company:monsanto co.

Behind the Monsanto Deal, Doubts About the GMO Revolution
▻http://www.wsj.com/articles/behind-the-monsanto-deal-doubts-about-the-gmo-revolution-1473880429

A l’origine les semences #OGM devaient nécessiter moins de pesticides et de logistique ce qui devait avoir pour résultat des grains plus sains et plus rentables.

C’est le contraire qui est vrai aujourd’hui.

Behind a wave of multibillion-dollar mergers in the agriculture business is a moment of change in American farming. The dominance of genetically modified crops is under threat.

[...]

Today, farmers are finding it harder to justify the high and often rising prices for modified, or GMO, seed, given the measly returns of the current farm economy. Spending on crop seeds has nearly quadrupled since 1996, when Monsanto Co. became the first of the companies to launch biotech varieties. Yet major crop prices have skidded lower for three years, and this year, many farmers stand to lose money.

[...]

Biotech farming has also shown limitations, given how certain weeds are evolving to resist sprays, forcing farmers to fork out for a broader array of chemicals. Some are starting to seek out old-fashioned seed, citing diminished returns from biotech bells and whistles.

[...]

The premise of biotech seeds was simple: Plants engineered to grow even while farmers applied a single, all-purpose herbicide to the field to attack weeds would let farmers buy fewer chemicals. Crops also secreting their own bug-killing toxins would reduce reliance on insecticides. Corn, soybean and cotton were natural markets, spanning tens of millions of acres in the U.S.

Monsanto and other seed companies could charge a premium for biotech seeds that were “Roundup Ready”—engineered to withstand Monsanto’s popular brand of herbicide—for those crops, splitting savings with farmers who would in theory save money spent on chemicals and labor.

Illegal Herbicide Use on GMO Crops Causing Massive Damage to Fruit, Vegetable and Soybean Farms - EcoWatch
▻http://www.ecowatch.com/monsanto-roundup-ready-soybean-1983477089.html

https://resize.rbl.ms/simage/https%3A%2F%2Fassets.rbl.ms%2F7460608%2F1200x600.jpg/2000%2C2000/Yqhpnr1nH4SpW76x/img.jpg

Last year, Kade McBroom launched a non-GMO soybean processing plant in Malden, Missouri, and was optimistic about the potential to serve the fast-growing non-GMO market.

But now McBroom sees a potential threat to his new business from herbicide drift sprayed on genetically modified crops. This past spring, Monsanto Co. started selling GM Roundup Ready Xtend soybean and cotton seeds to farmers in Missouri and several other states. The seeds are genetically engineered to withstand sprays of glyphosate and dicamba herbicides. The problem is that the Xtend dicamba herbicide designed to go with the seeds has not yet been approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), leading many farmers to spray their GMO soybeans and cotton with older formulas of dicamba—illegally.

While Monsanto’s GMO crops can tolerate sprays of dicamba, other crops can’t. As a result, dicamba, which is known to convert from a liquid to a gas and spread for miles, is damaging tens of thousands of acres of “non-target” crops in southern Missouri and nine other states, mostly in the South. An estimated 200,000 acres are affected in Missouri alone, though the EPA puts that number at 40,000. Non-GMO and even GMO, soybeans that aren’t dicamba resistant are damaged as well as peaches, tomatoes, watermelon, cantaloupe and other crops.

“Farmers are so mad,” said McBroom, who has spoken with several farmers in his area about the problem. “I’m assuming there will be lawsuits.”

Two farmers who grow non-GMO soybeans for Malden Specialty Soy told McBroom that they may be forced to grow dicamba tolerant GMO soybeans to protect their farms from dicamba drift.

#ogm #pesticides #destruction #brown_tech il y a un mot pour cela mais il m’échappe #entrer_en_force

Compelling Photos Reveal the Legacy of America’s Most Hated Corporation - Feature Shoot
▻http://www.featureshoot.com/2014/09/compelling-photos-reveal-legacy-americas-hated-corporation

http://www.featureshoot.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Mathieu_Asselin_04.jpg

For nearly 40 years, while producing the now-banned industrial coolants known as PCBs at a local factory, Monsanto Co. routinely discharged toxic waste into a west Anniston creek and dumped millions of pounds of PCBs into oozing open-pit landfills. Thousands of pages of Monsanto documents – many emblazoned with warnings such as “CONFIDENTIAL: Read and Destroy” – show that for decades, the corporate giant concealed what it did and what it knew.

Over the past five years, photographer Mathieu Asselin has devoted his life to researching and documenting the controversial history of Monsanto, a leading American corporation manufacturing agricultural chemicals and genetically modified food products. For Monsanto: A Photographic Investigation, he has traveled throughout the country, from the PCB-contaminated creeks of Anniston, Alabama to the hazardous waste sites of Sauget, Illinois, photographing the landscapes and persons devastated by exposure Monsanto’s toxic products and the company’s monopoly on seeds. Included in Asselin’s dark portrait of Monsanto are objects collected by the photographer himself: vintage advertisements, memorabilia, and newspaper clippings.

In its 113 year history, Monsanto has manufactured everything from plastic to the now-banned Agent Orange, an herbicide used to destroy a large area of jungle during the Vietnam War. Agent Orange has since been found to cause miscarriages and birth defects in the children of Vietnam veterans. Today, Monsanto is a main producer of the herbicide glyphosate, which goes by the brand-name Roundup, and bovine growth hormone, both which have raised ethical and environmental concerns relating to the welfare of animals, humans, and the environment. We spoke to Asselin about his project as well as Monsanto’s past, present, and future.

#monsanto #photographie

Genetic drift of seeds, pollen is a growing concern for farmers | Business Insurance
▻http://www.businessinsurance.com/article/20140202/NEWS07/302029996?tags=|61|342|303

Along with chemical drift, farmers face the problem of genetic drift — the migration of genetically modified seeds or pollen into fields of organic or conventional crops.

In one of the largest contamination settlements to date, a unit of #Bayer A.G. agreed in 2011 to pay $750 million to U.S. rice farmers who claimed their crops were tainted by a Bayer GM rice strain, making them unmarketable overseas.

More recently, wheat farmers in Oregon have filed class action suits against #Monsanto Co. after discovering an experimental strain of the company’s herbicide-resistant wheat growing in their fields. The farmers claim the GM wheat, which has not been approved for sale, escaped from Monsanto test fields and has damaged their wheat exports to countries that do not permit GM crops.

Monsanto has moved to dismiss the complaints, which are pending in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Kan.

#ogm