 |
|||
 |
" I heard it |
||
March 10, 2010
· Farmers squeezed by US-Mexico truck dispute
· Seven states probing Monsanto soy trade tactics
· Oregon, California nurseries team up in lawsuit
· Registration sought for two new biopesticides
· Spuds developed with antioxidants, visual appeal
Farmers squeezed by US-Mexico truck dispute
(tricitiesherald.com and other sources) – A tariff
imposed by
At the same time, the Fresno
Bee reports the trade dispute has cost
The dispute has frustrated many agriculture groups who say they are caught in the middle of a political spat that has nothing to do with the quality of their products.
The 45% tariff caused the value of
And now agricultural groups, the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce and a coalition of congressman want this skirmish to end.
But the solution could reopen the contentious issue of allowing Mexican trucks
into the
"We need this issue resolved, and we need it resolved right away," said Kathleen Nave, president of the Fresno-based California Table Grape Commission.
The tariff in part contributed to a $19.7 million decline in
the value of exported
And the state's spud growers are feeling the worst of it
because
"It's hurt us," said Frank Martinez of
"
Potato growers aren't alone.
Cherry exports to
"We need every market we can get, and
It's uncertain when there might be a resolution of the
dispute, which began last year when a pilot program ended that allowed a
limited number of Mexican trucks access to
Congress approved and the president signed an omnibus
spending bill that contained language terminating the pilot program in March
2009. The pilot program was intended to show that Mexican trucks and drivers
could safely operate on
But the Teamsters Union and some highway safety groups objected to the program, arguing Mexican trucks were unsafe. And in a speech in February to more than 200 Teamster local unions, Jim Hoffa, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, affirmed his opposition.
"We got the border closed to unsafe Mexican trucks and we're keeping it closed. The Teamsters did that, nobody else did that -- the Teamsters did that," Hoffa said, according to a news release of the speech issued by the Teamsters.
Members of
"The governor has raised this issue with administration
officials,"
And last week, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., prodded
Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to move faster on a plan to
resume cross-border trucking from
"We are finalizing a plan; the reason it's taken so
long is because there's a lot of moving parts, including about five different
cabinet officials, and every time we make a tweak or a change everybody has to
sign off on it. But we're very near a proposal that we think will meet all of
the safety concerns that I heard when I talked to 25 members of Congress,"
LaHood said, according to a transcript released by
Language that eliminated funding for the trucking
demonstration program was not included in the 2010 appropriations bill. U.S.
Trade Representative Ron Kirk has met with Mexican officials about the tariff
and told the Reuters news agency last month that talks with members of Congress
and
But a top Mexican trade leader told the trade publication
Inside U.S. Trade last month that
"The longer this goes on," Harris said, "the more it hurts our growers."
Seven states probing Monsanto soy trade tactics
(Bloomberg)
-- At least seven
The state investigations add to pressure on Monsanto over allegations of abusive competitive tactics. The U.S. Justice Department is probing the company’s marketing practices, and DuPont Co. has accused its rival in licensing litigation of anti-competitive actions. At stake are the costs to farmers who produce $80.3 billion a year in corn and soybeans, used in products ranging from Coca-Cola to cattle feed to ethanol.
“Monsanto has become such a dominant player in the seed business that producers have real concerns that the price they pay for seed is going to be anywhere near reasonable,” said John Crabtree, a spokesman for the Center for Rural Affairs in Lyons, Nebraska, a nonprofit group that provides services to farm communities. “The fear is that the sky’s the limit.”
Monsanto rose to dominance via its genetically engineered
Roundup Ready seed line, which was in 93 percent of the soybeans and 82 percent
of the corn produced in the
Rebates, Incentives
The states are probing whether Monsanto violated any laws by offering rebates to distributors for excluding rival seeds, imposing limits on combining the product with other genetic enhancements, or offering cash incentives to switch farmers to a more-expensive generation of seeds, according to one person involved in the probe who asked not to be named because he isn’t authorized to discuss it.
