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October 9, 2009
· Monsanto subject of US antitrust investigation
· United Fresh, PMA respond to riskiest foods list
· California water crisis bill called a Band-Aid
· Pig weed wreaking havoc on crops in the South
· Drought forces Kenya to evict mountain farmers
Monsanto subject of US antitrust investigation
(Bloomberg) -- Monsanto Co., the world’s largest seed producer, said it received questions from the U.S. Justice Department about anti-competition complaints that rival DuPont Co. made in a lawsuit.
The Justice Department’s inquiry is another sign the Obama administration is taking an aggressive approach to antitrust enforcement. Philip Weiser, the antitrust division’s deputy assistant attorney general, said at an August meeting on agriculture markets that the government had “concerns about the competitive consequences of how the marketplace is evolving.”
The questions Monsanto received about three months ago weren’t a formal request, known as a civil investigative demand, Lee Quarles, a spokesman for St. Louis-based Monsanto, said yesterday. Other agriculture companies may also be receiving questions after the Justice Department in August said it would examine competition in several farming markets, he said.
“We are cooperating and openly providing documents,” Quarles said. “We believe these claims are baseless.” Justice Department spokeswoman Gina Talamona had no immediate comment yesterday.
Monsanto rose 64 cents to $74.97 yesterday on the New York Stock Exchange, pushing this year’s gain to 5.7 percent.
DuPont’s anticompetitive claim stems from a Monsanto complaint filed in May accusing DuPont of violating a 2002 license by using Monsanto’s Roundup Ready trait with DuPont’s GAT genetics in soybeans. GAT genetics were designed to be an alternative to Roundup Ready crops, which tolerate applications of glyphosate herbicide, known as Roundup.
DuPont Claims
DuPont’s Pioneer unit, the second-largest seed producer, said it has the right to use Monsanto’s trait. Wilmington, Delaware-based DuPont also claimed the Monsanto patent is invalid and the company is misusing its patent rights to control the markets for “virtually every commercially important agricultural biotech trait in corn and soybeans.”
“Any time a competitor in an industry would raise an allegation that there is some sort of anticompetitive action going on, the department would look into that,” Quarles said.
The state of
The dispute highlights competition in the $8.3 billion
market for biotech seeds that ward off insects or withstand the application of
weed killers. More than 90 percent of soybeans and 80 percent of corn in the
Antitrust Regulators
In addition to the inquiry into Monsanto, the Justice Department’s antitrust division, headed by Assistant Attorney General Christine Varney, is looking into International Business Machine Corp.’s dominance of the mainframe computer market. The Justice Department is also concerned that the pending merger of Ticketmaster Entertainment Inc. and Live Nation Inc. may reduce competition for tickets to live events, a person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News.
(The case is Monsanto Co. v. E.I. DuPont de Nemours &
Co., 09cv686, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Missouri (
United Fresh, PMA respond to riskiest foods list
In response to the release of a list of the "Top 10 Riskiest Foods" by the Center for Science in the Public Interest this week, United Fresh and the Produce Marketing Association have issued a joint statement urging CSPI to clarify multiple inaccuracies contained in the report.
"As you know," stated the letter, "... the produce industry is committed to ensuring the fresh fruits and vegetables we produce provide consumers with a safe and healthy eating experience every bite, every time."
The joint letter emphasized industry initiatives to increase food safety accountability, including the Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement, United and PMA’s participation in the non-profit Partnership for Food Safety Education, and both associations’ call for mandatory regulation to help ensure the safety of the food supply.
"By focusing your 'Top Ten' release solely on the food products listed, you are presenting a misleading picture to the American public," continued the letter. "As you well know, food handling is often the cause of such outbreaks. And while you do provide some clarification in the full report, the reality is that most consumers and reporters will not go to the website for more complete information."
Upon release of the list, CSPI Staff Attorney Sarah Klein commented that "consumers can only do so much to make sure they are not getting sick."
Both associations took special exception to Klein's characterization of the consumer's role in ensuring a safe food supply as small.
"That's simply not accurate. Consumers and other food handlers play a huge role in preventing illnesses, and they do need more information on safe handling," stated the letter.
United Fresh President and CEO Tom Stenzel and PMA President and CEO Bryan Silbermann, authors of the letter, expressed worry that the CSPI's list could further discourage Americans from getting the healthy amounts of fresh fruits and vegetables they need.
"The lack of clarity and misleading way the information was presented could very well discourage consumers from eating healthy fruits and vegetables. That is unfortunate considering that obesity is at epidemic proportions and so few Americans consume the recommended amounts already."
For a full transcript of the response letter, please click here.
California
(Fresno
Bee) – A bill introduced Wednesday in
But a spokeswoman for Westlands Water District called it a Band-Aid for the state's water crisis.
