Monsanto Attacks Scientists After Studies Show Trouble For Weedkiller Dicamba
Monsanto’s Driverless Car: Is CRISPR Gene Editing Driving Seed Consolidation?
Farmers, Antitrust Activists Are Worried That Big Ag Is Only Getting Bigger
EPA Weighs In On Glyphosate, Says It Doesn't Cause Cancer
Crime In The Fields: How Monsanto And Scofflaw Farmers Hurt Soybeans In Arkansas
If Monsanto Disappears, Will It Matter?
Mighty Farming Microbes: Companies Harness Bacteria To Give Crops A Boost
Monsanto, Angling For Global Pesticide Dominance, Woos Syngenta
New GMOs Get A Regulatory Green Light, With A Hint Of Yellow
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An increasing number of weeds have now evolved resistance to the chemical.","imgSizes":{"kqedFullSize":{"file":"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2014/10/glyphosate-crops_enl-428a3594d783d20539d1da64cade4e31b4b920bb-e1413467600915.jpg","width":1000,"height":643}},"fetchFailed":false,"isLoading":false}},"audioPlayerReducer":{"postId":"stream_live"},"authorsReducer":{"byline_bayareabites_122139":{"type":"authors","id":"byline_bayareabites_122139","meta":{"override":true},"slug":"byline_bayareabites_122139","name":"Dan Charles, NPR Food","isLoading":false},"byline_bayareabites_116810":{"type":"authors","id":"byline_bayareabites_116810","meta":{"override":true},"slug":"byline_bayareabites_116810","name":"\u003ca href=\"http://civileats.com/author/tgreenaway/\">Twilight Greenaway\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/author/civileat/\">Civil 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FM","link":"/"}},"bayareabites_122139":{"type":"posts","id":"bayareabites_122139","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"bayareabites","id":"122139","score":null,"sort":[1509402299000]},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"monsanto-attacks-scientists-after-studies-show-trouble-for-weedkiller-dicamba","title":"Monsanto Attacks Scientists After Studies Show Trouble For Weedkiller Dicamba","publishDate":1509402299,"format":"standard","headTitle":"Bay Area Bites | KQED Food","labelTerm":{"site":"bayareabites"},"content":"\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Listen to the story on Morning Edition:\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nhttps://ondemand.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/me/2017/10/20171026_me_monsanto_and_the_weed_scientists_not_a_love_story.mp3\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a normal year, Kevin Bradley, a professor of weed science at the University of Missouri, would have spent his summer testing new ways to control a troublesome little plant called water hemp.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This has not been a normal year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I don't even talk about weed management anymore,\" \u003ca href=\"https://ipm.missouri.edu/IPCM/2017/8/Update-on-Dicamba-related-Injury-Investigations-and-Estimates-of-Injured-Soybean-Acreage/\">Bradley\u003c/a> tells me, and he sounds disgusted. \"Nobody calls me and ask me those questions. I barely have time to even work with my graduate students. Everything is about dicamba. Every single day.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dicamba, an old weedkiller that is being used in new ways, has thrust Bradley and a half-dozen other university weed scientists into the unfamiliar role of whistleblower, confronting what they believe are misleading and scientifically unfounded claims by one of the country's biggest seed and pesticide companies: Monsanto.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It's not comfortable. I'm like anybody else, I don't like [it when] people are unhappy with me,\" says \u003ca href=\"http://www.weeds.iastate.edu/personnel/owen.htm\">Mike Owen\u003c/a>, a weed specialist at Iowa State University. Then he chuckles. \"But sometimes, like John Wayne said, a man's got to do what a man's got to do!\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Certainly, there's not a weed scientist in any of these states who would back down, who would change their story,\" says \u003ca href=\"https://cropsciences.illinois.edu/people/profile/hager\">Aaron Hager\u003c/a>, at the University of Illinois.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The tensions between Monsanto and the nation's weed scientists actually began several years ago, when Monsanto first moved to make dicamba the centerpiece of a new weedkilling strategy. The company tweaked the genes in soybeans and cotton and created genetically modified varieties of those crops that can tolerate doses of dicamba. (Normally, dicamba kills those crops.) This allowed farmers to spray the weedkiller directly on their soybean or cotton plants, killing the weeds while their crops survived.