The five states known to be part of the inquiry accounted
for almost 39%, or $31 billion, of
Monsanto Vice President Jim Tobin will address the concerns
at a hearing March 12 in
‘Unsubstantiated Allegations’
“There have been unsubstantiated allegations of a lack of competition in the seed market for several years now,” said Kelli Powers, a spokeswoman for St. Louis-based Monsanto. “We’re confident an objective review will reveal competition is alive and flourishing in the seed market.” Monsanto has a “broad licensing approach that is “in fact pro-competitive,” she said.
“We produced millions of pages of documents” for the state working group, said Scott Partridge, a Monsanto attorney, in an interview. “For about a year now they haven’t had any more questions.” Seed producers and dealers say the state group has spoken to them as recently as December about their Monsanto licensing agreements.
The rebates investigators are exploring in the Monsanto case
are similar to incentives that have figured in past antitrust inquiries that
led to settlements, said Herb Hovenkamp a professor
at the University of Iowa Law School in
FTC Sues Intel
The Federal Trade Commission sued Intel Corp. in December alleging it used “threats and rewards,” including rebates, to coerce companies not to buy rivals’ computer chips. In a separate civil dispute, Intel agreed in November, without admitting any liability or fault, to pay $1.25 billion to Advanced Micro Devices Inc. to settle allegations Intel gave discounts to customers that avoided AMD products.
Courts disagree on whether such financial incentives are anti-competitive, Hovenkamp said.
“These things have been so controversial and so heavily litigated that some firms have taken preventative steps and just gotten rid of them,” Hovenkamp said.
Monsanto phased out its market-share discounts as of last year, said Powers, the spokeswoman.
Of Monsanto’s $11.7 billion in revenue in the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2009, $7.3 billion came from sales and licensing of seeds and seed genes. Revenue grew by an annual average of 17% from 2004 to 2009, as earnings expanded eight-fold to $2.11 billion, driven by genetically engineered products and acquisitions of other seed companies.
Generic Roundup
Revenue then declined as generic rivals to Roundup flooded
into the
Monsanto lost 74 cents, or 1 percent, to close at $71.28 yesterday in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.
Showing that Monsanto engaged in anti-competitive behavior that harmed residents of their states could enable the attorneys general to demand civil monetary damages in addition to any penalties that the Justice Department may seek, Hovenkamp said.
In one soybean licensing agreement reviewed by Bloomberg, Monsanto offered the licensee financial incentives to favor Roundup Ready seeds and Roundup brand chemicals over those of competitors. The dealer’s agreement with Monsanto is confidential, and he asked that his name not be used.
‘You Had To’
Under the agreement, the licensee would earn a rebate of 7.5 percent of the royalty it pays Monsanto if Roundup Ready accounts for 70 percent of the dealer’s annual herbicide- resistant seed sales. The rebate is halved if the Roundup Ready share is between 50 percent and 75 percent, and isn’t paid at all below 50 percent.
Similar terms were in Monsanto’s licensing agreements with
Stine Seed Co. until Monsanto phased them out in
recent years, according to Harry Stine, president and founder of the largest
closely held seed company in the
“In order to get the large rebate they would give you, you had to minimize your sales of other companies’ seeds,” Stine said. “The rebates were so large that for all practical purposes you had to do it.” At one time, the requirement for earning the full rebate was as high as 90 percent, he said. Stine has a collaborative agreement to develop seeds with Monsanto, he said.
Gene Restrictions
The agreement reviewed by Bloomberg prohibited the dealer from combining the Roundup Ready trait with herbicide-tolerant traits that the licensee or other companies developed. It specifically bars the dealer from using any non-Monsanto genetic modification that makes crops tolerant to glyphosate, the herbicide found in Roundup. Such terms could be anti-competitive because Monsanto controls such a large share of the corn and soybean markets with its Roundup Ready gene, Hovenkamp said.
Monsanto’s Partridge said the company routinely negotiates agreements that allow seed companies to combine Roundup Ready with genetic modifications of its competitors.
“Monsanto has a demonstrated track record of both in- licensing and out-licensing trait technologies to support the development of stacked products,” he said in an interview. “We’ve done this more than any other company in this industry.”