Reps. Jim Costa of
The lawmakers say the bill would make it easier for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to approve transfers between water sellers and buyers in the Valley.
Also, the bill requires only one environmental study to examine the effect of water transfers on the giant garter snake, a protected species. Currently, each water-transfer project requires a separate study.
According to Costa, the bill has been endorsed by 14 water
users including the Metropolitan Water District (the
Sarah Woolf, spokeswoman for Westlands, which spans 600,000
acres from Firebaugh to
Three years of below-normal precipitation combined with court-ordered restrictions on pumping water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta are the leading causes of the shortage.
"This bill will be an intermediate fix, a Band-Aid," Woolf said.
Westlands needs the water because the district received 10% of its allocations this year. The drought, combined with court-ordered water restrictions, have caused more than 150,000 acres of Westlands acres not to be farmed, Woolf said.
Woolf said the state's problem is this: There's an abundance of water north of the delta, but it is difficult to deliver the water to the areas that need it south of the delta. The new bill will eliminate some of the bureaucratic hurdles to water transfers, she said.
Pig weed wreaking havoc on crops in the South
(ABC News) – Across the South, there's a weed that man can no longer kill. It's called the pig weed, and for decades farmers controlled it by spraying their fields with herbicides.
"I've never seen anything that had this major an impact
on our agriculture in a short period of time," said Ken Smith, a weed
scientist at the
This past summer, Pace Hindsely of Coffee Creek Farms and other farmers started noticing the chemicals they routinely used were no longer working.
"The last three years it's really just exploded. There is no rhyme or reason as to how we can control it," Hindsely said. "I am worried about the future or what these fields will look like next year and the year after if we don't control this weed."
The weeds have adapted, and this year they're choking more than a million acres of cotton and soybeans.
In the last three months, Jim Hubbard of Double H Farms has spent more than $500,000 fighting the pig weeds, and they still won't die.
"Technology is great, but it can only go so far," said Hubbard. "As technology goes forward, so does mother-nature. As far as the weeds and everything, they adapt and overcome."
"Some of the causes related to the issue are the use of a single crop year after year. There are issues around using the herbicide without any other herbicides, and quite frankly, trying to control weeds that were too big," said Rick Cole, technology development manager at chemical maker Monsanto.
Pig weed is one formidable weed. It grows up to three inches a day, and at its base it's as thick as a baseball bat. It kills crops and destroys heavy machinery, keeping farmers from bringing their combines and cotton pickers into the fields.
"They get so big that sometimes you can't pull them up, so it's getting to be an extremely, extremely bad problem," Hubbard said.
Farmers Desperate for a Solution
Farmers are on the attack, hiring laborers to walk through their crops and chop the plants down before they spread. The scientists who created the herbicide blame their customers -- the farmers -- for over-use. They say it was only a matter of time before Mother Nature came up with a way to work around the chemicals.
Scientists are engineering a solution, but it won't be ready for another seven years.
"Herbicide resistance is not a new issue to us," Smith said. "We've always known we'd have herbicide resistance. But we always had new technology coming into the marketplace. We have no new technology coming in now."
In the meantime, farmers will continue to lose their fields to the enemy, and in the coming weeks some of them may be forced to harvest their crops -- by hand.
Drought forces Kenya
(BBC
News) – High in the hills of
The authorities are to start the process of removing them any day now. Farmers will be asked to surrender their title deeds for inspection.
If their documents are genuine, they have a chance of being resettled or compensated.
If not, they will simply be told to go.
"We are afraid. Not only me, but all of us here,"
says Kipkorir Ngeno, a teacher and father of six, from a village known as
"
"They call us squatters - a very bad name. But this is my land. It is not illegal."
Drought and despair
Mr Ngeno is one of those accused of responsibility for droughts which have left millions of Kenyans thirsty for water and hungry for retribution.
Mau forest is
But during the past 15 years, more than 100,000 hectares - one quarter of the protected forest reserve - have been settled and cleared.
Tearing out the trees at the heart of
The rivers that flow from the forest are drying up.
And as they disappear, so too have
The finger of blame is being pointed at the settlers in Mau. And the solution, according to a special task force appointed by Prime Minister Raila Odinga, is to uproot the invaders and replant the trees.
Of 20,000 families living in the forest, they estimate that as few as 1,962 have genuine title deeds.
Civil conflict
"We must act now - before the entire ecosystem is irreversibly damaged," said Mr Odinga.
"We are looking at securing the livelihoods and economies of millions of Africans who directly and indirectly depend on the ecosystem."
The prime minister was speaking at the United Nations -
appealing for donations of $400m (£250m) to "rehabilitate"
If he does not act, he foresees a struggle for water and land which could escalate into a bloody civil conflict.