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's an approach that Monsanto pioneered with crops that were genetically modified to tolerate glyphosate, or Roundup. After two decades of heavy exposure to glyphosate, however, devastating weeds like \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/03/07/147656157/farmers-face-tough-choice-on-ways-to-fight-new-strains-of-weeds\">Palmer amaranth\u003c/a>, or pigweed, developed resistance to it. So farmers are looking for new weedkilling tools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dicamba, however, has a well-known defect. It's volatile; it tends to evaporate from the soil or vegetation where it has been sprayed, creating a cloud of plant-killing vapor that can spread in unpredictable directions. It happens more in hot weather, and Monsanto's new strategy inevitably would mean spraying dicamba in the heat of summer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monsanto and two other chemical companies, BASF and DuPont, announced that they had solved this problem with new \"low-volatility\" formulations of dicamba that don't evaporate as easily. Yet the companies — especially Monsanto — made it difficult for university scientists to verify those claims with independent tests before the products were released commercially.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I wish we could have done more testing. We've been asking to do more testing for several years, but the product was not made available to us,\" says Bob Scott, a weed scientist at the University of Arkansas. \"These are proprietary products. Until they release those formulations for testing, we're not allowed to [test them].\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To make matters worse, Monsanto started selling its new dicamba-tolerant soybeans in 2016, before the new low-volatility formulations of dicamba were even approved for sale. It tempted farmers to use older versions of dicamba on these crops, illegally, and some farmers couldn't resist that temptation. In Arkansas, there were widespread \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/08/01/487809643/crime-in-the-fields-how-monsanto-and-scofflaw-farmers-hurt-soybeans-in-arkansas\">reports\u003c/a> that dicamba was damaging neighboring fields that didn't have the benefit of Monsanto's new genes. In one case, a dispute between farmers led to a fatal \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=531272125\">shooting\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That fall, at a meeting of weed scientists, Hager confronted Monsanto's representatives. According to Hager, he told the company that \"you knowingly released these varieties in an area of the U.S. where you knew that glyphosate resistance [in weeds] was rampant. When you did that ... you knew what was going to happen.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I got a blank stare,\" Hager recalls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This past summer, the floodgates on dicamba use opened. The new formulations of dicamba were approved for use (although Arkansas only allowed farmers to use BASF's product, not Monsanto's) and farmers rushed to adopt the new technology. They planted dicamba-tolerant crops on 26 million acres.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_122146\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2017/10/dicamba_not_love_story-2_custom-968664dcf88fa278f1497073c7d0e5450053c5ea-s2500-c85.jpg\" alt=\"A farmer's nightmare weed, glyphosate-resistant Palmer amaranth, or pigweed, sprouts in a soybean field in Arkansas. Its evolution has farmers looking for new weedkilling strategies.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1332\" class=\"size-full wp-image-122146\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2017/10/dicamba_not_love_story-2_custom-968664dcf88fa278f1497073c7d0e5450053c5ea-s2500-c85.jpg 2000w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2017/10/dicamba_not_love_story-2_custom-968664dcf88fa278f1497073c7d0e5450053c5ea-s2500-c85-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2017/10/dicamba_not_love_story-2_custom-968664dcf88fa278f1497073c7d0e5450053c5ea-s2500-c85-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2017/10/dicamba_not_love_story-2_custom-968664dcf88fa278f1497073c7d0e5450053c5ea-s2500-c85-768x511.jpg 768w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2017/10/dicamba_not_love_story-2_custom-968664dcf88fa278f1497073c7d0e5450053c5ea-s2500-c85-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2017/10/dicamba_not_love_story-2_custom-968664dcf88fa278f1497073c7d0e5450053c5ea-s2500-c85-1180x786.jpg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2017/10/dicamba_not_love_story-2_custom-968664dcf88fa278f1497073c7d0e5450053c5ea-s2500-c85-960x639.jpg 960w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2017/10/dicamba_not_love_story-2_custom-968664dcf88fa278f1497073c7d0e5450053c5ea-s2500-c85-240x160.jpg 240w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2017/10/dicamba_not_love_story-2_custom-968664dcf88fa278f1497073c7d0e5450053c5ea-s2500-c85-375x250.jpg 375w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2017/10/dicamba_not_love_story-2_custom-968664dcf88fa278f1497073c7d0e5450053c5ea-s2500-c85-520x346.