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market-farming - [Market-farming] a little Monsanto research.

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  • From: Leigh Hauter <bullrunfarm AT hughes.net>
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Market-farming] a little Monsanto research.
  • Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2011 13:12:16 -0500

Since I was under the impression that Monsanto now owns well over 50% of seed producing companies (the number might be up in the 70-80% range) I thought this thread a little like yelling 'the barn is on fire' after its been reduced to smoke and ashes.

Never the less

since this information isn't top secret and you no longer need a degree in library science (or teach a graduate course in research skills like I did back in the pre-computer age) Anyone with a computer and an internet hook up can find out what seed companies Monsanto owns.

(while the word Monsanto makes many of us hiss, myself included, I'm sure Monsanto is very proud of what they do and actually brags about the companies they have come to own. - good for stock prices on wall street I'm sure).

So here's what I found out with very little research on the internet.

Googling Seminis I found a Monsanto button at the bottom of their home page which when clicked got Monsanto's home page.

At the top of Monsanto's page was a button that got you to a list of the companies they completely own (I don't know if they own part of others, or what the rule is on that is).

Monsanto totally owns 19 major seed companies plus a number of other farm related concerns.

However, since our interests here are primarily vegetables seeds Monsanto was very helpful and separated its vegetable seed producing companies from the others. Monsanto lists as totally owned only two major seed companies -- Seminis and De Ruiter Seeds.

that, though is not the complete truth.

From there I went to another page, this one titled, I believe, 'our brands' and at the bottom was a vegetable button and , I should have written this down as I did it, I think I got to something that said 'Vegetable Seeds' which gives a page of verbage about how they are fighting the good fight for a better tasting world and listed some of their recent 'breakthroughs' (Bellaverde broccoli, rainbow carrots, Ruby Jewel sweet corn, cheddar cauliflower (I saw that recently in someone's catalog and debated buying it) sweetbites sweet peppers to mention a few.


And then it says at the bottom--

'Monsanto's Vegetable Division is represented in the market place by two main brands: Seminis and De Ruiter Seeds.' Apparently Monsanto divides their vegetable seeds into two categories. open-field which goes to Seminis and protected-culture (hothouse, greenhouse, netted structures) that goes to De Ruiter.

Then there's another button that connects you to their 'other webpages' and one of the webpages says Monsanto vegetable seeds worldwide. Clicking on that gets you a world map that you can click to find seed companies in your area, I did that for Virginia but just got a map of north American and more buttons for Canada, the US and Mexico.

Clicking the US got some more verbage about how wonderful they are but at the bottom is some important information.

'Monsanto's vegetables are represented through several brands such as Seminis and De Ruiter and other regional brands'.

So, what do we have. If its Seminis or De Ruiter its Monsanto, but its not limited to those companies. trying to decode that last paragraph can either mean its just those two and many regional companies or it means those two national and maybe some more national companies plus the regionals.

In other words, Monsanto is well entrenched in the seed market. If you are buying commodity seeds they now own 17 of the larger brands. For vegetables, Monsanto has been putting much of its efforts into two brands but they are by no means limited to those two. they own a number of regional brands and maybe some other national ones (more research is necessary to find that out and I don't have the time now).

and there you have it.

In a world where Walmart is now the largest organic food outlet of course a company like Monsanto would control a very large slice of seed companies.

The truth is, whether we like it or not our world now has a higher rate of ownership concentration than when President Teddy Roosevelt made an issue of busting the trusts back in the beginning of the 20th century.




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