KissMy
Free Breast Exam
Monsanto has monopoly pricing power. 93 Percent of U.S. soy grown from Monsanto patented GMO seeds. 80 Percent of U.S. corn grown from Monsanto patented GMO seeds. I have a 1.000 acre farm & when Monsanto raises their price, I have to pay it, because there is no excess seed sitting around from other companies that we can buy. At a July 2008 meeting, Monsanto officials announced plans to raise the average price of the company's triple-stack corn a whopping 35 percent. Fred Stokes of the U.S.-based Organization for Competitive Markets (OCM) describes the implications for farmers: "A $100 price increase is a tremendous drain on rural America. Let's say a farmer in Iowa who farms 1,000 acres plants one of these expensive corn varieties next year. The gross increased cost is more than $40,000. Yet there's no scientific basis to justify this price hike. How can we let companies get away with this?"
Did Mitt Romney Help Lake Michigan’s Polluters? The EPA sued OMC in 1978, adding Monsanto as a defendant in 1980, but the cleanup effort was delayed for a dozen years, in part because OMC refused to allow EPA inspectors onto the site, even ones with a warrant. In 1986 a federal appeals court found that OMC and Monsanto “caused the PCB problem in the harbor,” “fought the government every possible inch of the way,” and were “a major reason why the PCB problem has not been resolved.”
Monsanto's net income in 1991 was only $296 million, $250 million less than the previous year. In 1997 Monsanto spins off its industrial chemical and fibers business into Solutia Inc. amid complaints and legal claims about pollution from its plants. Solutia was spun off from Monsanto as a way for Monsanto to divest itself of billions of dollars in environmental cleanup costs and other liabilities for its past actions - liabilities that eventually forced Solutia to seek Chapter 11 bankruptcy. According to a spokesman for Solutia, "(Monsanto) sort of cherry-picked what they wanted and threw in all kinds of cats and dogs as part of a going-away present," including $1 billion in debt and environmental and litigation costs. Some pre-bankruptcy Solutia equity holders allege Solutia was set up fraudulently as it was always doomed to fail under the financial weight of Monsanto's liabilities.
Through a process of mergers and spin-offs between 1997 and 2002, Monsanto made a transition from chemical giant to biotech giant. Monsanto's corporate strategy led them for the first time to acquire seed companies. Monsanto spent $10 billion globally buying up seed companies - a push that continues to this day. It has purchased, for example, Holden's Foundations Seeds, Seminis - the largest seed company not producing corn or soybeans in the world, the Dutch seed company De Ruiter Seeds, and the big cotton seed firm Delta & Pine. As a result, Monsanto is now the world's largest seed company, accounting for almost a quarter of the global proprietary seed market.
Last edited:
With market brilliance like that, holy crap, I hope you don't run a hedge fund.