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A farmer's nightmare weed, glyphosate-resistant Palmer amaranth, or pigweed, sprouts in a soybean field in Arkansas. Its evolution has farmers looking for new weedkilling strategies. \u003ccite>( Dan Charles /NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\"The demand for it is overwhelming. The need to control these difficult-to-manage weeds is huge,\" says Scott Partridge, Monsanto's vice president of global strategy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When spraying started, \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/10/07/555872494/a-wayward-weed-killer-divides-farm-communities-harms-wildlife\">complaints\u003c/a> rolled in. The new \"low volatility\" versions of dicamba didn't stay where they belonged. They drifted into nearby fields, damaging crops there — mostly soybeans, but also vegetables and orchards. There were reports of damage from Mississippi to Minnesota, but the problem was worst in Arkansas, Missouri and Tennessee.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"By the end of May, first of June, it became impossible; the calls were coming in, three or four a day. Sometimes eight or 12 a day,\" says the University of Arkansas' Scott. \"There is no precedent for what we've seen this year.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At first, the companies selling these herbicides — both Monsanto and BASF — seemed unconcerned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"All I got was denial that there was a problem,\" Bradley says. \"What I kept hearing was: It's not a big problem nationwide; we always have these kinds of mistakes or accidents with the introduction of any new technology.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So Bradley, a past president of the Weed Science Society of America, started collecting data on crop damage from across the country, mapping the epidemic. By the end of the summer, Bradley estimated that at least 3.1 million acres of crops had shown some injury from drifting dicamba.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With the scale of dicamba damage increasingly clear, a fierce debate erupted over its cause.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monsanto's executives insist that the people who sprayed dicamba were just learning how to do it properly and didn't follow directions. Partridge says his company checked out more than a thousand cases of dicamba damage, \"and in 88 percent of those instances, the label was not followed.\" Farmers or pesticide applicators sprayed dicamba too close to neighboring fields, didn't clean out their equipment properly or used the wrong nozzles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Every one of those [mistakes] is fixable by education,\" Partridge says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>University weed scientists say that that is only part of the explanation and that the problem can't be fixed so easily.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bradley, Scott and their colleagues in other states say that much of the damage they saw this year didn't appear to come from \"physical drift\" of windblown droplets of dicamba, coming directly from a sprayer. Physical drift, they say, typically produces a plume of damage that diminishes with distance from the source of the spray. Instead, they saw entire hundred-acre fields of soybeans with cupped leaves, and the damage was uniform from one end to the other. They also saw damage in orchards and fields that were far removed from any fields sprayed with dicamba.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This pattern, they say, looks more like what they had feared all along: volatilization.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What is more, the scientists say, field experiments that they finally carried out this summer point toward evaporating dicamba as a cause.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bob Scott shows me one such experiment, a field of soybeans at a research station near Lonoke, Ark. Here, soybeans were injured by dicamba that definitely did not enter the field through mistakes in spraying.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It's important to remember, we did not spray this plot,\" Scott says. Instead, at a location far away from this field, he and his colleagues sprayed trays of soil with various dicamba-containing herbicides. Then they carried the trays into this field and placed them between the rows of soybeans for 48 hours. The trays and soybeans were protected underneath plastic hoops — essentially, miniature greenhouses — that were open at each end. The dicamba evaporated from the trays and injured the soybean plants nearby, curling their leaves and stunting their growth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"A lot of people were very disappointed when they saw the plots,\" Scott says. \"A lot of people didn't want to see what they were seeing, and were in disbelief.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These observations have huge implications. If the new formulations of dicamba evaporate and spread, they cannot easily be controlled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"If this were any other product, I feel like it would be just pulled off the market, and we'd be done with it,\" Scott says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But dicamba, and the crops created to tolerate it, aren't just any products. There is big money behind them. Monsanto, seed dealers, farmers who are struggling with weed problems — they all have a stake in this technology. The university scientists who are pointing out problems with them are confronting an economic juggernaut. