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	What a Monsanto merger with Bayer could mean for global food security by John Vidal, Joe McCarthy Global Citizen, agencies   Sep 2016   Farming mega-mergers threaten food security, say campaigners, writes John Vidal for Guardian News.   When an Indian farmer plants his cotton crop, there’s at least a 75% chance the seeds have been been bought from a company owned by Monsanto. If a Latin American farmer sprays insecticide on her genetically engineered soya beans, the chemical is more than likely to have been provided by German chemical and drugs company Bayer or by US firm Dupont.   And when African farmers add chemicals to their maize fields or plant it’s odds-on that they have come from Swiss company Syngenta.   Until recently, six or seven global agri-food businesses competed with each other for a share of the world market for seeds and chemicals. But if EU and US regulators allow a series of mega-mergers to take place, within months just three companies will be left in control of nearly 60% of the world’s seeds, nearly 70% of the chemicals and pesticides needed to grow food and nearly all of the world’s GM crop genetic traits.   The mega-deals now being scrutinised by governments and the EU include the $66bn (£51bn) agreed takeover of US seed, chemical and biotech company Monsanto by drug and German gene firm Bayer; US chemical company Dow’s intention to merge with chemical conglomerate rival DuPont; and ChemChina’s plan to buy massive Swiss seed and gene group Syngenta for $43bn (£33bn).   Include the mergers of several of the world’s biggest fertiliser companies, and moves by the world’s largest farm equipment companies to invest in big data, robotics and farm surveillance technologies, and the consolidations are seen as taking global agriculture into a new era.   Alarmed EU, US and Latin American consumer, environment and anti-trust groups this week claimed that the three mega deals have the potential to concentrate political and financial power dangerously and could force more countries to adopt a single model of farming that excludes or impoverishes small farmers.   With seeds, chemicals, research and lobbying power in the hands of a tiny group of immensely powerful companies, they say, the small farmer will inevitably be blown away, competition could be stifled, and food and farm input prices will rise.   In a report to be shortly published on the growing concentration of power in the agri-food industry, the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (Ipes) is expected to say that “an unprecedented wave of corporate consolidation is under way”.   “New technology and data-driven synergies could lead to three companies controlling 60% of seeds and 70% of agrochemicals worldwide with still greater oligopoly possible – a historic power shift throughout global agricultural inputs and even greater crop and livestock vulnerability through uniformity,” says an early draft of the report seen by the Guardian.   The consolidation means that each of the big three corporates will also be positioned to access massive banks of genetic data, seen as crucial to companies growing in places like sub-Saharan Africa with burgeoning populations and food shortages.   “The mergers will enable pharmaceutical and agriculture companies to become big data companies,” says Catherine Wood, CEO of Ark investment management. “When you sequence a human genome, or a seed, what you get out of it is data.”   Olivier De Schutter, former UN special rapporteur on the right to food and a co-chair of Ipes, says the mergers will make developing countries a more attractive target for corporate farming.   “The frontier of industrial agriculture is moving towards sub-Saharan Africa. There is a huge market there which the seed companies [say] will grow very significant in the next few years.   “They will be in a position to dominate this market. Sub-Saharan Africa is becoming the battleground of the giants,” says De Schutter.   Technology and agriculture watchdog group ETC argues that the takeover frenzy is no longer just about seeds and pesticides but about global control of agricultural inputs and world food security.   “Anti-competition regulators should block these mergers everywhere, and particularly in the emerging markets of the global south, as the new mega companies will greatly expand their power and outcompete national enterprises there,” said ETC’s director, Pat Mooney, a group which monitors global agribusiness and agricultural technologies.   Mooney says the mergers are linked to companies wanting control of big data and access to patents, gene traits and intellectual property.   “These deals are not just about seeds and pesticides, but also about who will control big data in agriculture. The company that can dominate seed, soil and weather data and crunch new genomics information will inevitably gain control of global agricultural inputs – seeds, pesticides, fertilisers and farm machinery.”   “Dominance may go to the biggest companies best able to manage the data and the DNA to their own advantage,” he says.   The mergers have created alarm throughout Latin America and raised concerns about increased prices, more privatisation of research and political pressure, says Silvia Ribeiro, director of ETC’s Latin American office in Mexico.   “There is huge pressure from these giant companies to make laws and regulations in our countries that allow them to dominate markets, crush farmers’ rights and make peasant seeds illegal,” he says.   “Together, these mergers are set to re-shape world farming, potentially raising prices for growers and consumers around the world,” says Adrian Bebb, senior food, agriculture and biodiversity campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe, who has described the Bayer-Monsanto takeover as a “marriage made in hell”.   By concentrating market control and access to seeds and land among a handful of corporations, Bebb says millions of small farmers in developing countries stand to become impoverished. “From Africa and Asia to Latin America and the EU, corporate control over markets and supply chains is displacing millions of small-scale farmers.   “These dynamics have created some of the world’s highest rates of poverty and hunger among small-scale food producers and rural communities worldwide.”   Bebb and others argue that the mergers have little to do with solving world hunger. “Research consistently demonstrates that world hunger is not a problem of supply, but rather of poverty, lack of democracy and unequal access to land, water and other resources, especially for women.   To avoid the absolute control of the global food supply by a few companies, money should be invested heavily in grassroots farming, he says.   “Smallholders are the backbone of world food supply; they represent over 90% percent of farmers worldwide and provide more than 80% of the food consumed throughout much of the developing world, particularly southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.   The battle to stop the mergers will not just be decided by regulators. Powerful farm movements in many developing countries frightened by the immense power that the corporates will wield, plan to take their concerns to the UN and international meetings in Indonesia, Mexico and elsewhere over the next few months.   