Because in the valleys downstream of Mau forest, farmers like Peter Ole Nkolia are running out of water, cattle, and patience.
"Those people up there need to just move," says Mr Nkolia, as he stands by the carcass of a dead cow.
"If the destruction of Mau shall continue I can assure you that a lot of people will suffer.
"What you are going to see here in Narok is just the skeletons of cattle - and maybe people."
Worse still, the water from Mau quenches thirst far beyond
When you consider that Lake Victoria is the source of the
"This is no longer a Kenyan problem," said Mr
Odinga. "
"And the implications go beyond the environment. This has the potential to create insecurity as people squabble over dwindling resources."
'Buffer zone'
Chopping down the tree cover in Mau has removed a natural "pump" which keeps the ecosystem alive.
"It rains a lot in
"So you need a buffer zone - a way to ration the rain water and release it slowly into the rivers in the dry season. That buffer is the forest.
"If you remove this ecosystem, you reduce the moisture reservoir. Which means that in the dry season... 'Hakuna maji'. No water."
When the rains in
And this year in
Narok county - the breadbasket of
Cattle keeled over and died, in their millions. And as the drought worsened, Kenyan government was forced to bail out farmers by slaughtering their weak animals for just 8,000 shillings ($105; £65) a head.
In western
Trouble in paradise
Wildlife tourism - another pillar of
And in the Masai Mara, the river which hosts the world famous "crossing of the wildebeest" has fallen to its lowest ever level.
Water scarcity has brought wild animals and farmers into conflict. Deaths, injuries and compensation claims are at record highs in Narok, according to the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS).
The fuse for all these disasters was lit in Mau.
"The Mau, in a sense, is the hen that lays the golden eggs," says Paul Udoto, of KWS.
"The eggs are
"Once you destroy the centre - the hen - that is the Mau - then by necessity you have to lose the golden eggs."
Frequent droughts
But can deforestation really be to blame for all these catastrophes?
After all, there have always been cyclical droughts in
The trouble is that these droughts are becoming more frequent, more severe and less predictable. Particularly since 2001 - the year when 60,000 hectares of Mau were allocated to settlers and cleared.
"At a time when the climate in Kenya is becoming drier, that is when you need to boost your ecosystem - to help it to absorb the impact of climate variability," says Mr Lambrechts.
"Go in the opposite direction, and you are going to feel those impacts much bigger. That is what we are currently feeling."
Mr Lambrechts is one of 30 officials recruited to the task force by Prime Minister Odinga.
Their report, published in July, set out in painstaking detail how more than 100,000 hectares - one quarter of the entire forest reserve - was parcelled up and cleared for settlement.
Almost 20,000 land parcels were "excised" by the governments of Daniel arap Moi and Mwai Kibaki, and handed out to farmers - which helped to boost the two presidents' popularity in the run-up to elections.
At the time, much of these excised land parcels were promised to Ogiek peoples, the original forest dwellers. But the title deeds ended up largely in the hands of local officials and incoming settlers.
Meanwhile, in the southern Maasai Mau forest, almost 2,000 plots were illegally purchased within the protected forest reserve, with the help of local officials.
Plots known as "group ranches" were expanded, subdivided and then sold on to third parties, unaware that their new title deeds may be "irregular" or "bogus".
An area of central Mau was "adjudicated" to local people who have traditional rights in the forest.
But elsewhere large chunks of the forest were occupied and squatted - "encroached" to use the official terminology - by settlers with no title claim whatsoever.
Political tightrope
The task force insists that almost all of these settlers and land owners should leave the forest as soon as possible.
But how many deserve compensation? This is a political tightrope for Prime Minister Odinga.
The task force has promised that each family will have their claim heard on a "case-to-case basis".
All holders of "genuine" title deeds will be compensated - perhaps even those high-ranking public officials who are named by the task force as having received land via irregular means.
A search for new land to resettle farmers is underway, but is already provoking controversy.
"I hope when they go to the World Bank they won't get any money," says Professor Wangari Maathai, the Nobel Laureate and environmental campaigner.
"The only reason why we are being held hostage with the Mau is because people who were in power want to be compensated."
Double-whammy
But perhaps the biggest challenge of all facing
It will take decades to restore the canopy - years in which Kenyans will continue to suffer from the double-whammy of local land degradation and global climate change.
Yet among environmentalists there is some relief that, at
last,
Countless warnings have gone unheeded, as Ms Maathai can testify.
"I keep telling people, let us not cut trees irresponsibly... especially the forested mountains," she says.
"Because if you destroy the forests, the rivers will stop flowing and the rains will become irregular and the crops will fail and you will die of hunger and starvation.
"Now the problem is, people don't make those linkages."
In
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