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monsanto — and farmers who want to use dicamba — have been fighting back. In Arkansas, where state regulators \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/09/22/552803465/arkansas-defies-monsanto-moves-to-ban-rogue-weedkiller\">proposed\u003c/a> a ban on dicamba during the growing season next year, Monsanto recently sued the regulators, arguing that the ban was based on \"unsubstantiated theories regarding product volatility that are contradicted by science.\" The company \u003ca href=\"https://monsanto.com/app/uploads/2017/09/Monsantos-Petition-for-Rulemaking-to-the-Arkansas-State-Plant-B_84746_1.pdf\">called\u003c/a> on regulators to disregard information from Jason Norsworthy, one of the University of Arkansas' weed researchers, because he had recommended that farmers use a non-dicamba alternative from a rival company. Monsanto also attacked the objectivity of Ford Baldwin, a former university weed scientist who now works as a consultant to farmers and herbicide companies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I read it as an attack on all of us, and anybody who dares to [gather] outside data,\" Scott says. \"And some of my fellow weed scientists read it that way as well.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bradley says executives from Monsanto have made repeated calls to his supervisors. \"What the exact nature of those calls [was], I'm not real sure,\" Bradley says. \"But I'm pretty sure it has something to do with not being happy with what I'm saying.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I contacted three academic deans at the University of Missouri, asking for details about the calls. A university spokesman said they were too busy to respond.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monsanto's Partridge says, \"We are not attacking Dr. Bradley. We respect him, his position, opinion, and his work. We respect him, and academics in general.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bradley says criticism from people in Missouri's farming community whom he has known for years hits him even harder. \"To have somebody say that what [I'm] saying is bad for Missouri agriculture, that's a hard one to take,\" he says. \"There's not a lot of glory in these positions, or major financial incentive. We chose these jobs to help the farmers in our states.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monsanto's explanation for what happened this summer, and how to prevent it, seems to be carrying the day in Washington, D.C. Two weeks ago, the Environmental Protection Agency \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/10/13/557607443/with-ok-from-epa-use-of-controversial-weedkiller-is-expected-to-double\">announced\u003c/a> that it will allow continued use of dicamba next year. The EPA is imposing a few additional restrictions on who can spray it, and when. Those restrictions will have little effect, or none at all, on damage caused by volatilization.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Arkansas' proposal to ban use of dicamba during the growing season next summer has not yet received final approval. A public hearing on the proposal is set for Nov. 8.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kevin Bradley thinks there is one positive result from the controversy. \"It has made more farmers aware of what we do, and that is, unbiased research and calling it like we see it,\" he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the course of recent decades, publicly funded agricultural extension services have shrunk, and farmers have turned to seed and chemical companies for advice. \"It's become so weighted towards — 'well, the companies did their research, and it said this, so that must be the way it is!' \" Bradley says. \"You know what? Maybe that's not the way it is.\" \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Copyright 2017 \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/em> \u003c/p>\n\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"Scientists are accusing the seed and pesticide giant of denying the risks of its latest weedkilling technology. Monsanto has responded by attacking some of those critics.","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1509402358,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":48,"wordCount":2003},"headData":{"title":"Monsanto Attacks Scientists After Studies Show Trouble For Weedkiller Dicamba | KQED","description":"Scientists are accusing the seed and pesticide giant of denying the risks of its latest weedkilling technology. Monsanto has responded by attacking some of those critics.","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":"","schema":{"@context":"http://schema.org","@type":"Article","headline":"Monsanto Attacks Scientists After Studies Show Trouble For Weedkiller Dicamba","datePublished":"2017-10-30T22:24:59.000Z","dateModified":"2017-10-30T22:25:58.000Z","image":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"}},"disqusIdentifier":"122139 https://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/?p=122139","disqusUrl":"https://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/2017/10/30/monsanto-attacks-scientists-after-studies-show-trouble-for-weedkiller-dicamba/","disqusTitle":"Monsanto Attacks Scientists After Studies Show Trouble For Weedkiller Dicamba","nprByline":"Dan Charles, NPR Food","nprImageAgency":"Dan Charles/ NPR","nprStoryId":"559733837","nprApiLink":"http://api.npr.org/query?id=559733837&apiKey=MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004","nprHtmlLink":"http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/10/26/559733837/monsanto-and-the-weed-scientists-not-a-love-story?ft=nprml&f=559733837","nprRetrievedStory":"1","nprPubDate":"Thu, 26 Oct 2017 15:09:00 -0400","nprStoryDate":"Thu, 26 Oct 2017 04:57:00 -0400","nprLastModifiedDate":"Mon, 30 Oct 2017 15:21:48 -0400","nprAudio":"https://ondemand.