One of the most important meetings will be in Rome where the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation’s committee on world food security meets next month.   “Virtually all of the world’s governments, farmer organisations and many agribusinesses companies will be in the same room for a week, with food security on the official agenda. There are going to be a lot of angry people there wanting to stop these mergers,” says Ribeiro. http://www.ipes-food.org/   July 2016   What a Monsanto merger with Bayer could mean for global food security, by Joe McCarthy. (Global Citizen)   The agrochemical and biotechnology company Monsanto has been courted by the chemical and pharmaceutical company Bayer for some time now. They''re taking part in a favorite corporate dance: merging to consolidate control over a market.   Yesterday, Monsanto scoffed at Bayer''s $62 billion bid, claiming that it was "financially inadequate," but this won''t be the end of the matter. After all, Monsanto probably wants to abandon its unhappy name.   All around the world, mergers are happening at a record pace and markets are coming under the control of ever-more dominant players.   According to ValueWalk, 2015 was the biggest financial year for mergers and acquisitions in the US and Asia of all time. The US tallied $4.28 trillion in mergers over the course of the year.   Mergers are not always intrinsically bad, but they risk distorting a particular market by crushing competition, limiting research and development and allowing harmful practices to continue. When companies swell to immense proporations, they can bargain exclusionary deals with customers, lobby for favorable political conditions, divert resources away from progressive research and development to executive pay.   In the agricultural industry, major mergers have already taken place this year. Dow and DuPont merged at the end of 2015 to form a $130 billion powerhouse, DowDuPont, and this past February ChemChina scooped up Sygenta for $43 billion. Bayer and Monsanto will probably hammer out a deal in the coming weeks or months.   Taken together, these deals are far more signifcant--and troubling--than similar consolidation in other markets.   In the airline industry, where the big 4 airlines control nearly the entire market, consumers have to deal with inflated prices.   In the agricultural industry, however, consumers could have to deal with compromised food supplies and the systematic disenfranchisement of small farmers around the world.   As the Guardian notes, consolidation in the food industry will mean heavier lobbying on local and national governments. This could erode opportunities and the independence of small farmers--who provide an estimated 70% of the world''s food--and lead to an expansion of the large-scale, industrial, chemical-dependent methods preferred by corporate players.   If small farmers are pushed out or yoked to multinational corporations through new regulations, then one of the most fundamental necessities of life--food--will be concentrated in the hands of global giants interested in turning a profit.   I think everyone can agree that fundamental human rights should not be controlled by entities driven by profit. When profit becomes the dominant consideration in the food industry, other motivating factors like improving nutrient intake are shirked.   Industrial agriculture tends to consist of monoculture farming and the heavy use of chemicals. Both of these practices limit and compromise the quality of food and degrade the environment, diminishing ecoystems and biodiversity.   Even though these practices are dangerous to human health and the environment, they are more lucrative in the short-term. Plus, Monsanto and Bayer have an incentive to increase the global use of agricultural chemicals, since they are the biggest producers in this industry.   Shareholders for Monsanto and Bayer would make a lot of money from a merger. But should the profit of a few ever be allowed to endanger the welfare of the many? Visit the related web page
	Dangerous sea level rise may occur in decades, not centuries by Dr. James Hansen   Mar. 2016   Dr. James Hansen, the former NASA scientist who is widely credited with being one of the first to raise concerns about human-caused global warming, is a co-author of a new report predicting that the world will undergo potentially dramatic sea level rises within mere decades—not centuries, as previously thought.   The report, published this week in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, paints a bleak picture of the planet''s future, suggesting that continued high fossil fuel emissions will "increase powerful storms" and drive sea-level rise of "potentially several meters over a timescale of 50 to 150 years."   Dr. Hansen, who now serves as the director of the Climate Science Awareness and Solutions program at Columbia University Earth Institute, published the findings along with an international team of 18 researchers and academics.   The report states, the predictions "differ fundamentally from existing climate change assessments." For example, the United Nation''s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2013 predicted three feet of sea level rise by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated.   A draft version of Hansen''s paper released last year provoked wide debate among climate scientists. Michael Mann, a renowned climate scientist with the University of Pennsylvania, who is among those questioning some of the report''s predictions, told the New York Times, "I think we ignore James Hansen at our peril."   The peer-edited report examines growing ice melt from Antarctica and Greenland and studies how that melting has historically amplified "feedbacks that increase sub-surface ocean warming and ice shelf melting."   Taking into consideration "rapid, large, human-made climate forcing," the study predicts a much more accelerated rate of sea level rise of several meters, beyond that which humanity is capable of adapting to. Or, as Hansen put it, "We’re in danger of handing young people a situation that’s out of their control."   These alarming claims come as climate scientists continue to reel from the frightening speed at which the Earth is warming. On Monday, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) issued a report warning that climate change is occurring at an "alarming rate" and that world leaders must act to curb greenhouse gases now, "before we pass the point of no return."   In a video released alongside the new report (see link below), Dr. Hansen, who left his position at NASA in 2013 so that he could fully commit himself to fighting climate change, says that the report explores the consequences of continued greenhouse gas emissions. These include "superstorms stronger than any seen in modern times," sea level rise that will erase "all coastal cities," and, finally, "how soon we will pass points of no return."   http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/16/3761/2016/acp-16-3761-2016.html Visit the related web page
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