Monsanto

In a decision that removed a roadblock to adoption of a new genetically engineered soybean variety, the European Commission approved import of the Monsanto soybean that is resistant to two types of weedkillers, said Reuters. The soybean went on sale in the United States and Canada this year surrounded by questions about whether there was a market for it.

Bayer upped its bid to buy Monsanto to $65 billion in a move to create the world’s largest supplier of crop seeds and chemicals, says The Wall Street Journal. The proposed merger is part of a wave of consolidation in the seed and agricultural chemical industry, including the Dow-DuPont merger and the purchase of Syngenta by state-owned ChemChina.

Government agencies in the U.S., Canada and Mexico can't say for sure whether the herbicides they spray on pubic lands to control invasive species are doing more harm than good, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Montana and their Canadian colleagues. The huge amount of herbicides applied by land managers every year—largely glyphosate (the key ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup)—may in fact prevent native species from germinating.

The executive arm of the EU approved a short-term extension of European use of the weedkiller glyphosate while a safety study is completed. EU members are deadlocked over renewal of the license and without the intervention by the European Commission, the license would have expired today and started a six-month phase-out.

The European Commission, with one member for each of the EU nations, could meet as early as today to decide on a short-term extension of EU approval of use of glyphosate, the most widely used weedkiller in the world, said Farmers Weekly, based in Britain. An EU appeals committee failed to reach as qualified majority — meaning support by 55 percent of EU members with 65 percent of the population — at the end of last week, with approval for the chemical to expire on Thursday.

Agriculture Minister Ricardo Buryaile said the Argentine government will oversee testing of soybean crops in an agreement to assure Monsanto that its genetically engineered seeds are not being pirated, said Reuters. Monsanto, the largest seed company in the world, had threatened to stop selling its seed in Argentina, the No. 3 soy producer, because of the dispute.

Anti-GMO activists addressed the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Honolulu this week, in an effort to regulate GMO crops in three counties, reports The Seattle Times. The activists from Maui, Hawaii and Kauai, say they fear the pesticide use that comes with GMO production. All three counties have passed legislation limiting or outright banning GMOs. But after Monsanto and Dow Chemical sued in response, U.S. Magistrate Judge Barry Kurren ruled in 2014 that state and federal laws supersede county legislation, making the anti-GMO laws null and void.

The third-largest producer of agricultural chemicals, German-based BASF "is not backed into a corner" by the wave of mergers among the world's largest seed and agricultural-chemical companies, says deputy chief executive Martin Brudermueller.

The European Commission’s plan to temporarily extend the glyphosate sales license was thwarted Monday when France, Germany, and Italy abstained from voting on the proposal, leaving the commission short of the requisite population threshold for approval, reports the Wall Street Journal.

The Justice Department should block the Dow-DuPont merger, which would create the largest seed and ag chemical company in the world, because it would unduly reduce competition in the sector, say a trio of legal, farm and consumer groups. The merger is part of a wave of consolidations that would turn the world's six biggest seed and ag chemical companies — Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, DuPont, Dow and BASF — into "a Big 4, dominated by a Monsanto-Bayer and Dow-DuPont duopoly," said the groups in a letter to regulators.

Monsanto says Bayer isn't offering enough to justify a merger but that it's open to continued talks with the German company. An official at Johns Hopkins' Center for a Livable Future says a merger would "be a real shock to the food system" because of the potential of higher prices to farmers for seeds and agricultural chemicals in a sector undergoing consolidation, reported Marketwatch.

Three big mergers among the world's largest seed and agricultural chemical companies are under way or proposed — Bayer and Monsanto, ChemChina and Syngenta, and Dow and DuPont — creating concerns among growers of fewer choices and higher prices when they go shopping. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told Harvest Public Media, “I’m not going to respond directly to particular business transactions."

Two days before the EU is set to vote on whether to relicense the pesticide glyphosate, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Health Organization have decided that the chemical is “unlikely to pose a carcinogenic risk to humans from exposure through the diet,” reports The Guardian.

Best known as a pharmaceutical company, Bayer may be considering a takeover bid for Monsanto, the world's largest seed company, in a consolidation wave that Monsanto inaugurated but did not consummate a year ago, said USA Today. Bayer has a large seed and crop-protection portfolio.

California farmer Jack McCall died last Dec. 26 of non-Hodgkins lymphoma but remains "one of several plaintiffs in more than a dozen lawsuits that claim the active ingredient in Roundup -- a chemical called glyphosate -- gave them cancer," says Huffington Post.

As it promised last month, Bayer, the world's largest seed and agricultural chemicals company, asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to overturn the $25-million award to Edwin Hardeman, a California man who blamed Roundup herbicide for giving him cancer. The appeal is a key element in Bayer's plan to resolve billions of dollars of claims against Roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, the most widely used weedkiller in the world.