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/me/2017/10/20171026_me_monsanto_and_the_weed_scientists_not_a_love_story.mp3?orgId=1&topicId=1025&d=299&p=3&story=559733837&t=progseg&e=560152235&seg=2&ft=nprml&f=559733837","nprAudioM3u":"http://api.npr.org/m3u/1560152306-011062.m3u?orgId=1&topicId=1025&d=299&p=3&story=559733837&t=progseg&e=560152235&seg=2&ft=nprml&f=559733837","path":"/bayareabites/122139/monsanto-attacks-scientists-after-studies-show-trouble-for-weedkiller-dicamba","audioUrl":"https://ondemand.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/me/2017/10/20171026_me_monsanto_and_the_weed_scientists_not_a_love_story.mp3?orgId=1&topicId=1025&d=299&p=3&story=559733837&t=progseg&e=560152235&seg=2&ft=nprml&f=559733837","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Listen to the story on Morning Edition:\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"nprOneAudioLink","attributes":{"named":{"src":"https://ondemand.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/me/2017/10/20171026_me_monsanto_and_the_weed_scientists_not_a_love_story.mp3"},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a normal year, Kevin Bradley, a professor of weed science at the University of Missouri, would have spent his summer testing new ways to control a troublesome little plant called water hemp.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This has not been a normal year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I don't even talk about weed management anymore,\" \u003ca href=\"https://ipm.missouri.edu/IPCM/2017/8/Update-on-Dicamba-related-Injury-Investigations-and-Estimates-of-Injured-Soybean-Acreage/\">Bradley\u003c/a> tells me, and he sounds disgusted. \"Nobody calls me and ask me those questions. I barely have time to even work with my graduate students. Everything is about dicamba. Every single day.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dicamba, an old weedkiller that is being used in new ways, has thrust Bradley and a half-dozen other university weed scientists into the unfamiliar role of whistleblower, confronting what they believe are misleading and scientifically unfounded claims by one of the country's biggest seed and pesticide companies: Monsanto.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It's not comfortable. I'm like anybody else, I don't like [it when] people are unhappy with me,\" says \u003ca href=\"http://www.weeds.iastate.edu/personnel/owen.htm\">Mike Owen\u003c/a>, a weed specialist at Iowa State University. Then he chuckles. \"But sometimes, like John Wayne said, a man's got to do what a man's got to do!\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Certainly, there's not a weed scientist in any of these states who would back down, who would change their story,\" says \u003ca href=\"https://cropsciences.illinois.edu/people/profile/hager\">Aaron Hager\u003c/a>, at the University of Illinois.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The tensions between Monsanto and the nation's weed scientists actually began several years ago, when Monsanto first moved to make dicamba the centerpiece of a new weedkilling strategy. The company tweaked the genes in soybeans and cotton and created genetically modified varieties of those crops that can tolerate doses of dicamba. (Normally, dicamba kills those crops.) This allowed farmers to spray the weedkiller directly on their soybean or cotton plants, killing the weeds while their crops survived.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's an approach that Monsanto pioneered with crops that were genetically modified to tolerate glyphosate, or Roundup. After two decades of heavy exposure to glyphosate, however, devastating weeds like \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/03/07/147656157/farmers-face-tough-choice-on-ways-to-fight-new-strains-of-weeds\">Palmer amaranth\u003c/a>, or pigweed, developed resistance to it. So farmers are looking for new weedkilling tools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dicamba, however, has a well-known defect. It's volatile; it tends to evaporate from the soil or vegetation where it has been sprayed, creating a cloud of plant-killing vapor that can spread in unpredictable directions. It happens more in hot weather, and Monsanto's new strategy inevitably would mean spraying dicamba in the heat of summer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monsanto and two other chemical companies, BASF and DuPont, announced that they had solved this problem with new \"low-volatility\" formulations of dicamba that don't evaporate as easily. Yet the companies — especially Monsanto — made it difficult for university scientists to verify those claims with independent tests before the products were released commercially.