Sorry for thinking Monsanto is dying

Good morning, well that is if you and I dear reader share the same time zone and also happened to be given the gift of rain at the same time.

While most of us farmers were busy praying for rain a couple of months ago, Bayer and Monsanto were busy courting each other.

I was busy looking for nice news (for a change) updates on Agriculture last week Monday on Twitter and as per usual I changed my twitter feeds and searched for feeds on dear old friend Agriculture in Africa. Many of the updates lived up to what I wanted. I hoped that for a change I will write and post something nice and maybe even inspiring this week. And well poor me I kept on looking and looking until, well there it was “Bayer and Monsanto to merge”.

Truth is I read the feed and took it as one of those tweets from fear mongers we seem to be farming on twitter these days. I therefore dismissed it and paid no mind to it.

This morning I came across a feed again that was from Dutch Welle talking about the two Agribusiness giants, Bayer and Monsanto merging and becoming one very happy family.

There it is; while we were busy thanking God for the rain blessings over the weekend, Bayer was very much thanking Monsanto for agreeing to wed him.

As pointed out by Mariam Mayet, CEO of Africa Center for Biodiversity (ACB)-South Africa, this wedding could result in negative impact for farmers and consumers.

Why does she say so? Well the the answer is very much as ever so simple. This merger will hurt us very, very much.

For starters, Monsanto’s relationship with its primary customer the African farmer, is strained because of the company’s bad track record. The company has had to suffer the humiliation of failing to have its GMO food crop deliver good yield to not only the African farmer but now, that of Europe as well.

Countries that been advocating for GMO food crops as the future and answer to the question of world hunger are now slowly but surely closing their doors to the GMO answer because people in those countries are becoming very vocal and choozey as to what they are to eat. The American market was once a very secure market for GMO food crops and seeds. Today the tides are very much changing and the public is choosing to listen to popular culture icons and eat the pricey organic alternatives.

It is therefore, easy to see the reason for Bayer’s need to marry Monsanto. The ultimate goal here is not just profit but rather the obvious well suited market Africa presents to Bayer and Monsanto. Bayer will become the biggest agri-business and Monsanto will be given a chance to redeem its tarnished image and be saved from death. The following little sample from ACB-Africa Centre For Biodiversity sums the whole Bayer and Monsanto problem in Africa quite nicely:

“The hype around the current wave of GM

research into non- commercial crops in Africa

is purposefully ahistorical and deceitful. It

does not mention past failures involving the

demise of Wambugu’s/Monsanto’s GM sweet

potato research in Kenya (DeGrassi, 2003;

GMWatch, 2015), or the quiet recognition by the

-Danforth Research Centre in 2006 that the GM

cassava it had developed had lost resistance

to African cassava mosaic virus (ACMV) (ACB

and GRAIN, 2006). The recent case of Burkina

Faso’s reversal on GM cotton, due to the Bt

Cotton crop’s declining quality, is instructive

for Africa. Burkina Faso’s cotton companies

have committed to phasing out Bt cotton and

returning to the exclusive use of conventional

cotton, by the 2017/18 seasons. The sector is

seeking compensation from Monsanto for

the losses incurred and this is also extremely

telling (Dowd-Uribe and Schnurr, 2016)”.

(African Centre for Biodiversity).

Happy farming fellas…And sorry for thinking Monsanto is dying.

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