Monsanto is also under scrutiny because the rising price of
its seeds has been a sore point for farmers, said Peter Carstensen,
a antitrust professor at the University of Wisconsin
Law School in
Farmers’ Costs Rise
“Buying seed used to be not terribly costly,” said Charles
Benbrook, chief scientist at the
The study showed that soybean farmers spent between 4 percent and 8 percent of their farm income on seeds from 1975 through 1997. Last year, farmers who planted genetically modified soybeans spent 16.4 percent of their income on seeds, it found.
Monsanto’s licensing royalty on soybean seeds with the Roundup Ready trait climbed to $15.65 for each 140,000-seed bag last year from about $6.50 a decade ago, according to the owner of one seed company. A bag of Roundup Ready seed sells for about $35 and can plant three-quarters of an acre (0.3 hectare). He asked not to be named because the terms are confidential under his licensing agreement. Monsanto sells him seeds including the genetic trait, which he then reproduces and sells under his own brand, the person said.
‘Triple Stack’ Corn
Farmers who adopt Monsanto’s Roundup Ready 2 Yield technology, being introduced this year as a replacement for Roundup Ready, will have to pay a royalty of as much as $39.75 a bag, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg.
Cal Dalton, a farmer in
The list price for Monsanto’s “Yieldgard VT Triple” brand of triple-stack corn seed rose to about $277.50 a bag this year from $201.83 in 2008, based on seed prices per acre provided by Powers, the spokeswoman. She declined to discuss prices or royalties individual customers pay.
Roundup Ready 2
In the licensing agreement reviewed by Bloomberg, Monsanto agreed to rebate to the dealer as much as 4% of the dealer’s royalty if he developed a plan to move his customers from Roundup Ready to Roundup Ready 2. Monsanto says Roundup Ready 2 soybean seeds boost crop yields by 4.7 bushels an acre compared with traditional Roundup Ready. Soybeans yielded on average 44 bushels an acre last year, according to the USDA.
Stine, who said he’s been on conference calls with the state attorneys general group to discuss the Monsanto investigation, hasn’t made up his mind whether Monsanto’s dealings are anticompetitive.
“On the one hand,” Monsanto is “hard to get along with and very restrictive,” Stine said. “However, in general, their traits and products have been superior to other companies’.”
Oregon ,
California
(OregonLive.com) – Nurseries in Oregon and California teamed up to file a lawsuit in U.S. District Court Monday, seeking to overturn a new regulation they say unfairly blocks shipments of their plants to South Carolina.
Potentially millions of dollars are riding on the lawsuit
since most of the plant material grown in the two states is exported to markets
in the south, east and
"For us, the problem is much bigger than just
The federal government already maintains strict regulations
to limit the interstate spread of plant diseases such as Phytophthora
ramorum, or sudden oak death, Aguirre said. He added
that nurseries in
Last year, however, the South Carolina Assembly approved a
law limiting
Gaining such approval requires individual
In cash-strapped
"We are disappointed that we were forced to take this action,'' said Robert Dolezal, executive vice president of the California Association of Nurseries and Garden Centers, referring to the lawsuit. "But the impact on our members' businesses left us no choice.
Together, the two states export upwards of 75 percent of all their nursery and greenhouse products.
The
Registration sought for two new biopesticides
(Wire Services) – Exhibiting the ability to move early-stage technology to the market quickly, Marrone Bio Innovations (MBI) announces the submission of two new agricultural biopesticides to the US EPA.
The first submission is a novel bioinsecticide with broad-spectrum activity on both sucking and chewing insects. The product source is a licensed bacterium discovered in the lab of microbiologist Dr. Phyllis Martin at the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS). Developed as a commercial product in MBI’s Davis, California R&D facility in under two years’ time, lab and field studies on the new insecticide show excellent activity on whitefly, spider mite, diamondback moth, cabbage looper, tobacco budworm and Lygus bugs.
“This is an important and much needed new product, and the first bacterial-based insecticide to be introduced since Bt,” states Pam Marrone, CEO and Founder of Marrone Bio Innovations. “Its rapid development is testament to the expertise of our research, development and regulatory teams at MBI.”