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I wish we could have done more testing. We've been asking to do more testing for several years, but the product was not made available to us,\" says Bob Scott, a weed scientist at the University of Arkansas. \"These are proprietary products. Until they release those formulations for testing, we're not allowed to [test them].\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To make matters worse, Monsanto started selling its new dicamba-tolerant soybeans in 2016, before the new low-volatility formulations of dicamba were even approved for sale. It tempted farmers to use older versions of dicamba on these crops, illegally, and some farmers couldn't resist that temptation. In Arkansas, there were widespread \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/08/01/487809643/crime-in-the-fields-how-monsanto-and-scofflaw-farmers-hurt-soybeans-in-arkansas\">reports\u003c/a> that dicamba was damaging neighboring fields that didn't have the benefit of Monsanto's new genes. In one case, a dispute between farmers led to a fatal \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=531272125\">shooting\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That fall, at a meeting of weed scientists, Hager confronted Monsanto's representatives. According to Hager, he told the company that \"you knowingly released these varieties in an area of the U.S. where you knew that glyphosate resistance [in weeds] was rampant. When you did that ... you knew what was going to happen.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I got a blank stare,\" Hager recalls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This past summer, the floodgates on dicamba use opened. The new formulations of dicamba were approved for use (although Arkansas only allowed farmers to use BASF's product, not Monsanto's) and farmers rushed to adopt the new technology. They planted dicamba-tolerant crops on 26 million acres.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_122146\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2017/10/dicamba_not_love_story-2_custom-968664dcf88fa278f1497073c7d0e5450053c5ea-s2500-c85.jpg\" alt=\"A farmer's nightmare weed, glyphosate-resistant Palmer amaranth, or pigweed, sprouts in a soybean field in Arkansas. Its evolution has farmers looking for new weedkilling strategies.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1332\" class=\"size-full wp-image-122146\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2017/10/dicamba_not_love_story-2_custom-968664dcf88fa278f1497073c7d0e5450053c5ea-s2500-c85.jpg 2000w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2017/10/dicamba_not_love_story-2_custom-968664dcf88fa278f1497073c7d0e5450053c5ea-s2500-c85-160x107.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2017/10/dicamba_not_love_story-2_custom-968664dcf88fa278f1497073c7d0e5450053c5ea-s2500-c85-800x533.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2017/10/dicamba_not_love_story-2_custom-968664dcf88fa278f1497073c7d0e5450053c5ea-s2500-c85-768x511.jpg 768w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2017/10/dicamba_not_love_story-2_custom-968664dcf88fa278f1497073c7d0e5450053c5ea-s2500-c85-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2017/10/dicamba_not_love_story-2_custom-968664dcf88fa278f1497073c7d0e5450053c5ea-s2500-c85-1180x786.jpg 1180w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2017/10/dicamba_not_love_story-2_custom-968664dcf88fa278f1497073c7d0e5450053c5ea-s2500-c85-960x639.jpg 960w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2017/10/dicamba_not_love_story-2_custom-968664dcf88fa278f1497073c7d0e5450053c5ea-s2500-c85-240x160.jpg 240w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2017/10/dicamba_not_love_story-2_custom-968664dcf88fa278f1497073c7d0e5450053c5ea-s2500-c85-375x250.jpg 375w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2017/10/dicamba_not_love_story-2_custom-968664dcf88fa278f1497073c7d0e5450053c5ea-s2500-c85-520x346.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A farmer's nightmare weed, glyphosate-resistant Palmer amaranth, or pigweed, sprouts in a soybean field in Arkansas. Its evolution has farmers looking for new weedkilling strategies. \u003ccite>( Dan Charles /NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\"The demand for it is overwhelming. The need to control these difficult-to-manage weeds is huge,\" says Scott Partridge, Monsanto's vice president of global strategy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When spraying started, \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/10/07/555872494/a-wayward-weed-killer-divides-farm-communities-harms-wildlife\">complaints\u003c/a> rolled in. The new \"low volatility\" versions of dicamba didn't stay where they belonged. They drifted into nearby fields, damaging crops there — mostly soybeans, but also vegetables and orchards. There were reports of damage from Mississippi to Minnesota, but the problem was worst in Arkansas, Missouri and Tennessee.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"By the end of May, first of June, it became impossible; the calls were coming in, three or four a day. Sometimes eight or 12 a day,\" says the University of Arkansas' Scott. \"There is no precedent for what we've seen this year.