Monsanto threatens to exit India if govt imposes cuts on GM royalties

[forest444]

Source: Hindustan Times

Monsanto, the world’s biggest seed company, threatened to pull out of India on Friday if the government imposed a big cut in royalties that local firms pay for its genetically modified cotton seeds.

Mahyco Monsanto Biotech (India)(MMB), a joint venture with India’s Mahyco, licenses a gene that produces its own pesticide to a number of local seed companies in lieu of royalties and an upfront payment. MMB also markets the seeds directly, though the local licensees together command 90% of the market.

Acting on complaints of local seeds companies that MMB was charging high fees, the farm ministry last year formed a committee to look into the matter. The committee has now recommended about a 70% cut in royalty, or trait fee, that the seed companies pay to MMB, government sources said. The farm ministry is yet to take a decision on the committee’s recommendation.

In a partnership with Mahyco, US-based Monsanto launched a GM cotton variety in India in 2002 despite opposition from critics who questioned its safety, helping transform the country into the world’s top producer and second-largest exporter of the fibre. In a ruling last month, the Competition Commission of India, the antitrust regulator, said there were indications that MMB had abused its dominant position in the country and asked its director general to complete an investigation within two months.

Read more: http://www.hindustantimes.com/business/monsanto-threatens-to-exit-india-if-govt-imposes-cuts-on-gm-royalties/story-wM9mptHi2rCV6yVT1esbiO.html

---

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

[roody]

1. Good idea, Monsatan.

[AxionExcel]

2. BREAKING: Goldman Sachs downgrades Monsanto to SELL

Rats fleeing the stinking corporate ship which has profiteered while poisoning plants, animals and people with GMO & glyphosate.

Goldman Sachs: "...we downgrade Monsanto to Sell from Neutral."

http://blogs.barrons.com/stockstowatchtoday/2016/03/04/monsanto-meaningful-risk-goldman-sachs-says/

[forest444]

3. Couldn't be happening to a nicer bunch of finks.

Last edited Sat Mar 5, 2016, 02:05 PM - Edit history (1)

Thanks , AxionExcel. I think this merits an LBN thread of its own.

[pbmus]

27. This is the only way to destroy the monster

Starve the beast

[Blue State Bandit]

4. Please... go on.

[Herman4747]

5. Could this be our strategy to get Monsanto to leave the U.S.?

[LiberalEsto]

9. USDA scientist files whistleblower suit alleging harassment while studying pesticides

Last edited Sat Mar 5, 2016, 02:29 PM - Edit history (1)

Big article in tomorrow's (March 6, 2016) Washington Post Sunday Magazine.

The scientist was finding connections between honeybee deaths and neonicotinoid pesticides manufactured by Bayer. He was also studying Monsanto's new RNAi technology and raising serious questions about its impact. Suddenly the award-winning researcher was being told to retract studies and suspended for job-related infractions. He filed a whistleblower lawsuit last October, claiming he was being disciplined to suppress his research.

Excerpt from earlier article on the scientist, Jonathan Lundgren, in Mother Jones in November, 2015l:

"Then there's Lundgren's work on RNA interference, an emerging insecticidal technology that promises to kill targeted insects and weeds by silencing genes crucial to their survival, leaving everything else unaffected. GM seed/agrichemical giant Monsanto has placed great hope in RNAi, as this novel genetic technology is known. In a 2013 paper, Lundgren and USDA colleague Jian Duan noted that the great bulk of the research done on RNAi involves using the technology for human medicine, not to kill specific insects. They also challenged the claim that the technology can target particular pests and leave everything else in the ecosystem alone, and concluded that it's "largely unknown" how long the RNAi pesticide material would persist in the environment. In 2014, Lundgren served on a panel of independent scientists convened by the Environmental Protection Agency to assess the technology's risks. The scientists' report echoed the assessment of Lundgren's paper.

As Monsanto's new technology makes its way through the regulatory system, the questions raised by Lundgren are slowing it down. In late October, the USDA quietly greenlighted Monsanto's RNAi-engineered corn strain designed to kill an insect called the corn rootworm—the first RNAi pesticide product the agency has approved. Because of the odd system the United States uses to regulate new GM crops (explained here and here), the USDA review process doesn't directly assess the possible impacts that novel pesticides might have on ecosystems, the topic of Lundgren's research.

That task falls to the Environmental Protection Agency—and the EPA appears to be taking the questions raised by Lundgren quite seriously. Days after the USDA gave Monsanto's new corn the thumbs-up, the EPA granted it only "limited registration," which does not allow commercial sale and distribution of the novel corn or its seed. The EPA would not comment on why it declined to fully register the product."

From: http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2015/11/usda-researcher-claims-harrassment-and-retaliation-pesticide-research

[redruddyred]

22. and they call young black men "thugs"

:0

[cprise]

29. The GMO PR "We Are Science" machine kicking into overdrive, too

They're looking at their revenues and career prospects in light of Monsanto's problems.

But, we're "anti-science" if we question the long-term safety of these rubber-stamp-regulated products.

[OkSustainAg]

6. This is a victory for

seed savers and hierloom species.

[awoke_in_2003]

7. Welcome to DU.

[SoapBox]

8. Don't let the door hit you on the way out!

Fuck Monsanto!

[mountain grammy]

10. Guess that claim to ending world hunger

takes a back seat to profits after all. Gee, who knew?????