MBI’s second EPA submission is an exciting new bioherbicide, based on a lead obtained from a novel marine microbe originally discovered by and licensed from DuPont Crop Protection. Initially the product was seen as a selective rice herbicide, due to its ability to kill broadleaf weeds such as redstem and waterplantain, as well as sedge affecting yields in rice production. However, further testing has identified additional market opportunities in turf, wheat and other cereal crops as well.
“On both of these new products, timelines were aggressive from petri plate to EPA submissions and commercial products. There were notable achievements made by our natural product and analytical chemists, our formulation and fermentation engineers, our greenhouse and field development staff, and our process development and regulatory teams,” adds Marja Koivunen, MBI’s VP of Research.
Currently anticipating final regulatory approval at the EPA in 2010, is MBI’s new biomolluscicide, Zequanox, which provides effective control of invasive zebra and quagga mussels without affecting people, the environment and important native, aquatic species.
About Marrone Bio Innovations:
Marrone Bio Innovations (MBI) discovers, develops and markets effective and environmentally responsible products that fill unmet needs for weed, plant disease, and invasive pest management. Through a combination of in-licensed technology and its own R&D, MBI uses plants and naturally occurring microorganisms from unique habitats to develop better and safer pest management products. The company has an impressive pipeline of new products coming, including two insecticides, two herbicides, and Zequanox for controlling invasive zebra and quagga mussels in waterways (EPA pending). MBI currently markets GreenMatch burndown herbicide for weed control in organic crop production, and Regalia for control of fungal and bacterial diseases of both food and ornamental crops in conventional and organic production.
Spuds developed with antioxidants, visual appeal
(The Canadian
Press) – Chef Allan Williams gets excited every time he goes through the
doors of
With the vibrantly coloured, healthy potato varieties researchers are developing, Williams sees a world of possibilities.
"You have different tastes, different colours, different textures. It's all exciting," Williams said as he prepared several potato dishes in the research centre's basement kitchen.
Chefs and home cooks will be able to give dishes plenty of visual appeal using the new red, yellow and purple varieties of potatoes the research centre recently unveiled.
"To me, this is really attractive," Williams said, holding up a platter of chips cut from a potato that had white flesh and a purple starburst pattern inside.
Red and blue potato croquettes sat on other plates.
"And I know my little guy gets excited about these," he said, pointing to a bowl of purple chips.
For the chips, he came up with flavours
such as
These potatoes don't just look intriguing and appetizing, he said, but they're also healthier.
Williams, the research and development chef at the Culinary
Institute of Canada at
It doesn't make sense to deep-fry these potatoes, he said. "If you deep-fry, you lose the health benefit."
The centre unveiled 13 new varieties of potatoes last week.
Producers will get two years to work with the potato varieties. After that, they can bid to get exclusive use of the variety for up to five years.
Red-skinned potatoes are among the varieties stirring up interest, and a handful of the potatoes introduced this year are red-skinned.
They're sought after by chefs and consumers who want to put more colour on their plates.
"It's important that the red be quite deep and bright and that the red doesn't fade over storage, and where possible, be maintained when cooked," said Agnes Murphy, a research scientist at the centre.
Murphy's colleague, Benoit Bizimungu, said many people are also looking to healthier foods.
"There is a trend in recognizing the health benefits: vitamin C, high potassium, high fibre," he said.
"Most of the red potatoes are very popular at market and there is a lot of interest in them.
"Having a distinctive colour makes them more attractive."
Dino Kubik works to get the potatoes used commercially.
"What we're finding is that some of these potatoes have antioxidant levels that are about half of what is in a blueberry," Kubik said.
That may not sound like much, but consider that the average Canadian eats 32 kilograms of potatoes a year, compared to 700 grams of blueberries. Antioxidants are linked to potential benefits for human health.
"Looking at these, if instead of eating a plain white potato we ate an antioxidant potato, a yellow pigment potato, we would get a significant amount of antioxidant in our diet."
While part of the breeding process comes down to visual appeal, Murphy said the potatoes are also healthier and hardier, which means that farmers can avoid pesticides.
The work is done the old-fashioned way without any genetic modification. Many varieties are planted and tested before a dozen or so are selected each year.
"It's all produced under standard production methods. The colour is natural; it's just something you select for," Murphy said.
End Transmission