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At first, the companies selling these herbicides — both Monsanto and BASF — seemed unconcerned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"All I got was denial that there was a problem,\" Bradley says. \"What I kept hearing was: It's not a big problem nationwide; we always have these kinds of mistakes or accidents with the introduction of any new technology.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So Bradley, a past president of the Weed Science Society of America, started collecting data on crop damage from across the country, mapping the epidemic. By the end of the summer, Bradley estimated that at least 3.1 million acres of crops had shown some injury from drifting dicamba.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With the scale of dicamba damage increasingly clear, a fierce debate erupted over its cause.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monsanto's executives insist that the people who sprayed dicamba were just learning how to do it properly and didn't follow directions. Partridge says his company checked out more than a thousand cases of dicamba damage, \"and in 88 percent of those instances, the label was not followed.\" Farmers or pesticide applicators sprayed dicamba too close to neighboring fields, didn't clean out their equipment properly or used the wrong nozzles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Every one of those [mistakes] is fixable by education,\" Partridge says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>University weed scientists say that that is only part of the explanation and that the problem can't be fixed so easily.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bradley, Scott and their colleagues in other states say that much of the damage they saw this year didn't appear to come from \"physical drift\" of windblown droplets of dicamba, coming directly from a sprayer. Physical drift, they say, typically produces a plume of damage that diminishes with distance from the source of the spray. Instead, they saw entire hundred-acre fields of soybeans with cupped leaves, and the damage was uniform from one end to the other. They also saw damage in orchards and fields that were far removed from any fields sprayed with dicamba.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This pattern, they say, looks more like what they had feared all along: volatilization.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What is more, the scientists say, field experiments that they finally carried out this summer point toward evaporating dicamba as a cause.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bob Scott shows me one such experiment, a field of soybeans at a research station near Lonoke, Ark. Here, soybeans were injured by dicamba that definitely did not enter the field through mistakes in spraying.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It's important to remember, we did not spray this plot,\" Scott says. Instead, at a location far away from this field, he and his colleagues sprayed trays of soil with various dicamba-containing herbicides. Then they carried the trays into this field and placed them between the rows of soybeans for 48 hours. The trays and soybeans were protected underneath plastic hoops — essentially, miniature greenhouses — that were open at each end. The dicamba evaporated from the trays and injured the soybean plants nearby, curling their leaves and stunting their growth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"A lot of people were very disappointed when they saw the plots,\" Scott says. \"A lot of people didn't want to see what they were seeing, and were in disbelief.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These observations have huge implications. If the new formulations of dicamba evaporate and spread, they cannot easily be controlled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"If this were any other product, I feel like it would be just pulled off the market, and we'd be done with it,\" Scott says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But dicamba, and the crops created to tolerate it, aren't just any products. There is big money behind them. Monsanto, seed dealers, farmers who are struggling with weed problems — they all have a stake in this technology. The university scientists who are pointing out problems with them are confronting an economic juggernaut. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monsanto — and farmers who want to use dicamba — have been fighting back. In Arkansas, where state regulators \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/09/22/552803465/arkansas-defies-monsanto-moves-to-ban-rogue-weedkiller\">proposed\u003c/a> a ban on dicamba during the growing season next year, Monsanto recently sued the regulators, arguing that the ban was based on \"unsubstantiated theories regarding product volatility that are contradicted by science.