{"id":80154,"date":"2016-09-26T12:00:36","date_gmt":"2016-09-26T11:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=80154"},"modified":"2016-09-23T15:59:22","modified_gmt":"2016-09-23T14:59:22","slug":"heroin-nazis-and-agent-orange-inside-the-66-billion-merger-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/09\/heroin-nazis-and-agent-orange-inside-the-66-billion-merger-of-the-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Heroin, Nazis, and Agent Orange: Inside the $66 Billion Merger of the Year"},"content":{"rendered":"

These companies used to sell heroin and Agent Orange. Now, they want to form the\u00a0world\u2019s largest\u00a0supplier of seeds and pesticides. <\/em><\/p>\n

14 Sep 2016 – <\/em>Two giants of the farming and chemical industries agreed to merge Wednesday in a\u00a0$66 billion deal: the U.S.\u2019s\u00a0Monsanto and Germany\u2019s Bayer, the\u00a0original maker of aspirin.\u00a0It\u2019s the year\u2019s biggest deal and will\u00a0create the world\u2019s largest\u00a0supplier of seeds and farm chemicals, with $26 billion in combined annual revenue from agriculture.\u00a0If the merger goes through, it will combine two companies with a long and storied history that shaped what we eat, the drugs we take and how we grow our food.<\/p>\n

Bayer: Then & Now<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

A Bayer advertisement from a 1900 magazine.
Source: Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

Two friends making dyes from coal-tar started Bayer in 1863, and it developed into a chemical and drug company famous for introducing heroin as a cough remedy in 1896, then aspirin in 1899. The company was a Nazi contractor during World War II and used forced labor. Today, the firm based in Leverkusen, Germany, makes drugs and has a crop science unit, which makes weed and bug killers. Its goal is to dominate the chemical and drug markets for people, plants and animals.<\/p>\n

Monsanto: Then & Now<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Agent<\/a>

Agent Orange is sprayed over a forest in north Vietnam, during the Vietnam war.
Source: Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

Monsanto, founded in 1901, originally made food additives like saccharin before expanding into industrial chemicals, pharmaceuticals and agriculture products. It\u2019s famous for making some controversial and highly toxic chemicals like polychlorinated biphenyls, now banned and commonly known as PCBs, and the herbicide Agent Orange, which was used by the U.S. military in Vietnam. It commercialized Roundup herbicide in the 1970s and began developing genetically modified corn and soybean seeds in the 1980s. In 2000, a new Monsanto emerged from a series of corporate mergers.<\/p>\n

The Ultimate Farm Store<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Monsanto's<\/a>

Monsanto’s ‘Roundup’ pesticide.
Photographer: Philippe Huguen\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

Monsanto has recently tried to position itself as a one-stop seeds and chemicals shop for farmers. The idea is\u00a0to use information directly from the fields\u00a0to\u00a0figure out exactly when, where and how farmers should apply chemicals to crops\u00a0to yield a bigger harvest. Monsanto\u2019s not the only company with this clever idea. Dow Chemical and DuPont said in December they\u2019d merge, then break into three entities, one of which will offer a range of seeds and chemicals. A few months later, China National Chemical Corp. said it was buying Syngenta in an even bigger deal.<\/p>\n

Will the Deal Go Through?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>

An anti-Monsanto activist in Munich.
Photographer: Sean Gallup\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

The deal would be the biggest ever in agriculture, but it\u2019s not a sure thing. There could be antitrust hurdles. A combined Bayer-Monsanto would be the biggest player in an industry with only three megacompanies left standing. Plus, the deal could face a backlash in Germany, where the majority of citizens question the safety of eating and growing modified food. The mistrust is so deep, it\u2019s illegal to grow GMO crops for food there. Monsanto is considered a poster child for evil American corporations in Germany, and its pesticide has been blamed for deaths of monarch butterflies in North America.<\/p>\n

The Future of Agriculture?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Corn<\/a>

Corn harvest.
Photographer: Daniel Acker\/Bloomberg<\/p><\/div>\n

Monsanto\u2019s dominance in seeds and Bayer\u2019s strength in crop chemicals means they\u2019ll be able to sell farmers a comprehensive suite of pesticides and genetically modified seeds. Monsanto has also invested in the emerging industry of precision agriculture, which is a way for farmers to figure out exactly how much fertilizer or what kind of seed they should use. They do that by gathering and analyzing weather and crop data at increasingly frequent and granular levels on their fields. Monsanto and Bayer argue that the boost to crops that will come from using this method will be necessary to feed a burgeoning world population that\u2019s more often demanding meat and dairy.<\/p>\n

___________________________________<\/p>\n

QuickTake<\/strong>:\u00a0GMOs and Engineered Food<\/a><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 bloomberg.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

These companies used to sell heroin and Agent Orange. Now, they want to form the world\u2019s largest supplier of seeds and pesticides. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-capitalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}