WASHINGTON, Sept. 20, 2016 - Executives from five seed and
crop protection giants will be on Capitol Hill to defend their merger plans
before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley is
concerned about the impact the deals could have on farm input costs. The executives
are going to have to explain how the consolidation is going to benefit
growers.
The hearing comes just one week after Bayer announced it had reached a $66
billion deal to take over Monsanto, the third such deal in the seed and
chemical industries.
Also testifying today is Chris Novak, who will be representing corn and soybean
producers. Novak, who is CEO of the National Corn Growers Association, will
tell the committee that an analysis of the pending Dow-DuPont merger found it
would diminish competition in the corn seed sector. But he says his group
decided that the deal wouldn’t “fundamentally undermine competition” in the
seed industry and didn’t ask the Justice Department to force the companies to
divest any seed assets.
One concern that corn growers don’t have an answer to, Novak says, is what
impact the Chinese takeover of Syngenta will have on the Chinese approval
process for new biotech crop traits. It’s possible, Novak says, that China
could wind up accelerating its approval process if it sees that it has a
national stake in the success of biotechnology.
A unified message from farm witnesses at the hearing will be that the mergers
demonstrate the severity of the downturn in U.S. agriculture. Roger Johnson,
president of the National Farmers Union, is worried that rising input costs as
a result of the consolidation will stress farmers even more.
“While the agrochemical and seed companies are feeling strained in boardrooms
and being pressured to merge, no one feels the strain of a farm economy more
than the farmers,” Johnson says.
USDA works to keep organic labeling separate from GMO disclosure labeling. Agriculture
Marketing Service Administrator Elanor Starmer released a memo Monday
evening on how the agency will maintain separate standards for labeling under
the National Organic Program and the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure
Standard.
At the heart of the memo is the statement:
No certified organic products will require disclosure as bioengineered; and
No proposed rules for bioengineered food disclosure will require that modifications be made to the USDA organic regulations.
The memo addresses the issue of whether non-organic foods that do not need to
be disclosed as containing GMO ingredients can be labeled as GMO-free, but
makes no definitive conclusion. Starmer wrote in the memo: “As instructed by
statute, USDA shall consider organic certification sufficient to make a claim
regarding the absence of bioengineering in the food, such as ‘not
bioengineered,’ ‘non-GMO,’ or another similar claim. However, products that do
not require mandatory disclosure as bioengineered foods or foods that contain
bioengineered ingredients may not automatically qualify for absence claims.”
Customs officers find farm threat in Saudi shipment. U.S. Customs and
Border Protection (CBP) officers quarantined a non-commercial shipment from
Saudi Arabia after finding
it infested with Khapra beetles, which are a major threat to grain
farmers.
CBP officers in Philadelphia said they discovered 60 live Khapra beetle larvae
in rice that was part of a household goods shipment from Saudi Arabia.
“To see such a large concentration of larvae is alarming and it presents a
serious threat to our nation’s agriculture. Customs and Border Protection
agriculture specialists took immediate action to quarantine the rice and these
highly destructive and invasive insect pests,” said Marge Braunstein, Acting
CBP Port Director for the Area Port of Philadelphia.
Danish trade mission lands in U.S. next week. Representatives of some of
the largest of Denmark’s food and
agriculture companies are coming to the U.S. next week to learn
firsthand about evolving U.S. food safety and biotechnology policies. The trade
mission, which will be led by the Crown Prince and Princess of Denmark and the
Danish Minister for Environment and Food, is scheduled to stay in the U.S. from
Sept. 27 through Sept. 30.
The delegation will attend a seminar in Washington D.C. hosted by the National
Association of Manufacturers on Sept. 28 at 10 a.m. The FDA is scheduled to
give a presentation at the event on the Food Safety Modernization Act.
Brazil’s beef and pork exports expected to rise in 2017. Brazilian beef
and pork exports are expected to increase next year to new record levels,
according to a newly released report from
USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service. Rising demand from China and other
countries are fueling the rising shipments, but the value of Brazil’s currency
has risen in the past couple months and that will likely limit export growth.
The new FAS forecast shows Brazil exporting 1.96 million metric tons of beef in
2017, up from 1.85 million tons this year and 1.7 million tons last year.
Brazil’s domestic consumption is also on the rise as the economy is showing
signs of recovery.
“The outlook for the Brazilian economy in 2017 calls for a moderate improvement
in the main macroeconomic figures, such as a forecast growth of 1.16% in the
gross domestic product, a lower inflation rate, a small recovery in the
unemployment rate, and the return of foreign investments,” the report said.
Phil Brasher contributed to this report.
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