Global protests hold back Monsanto’s GM juggernaut
For decades the giant St Louis-based Monsanto corporation has been able to get away with selling toxins to the world: but now global protests have inflicted a series of major setbacks from which it is struggling to recover.
Early in October Monsanto chiefs announced they would not attempt commercial exploitation of their work on a "terminator gene" that would prevent genetically-modified crops from reproducing, and thus force farmers to buy fresh seeds from Monsanto each year.
As one US Department of Agriculture official put it: "The goal is to increase the value of proprietary seed owned by US seed companies, and to open up new markets in Second and Third World countries".
Environmental campaigners warned that Monsanto’s renunciation would close off only one of dozens of possible ways in which "terminator technology" could be used to boost the profits of seed monopolies.
However Wall Street analysts have warned that the whole of Monsanto’s investment in genetically-modified crops is becoming a major liability. It is dragging down the corporation’s share price – while global rejection of GM crops is ruining key sections of US agriculture.
Protests by Indian farmers have helped force a government ban this year on crops containing the terminator gene.
And consumer concern in Europe, Japan and elsewhere is leading to major food producers and retailers refusing to buy American and other GM farm products.
US corn exports to the European Union have plunged 96% in a year – almost wiping out a $200m market. Exports to food producers in Mexico and Japan have also been hit by bans on GM corn.
Even within the US, where the pro-GM lobby is strongest, and 35% of this year’s corn and 55% of soya bean acreage was from GM seeds, major food companies are now refusing to use genetically modified crops and demanding that they be separated from non-GM output.
Hormones
There have also been increasing problems facing US farmers who use Monsanto’s controversial Bovine Growth Hormone. There have been battles to force the EU to drop its ban on BGH-injected beef, and over 90% of US dairy farmers have refused to use BGH since it makes cows sick, requiring them to be dosed with large amounts of antibiotic, which contaminates the milk.
To make matters even worse for Monsanto, the world’s second largest agribusiness which now controls 85% of the US cotton seed market, the bulk of the US corn seed, and 30% of the Brazilian corn market, fresh doubts have been raised over the safety of its flagship weedkiller Roundup, which accounts for 17% of the corporation’s total annual sales.
Roundup kills almost anything green, and one of the objectives of producing genetically-modified ("Roundup Ready") soya beans and cotton was to encourage farmers to use large quantities of this herbicide – and no other. Any restriction on the use of Roundup could prove devastating to the whole Monsanto strategy.
Already US business is losing confidence as the GM bubble bursts. Shares in the $12 billion a year Monsanto were valued at $47 in the spring of this year and rose to $51, but as the global tide of boycotts, protests and government bans has risen, this has slipped away to just $38 in October.
Monsanto has always been willing to make a fast buck from selling toxic and hazardous material. They were manufacturers of the notorious "Agent Orange" defoliant used by the US airforce in Vietnam: Monsanto also produces NutraSweet (aspartame), the artificial sweetener linked with a range of symptoms and side-effects.
But it seems that even the political power of this massive multi-billion dollar corporation, which has been able to persuade the US government to turn a blind eye to so many dodgy products, can be undermined by mass campaigns.
The Clinton administration, recognising the tide of opinion against GM foods, has been reluctant to wage yet another trade war on behalf of Monsanto, leaving many US farmers high and dry with unsaleable crops.
But even if Monsanto bows to pressure and sells off its agricultural chemicals business – perhaps to German giant Bayer – there is little doubt that the drive for profits and monopoly among seed suppliers will force new efforts at "terminator" technology – perhaps based on requiring seeds to be used in conjunction with specific weedkillers or fertilisers.
Campaigners warn that Monsanto alone has been seeking to patent as many as 87 terminator patents, with other firms also trying to get into the act. As long as agriculture is dominated by capitalism and the giants of agribusiness, the needs and safety of consumers and farmworkers will come a poor second to the profits of the corporations.