundup) is reaching the end of its useful commercial life. Roundup is the most lucrative agrochemical in history. In the United States alone, the use of glyphosate on corn and soy increased twenty-fold from 1995 to 2013. This growth has been possible thanks to Monsanto’s patented Roundup Ready crops, genetically engineered to resist this particular herbicide. This technology combination allows the corporation to sell both the chemical and the seed as a single integrated package.
“But after two decades of relentless Roundup-based warfare, glyphosate- resistant ‘superweeds’ are proliferating and Roundup Ready crops are choking in weed-infested fields”, says the ETC Group. “In the U.S., farmers now face nearly 100 million acres of herbicide-resistant weeds in 36 states. Worldwide, at least 24 species of weeds are now glyphosate-resistant.”
Monsanto ran into further trouble in March 2015 when the World Health Organization declared that glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen. Two months later, the International Society of Doctors for the Environment, based in Switzerland, issued an appeal to the European governments, “to immediately and permanently ban, with no exceptions, the production, trade and use in all the EU territory of glyphosate-based herbicides.” (3)
Seeds and agricultural poisons are not the only farm business sectors witnessing accelerated corporate concentration. Fertilizer companies and farm machinery manufacturers are also in the game, and they move vastly greater sums of money. Whereas the global seed and agrochemical businesses each have $39 billion and $54 billion markets respectively, the global farm machinery market is worth $116 billion and the fertilizer market $175 billion. Three firms control 49% of the farm machinery market, while in the fertilizer sector, three North American companies own the Canpotex consortium, which controls one third of the world market of potash, an essential ingredient for fertilizer.
Farm machinery makers are inching in on turf controlled by Monsanto and its peers. John Deere, the sector’s undisputed leader, has joint ventures with five of the Big Six seed and agrochem companies. Meanwhile Monsanto has collaborations with the three top machinery firms, which apart from John Deere are Holland’s CNH, and the US-based AGCO.
The farm machinery business is buying big into “precision farming”, which relies on software, robotics, GPS, satellite monitoring, climate data, and even drones.
“The goal is to sell a platform for mapping and monitoring weather, pests and soils throughout a farm’s entire growing area – Monsanto calls them ‘paid acres’ and the company is targeting 300-400 million paid acres across the US, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Western and Eastern Europe by 2025”, says the ETC Group. “Big Ag’s digital platform aims to be the corporate command and control center for every ag input decision – crop, seed variety, soil, seed, pesticide, fertilizer, irrigation, machinery, even crop insurance.”
University of Wisconsin professors Steven Wolf and Spencer Wood have warned that precision farming would legitimate chemical-based agriculture in an era of rising environmental awareness: “Precision farming supports further integration of on-farm activity into a coordinated system of industrial manufacture.” (4)
Also ahead of the curve was the ETC Group, which until 2001 was called RAFI. “Precision farming technology reinforces the uniformity and chemical-intensive requirements of industrial agriculture”, warned RAFI back in 1997. “It is an industrializing technology that builds further links of dependency between the farmer, the agrochemical industry and off-farm information providers.” (5)
Meanwhile, the fertilizer industry is taking up the discourse of “climate-smart agriculture” (CSA) in order to counter criticism of its product’s environmental impact and contribution to climate change. According to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, “CSA is an approach to developing the technical, policy and investment conditions to achieve sustainable agricultural development for food security under climate change.” (6)
But international civil society is not buying it. In September 2015 dozens of organizations signed on to an open letter urging governments to refrain from endorsing CSA in the upcoming COP 21 climate change conference in Paris.
“‘Climate-Smart Agriculture’ may sound promising, but it is a politically-motivated term. The approach does not involve any criteria to define what can or cannot be called ‘Climate Smart’. Agribusiness corporations that promote synthetic fertilisers, industrial meat production and large-scale industrial agriculture – all of which are widely recognised as contributing to climate change and undermining the resilience of farming systems – can and do call themselves ‘Climate Smart’. CSA claims to include all models of agriculture. However it lacks any social or environmental safeguards and fails to prioritize farmers’ voices, knowledge and rights as key to facing and mitigating our climate challenges. It therefore actually threatens to undermine agroecological approaches as defined by practitioners, while endangering the future development and upscaling of such approaches.” (7)
According to the Europe-based non-governmental organization GRAIN, climate smart ag is little more than a front for the fertilizer business:
“The Global Alliance for Climate Smart Agriculture, launched (in 2014) at the United Nations Summit on Climate Change in New York, is the culmination of several years of efforts by the fertiliser lobby to block meaningful action on agriculture and climate change. Of the Alliance’s 29 non-governmental founding members, there are three fertiliser industry lobby groups, two of the world’s largest fertiliser companies (Yara of Norway and Mosaic of the US), and a handful of organisations working directly with fertiliser companies on climate change programmes. Today, 60% of the private sector members of the Alliance still come from the fertiliser industry.” (8)
The critics of corporate industrial agriculture affirm that socially just and scientifically sound alternatives to feed the world and counter climate change do exist. These are grouped under the concept of food sovereignty, which was formulated by La Via Campesina, an organization that represents millions of small farmers worldwide. The ETC Group advises that “To move us all toward food sovereignty, the world needs a new configuration of true innovators, including smallholder producers and public researchers – who are not undermined by spineless regulators.”

Carmelo Ruiz is a Puerto Rican author and journalist currently living in Ecuador. He directs the Latin America Energy and Environment Monitor, (http://monitorenergiayambiente.blogspot.com/) runs a bilingual blog on journalism and current affairs (http://carmeloruiz.blogspot.com/), and is a member of the directive commission of the Puerto Rico Socialist Front (http://frentesocialistapr.blogspot.com/). His Twitter ID is @carmeloruiz.

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