Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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Monsanto Accused of Price-Fixing
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By Julian Borger 
The Guardian UK 
Wednesday 07 January 2004 

     Monsanto, the corporate driving force behind the
development of genetically modified food, held
frequent meetings with its chief competitors and
persuaded them to raise the price of GM seeds, it was
reported yesterday. 

     Monsanto has admitted that meetings with senior
executives of another agri-industrial giant, Pioneer
Hi-Bred International Inc, took place in the late
1990s, but insists they were legal discussions about
seed licensing agreements, rather than illegal
price-fixing. 

     However, legal experts said that distinction was
murky and predicted that an investigation would be
launched. 

     "The problem is that you have competitors talking
to each other, which makes you uneasy," said Lawrence
White, an economics professor and antitrust expert at
New York University. 

     "There are lots of legitimate reasons for them to
be meeting, but the fact they were talking about
prices makes you even more uneasy. You certainly have
to worry here and my guess is the [justice
department's] antitrust division is going to be
looking very closely at this." 

     The justice department would not say yesterday
whether a formal inquiry hadbegun. It is already
investigating Monsanto for anti-competitive practices
in the herbicide market. 

     A New York Times investigation found that
executives from Monsanto and Pioneer Hi-Bred - the two
biggest seed companies in the world, who account for
60% of the US market in maize and soybean seeds - met
repeatedly between 1995 and 1999 to discuss licences
under which Pioneer sold genetically altered seeds
that had originally been developed by Monsanto. 

     The report quotes former executives, court papers
and other documents as saying those talks involved the
prices at which the seeds should be sold and how to
keep those prices high. 

     Executives from two other seed companies,
Novartis and Mycogen, said they also came under
pressure from Monsanto to coordinate their pricing
policies but rejected the approaches as potentially
illegal. 

     Monsanto did not return calls seeking comment
yesterday, but a spokeswoman, Lori Fisher, told the
New York Times: "Monsanto did offer to expand and
revise existing licences with Pioneer. In the context
of a potentially new licence for technology, it is
absolutely within the law to discuss the price and the
means of compensation to the licensing party." 

     Monsanto's critics have long accused the company
of marketing policies aimed at making farmers around
the world dependent on its GM technology and its
seeds. 

     In 1999, a group of farmers in the national
family farm coalition (NFFC) took the corporation to
court, accusing it of forming a cartel aimed at
monopolising the market in GM maize and soya seeds. A
court rejected the antitrust charges but the NFFC is
appealing against the decision. 

     Bill Christison, the former head of the farmers'
coalition, said yesterday. "We are giving away the
seeds of the world to a handful of corporations who
are going to own all our food production."