[killbotfactory]

11. Come on guys, they're just trying to "Feed the World™" nt

[A Simple Game]

12. I don't get it, what is the threat? n/t

[forest444]

18. New regulations (gasp!) that cut Monsanto's royalties charged to farmers by 70%.

Most of India's farmers, as you know, live at the subsistence level or close to it. Since India authorized Monsanto to market its seeds in that country, farmers have faced the unprecedented problem of having to discard seeds gleaned from their own harvest - and instead pay Monsanto an astronomical royalty fee to buy new seeds each and every year. These new regulations would cut the maximum seed royalty by 70%.

Monsanto allegedly bribes judges in agricultural districts to throw the book at any farmer caught reusing the seeds - which, moreover, create crops that can only flourish with large amounts of Roundup (and you can imagine what that does to their water, and of course their own health).

Once a farmer becomes insolvent under all these burdens, these same judges quickly order their land auctioned off - typically with Indian or foreign speculators with links to - you guessed it - Monsanto. There have been many documented cases of farmers committing suicide by drinking Roundup once it gets to that point. Monsanto Roundup.

Since two-thirds of India's population in still rural, New Delhi was under tremendous political pressure to do something. This is really the very least they could do.

[NickB79]

35. The crops don't need Roundup to grow.

Without Roundup applications, they yield the same amount per acre as regular crops do, when farmed in the same fashion (lots of manual weed removal and applications of older, highly toxic herbicides like atrazine or 2,4-D).

[Marrah_G]

13. There is no reason for India to have to buy from monsanto

They can produce their own seeds and maybe put some people to work at the same time.

[NickB79]

34. Indeed. India is a major player in GM crop development.

They already have numerous GM crops domestically produced that can replace Monsanto's seed lines.

[jalan48]

14. Damn, we need to get the TPP enacted ASAP so countries can't pull this shit on our big corporations.

Send in the troops! Freedom to loot!

[MoreGOPoop]

15. Dear India,

For the sake of the health of Mother Earth and all her charges,
please show them the door.

[Playinghardball]

16. Hope the door doesn't hit them in the ass on the way out..

Actually I hope that it does hit them in their ass...

[AxionExcel]

17. Really strange thing is those on DU supporting Monsanto's GMOs & glyphosate...

...even though the toxic crud is now found in beer and tampons.

What's up with that whacko cheerleading...?

[LiberalEsto]

20. I have to wonder whether some industries hire people to post things on various websites

Or it could be people who work in various industries, ordered by supervisors to write pro-industry posts.

Poor, poor little corporations! Any threat to their bloated profits scares these delicate flowers.

[AxionExcel]

23. Bingo. Some of the GMO-Chem-Pharaceutical Corps. have whole departments...

...dedicated to disinformation...

Fugly, but true.

http://naturalsociety.com/monsanto-and-others-caught-paying-internet-trolls-to-attack-activists/

"...In a conversation with students, Dr. William “Bill” Moar raved that Monsanto had established:

“An entire department” (waving his arm for emphasis) dedicated to 'debunking' science which disagreed with theirs.”

[stuffmatters]

30. 96% of US cotton is GMO, carcinogenic glyphosate in pads, diapers, gauze, cotton balls

That's according to current issue of my supermarket "Women's Mag" FIRST. These carcinogenic pesticides not just used in India, but also on 96% of American cotton in products for babies,women, elderly.

They say "buy organic"...but holy cow!

[IthinkThereforeIAM]

19. You took the words right off my keyboard...

... I was going to post the same thing. I hate redundancy.

[redruddyred]

21. good riddance

thanks btw DU community for posting these threads, these are the real issues, and i'd never hear of them otherwise...

[gregcrawford]

24. Don't let the door hit you in the ass...

... on your way out, Grant. Nobody needs or wants your fucking seeds. You claimed a while back that Monsanto would own everything anyone eats in this world. Monsanto's diseased desire to control food production, processing, and delivery from seed to supper is simply not going to be allowed to happen, under ANY circumstances.

Now maybe the suicide rate among Indian farmers will decline. There was a definite correlation between the rise of the suicide rate and the institution of Monsanto's draconian control of seed distribution.

I'm getting old, but I hope I live long enough to piss on *Hugh Grant's grave.



* CEO and COTB of Monsanto, not the actor, although I hear he's kind of a dick, too.

[forest444]

32. Right on, Greg.

If there's something this world doesn't need more of, it's megalomania. These people are straight out of a Bond movie.

[blackspade]

25. Good for India.

I guess their government isn't as captured by corporatists like ours is yet.

[Kalidurga]

26. Wow

who knew it would be that easy.

[2naSalit]

28. Best thing that could happen.....nt

[Joe Chi Minh]

31. Get it in writing and notarised immediately.

[NickB79]

33. If Monsanto left the Indian market, Indian biotech companies would step up to sell their own GM seed

The news story in the OP isn't about a GM vs. non-GM battle in India; it is about royalty disputes between several different seed companies, international and domestic, that ALL produce GM seed for Indian farmers. The biotech industry is growing rapidly in India, and domestically-produced GM seed is a major growth market there.

For example, domestically produced Bt cotton: https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2016/02/24/indian-researchers-developing-new-insect-resistant-gmo-cotton-varieties/

Domestically produced GM mustard seed: https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/11/05/gmo-mustard-developed-india-cheaper-higher-yields-activists-claim-causes-sterility/

Domestically produced Bt eggplant: https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/04/27/as-success-grows-for-bangladeshs-bt-brinjal-eggplant-mae-won-ho-renews-gmo-disinformation-campaign/

That is what makes this thread is amusing to me. Are all the posters here really convinced that Indian farmers would just go back to organic, heirloom seed stock once Monsanto is gone? Forgo herbicides and pesticides they've grown to rely upon for higher yields?

At best, they'd go back to non-GM, hybrid seed stock. And those high-yielding hybrids are patented and cannot be saved year after year, just like GM crops.