Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Art Warheit" <walt00@earthlink.net>]

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----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>
To: <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>; <nmgreens@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, January 09, 2004 6:08 AM
Subject: [Livingontheland] Monsanto Accused of Price-Fixing


> 
> Monsanto Accused of Price-Fixing
> =================================
> 
> 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." 
> 
> 
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