\" The company \u003ca href=\"https://monsanto.com/app/uploads/2017/09/Monsantos-Petition-for-Rulemaking-to-the-Arkansas-State-Plant-B_84746_1.pdf\">called\u003c/a> on regulators to disregard information from Jason Norsworthy, one of the University of Arkansas' weed researchers, because he had recommended that farmers use a non-dicamba alternative from a rival company. Monsanto also attacked the objectivity of Ford Baldwin, a former university weed scientist who now works as a consultant to farmers and herbicide companies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I read it as an attack on all of us, and anybody who dares to [gather] outside data,\" Scott says. \"And some of my fellow weed scientists read it that way as well.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bradley says executives from Monsanto have made repeated calls to his supervisors. \"What the exact nature of those calls [was], I'm not real sure,\" Bradley says. \"But I'm pretty sure it has something to do with not being happy with what I'm saying.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I contacted three academic deans at the University of Missouri, asking for details about the calls. A university spokesman said they were too busy to respond.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monsanto's Partridge says, \"We are not attacking Dr. Bradley. We respect him, his position, opinion, and his work. We respect him, and academics in general.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bradley says criticism from people in Missouri's farming community whom he has known for years hits him even harder. \"To have somebody say that what [I'm] saying is bad for Missouri agriculture, that's a hard one to take,\" he says. \"There's not a lot of glory in these positions, or major financial incentive. We chose these jobs to help the farmers in our states.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monsanto's explanation for what happened this summer, and how to prevent it, seems to be carrying the day in Washington, D.C. Two weeks ago, the Environmental Protection Agency \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/10/13/557607443/with-ok-from-epa-use-of-controversial-weedkiller-is-expected-to-double\">announced\u003c/a> that it will allow continued use of dicamba next year. The EPA is imposing a few additional restrictions on who can spray it, and when. Those restrictions will have little effect, or none at all, on damage caused by volatilization.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Arkansas' proposal to ban use of dicamba during the growing season next summer has not yet received final approval. A public hearing on the proposal is set for Nov. 8.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kevin Bradley thinks there is one positive result from the controversy. \"It has made more farmers aware of what we do, and that is, unbiased research and calling it like we see it,\" he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the course of recent decades, publicly funded agricultural extension services have shrunk, and farmers have turned to seed and chemical companies for advice. \"It's become so weighted towards — 'well, the companies did their research, and it said this, so that must be the way it is!' \" Bradley says. \"You know what? Maybe that's not the way it is.\" \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"floatright"},"numeric":["floatright"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Copyright 2017 \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/em> \u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/bayareabites/122139/monsanto-attacks-scientists-after-studies-show-trouble-for-weedkiller-dicamba","authors":["byline_bayareabites_122139"],"categories":["bayareabites_10028","bayareabites_1245","bayareabites_2035","bayareabites_358","bayareabites_60"],"tags":["bayareabites_15550","bayareabites_10773"],"featImg":"bayareabites_122140","label":"bayareabites"},"bayareabites_116810":{"type":"posts","id":"bayareabites_116810","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"bayareabites","id":"116810","score":null,"sort":[1492181846000]},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"monsantos-driverless-car-is-crispr-gene-editing-driving-seed-consolidation","title":"Monsanto’s Driverless Car: Is CRISPR Gene Editing Driving Seed Consolidation?","publishDate":1492181846,"format":"image","headTitle":"Bay Area Bites | KQED Food","labelTerm":{"site":"bayareabites"},"content":"\u003cp>When the CEOs of both Monsanto and Bayer met with Donald Trump to talk about their potential merger just three days before the inauguration, they made some \u003ca href=\"https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-01-17/bayer-to-invest-8-billion-and-add-3-000-jobs-trump-aide-says\">big promises\u003c/a>. If the union between the world’s largest seed company and the German multinational chemical, pharmaceutical, and life-sciences company is blessed by antitrust regulators, the companies have pledged to add 3,000 high-tech American jobs and to combine—rather than consolidate and trim—their R&D budgets to the tune of $16 billion over the next six years, or $2.7 billion a year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The two companies have been locked in a dance since May 2016, when Monsanto \u003ca href=\"https://www.wsj.com/articles/monsanto-rejects-bayer-merger-offer-says-its-open-to-talks-1464110057\">rejected\u003c/a> Bayer’s initial $62 billion offer. Then, last fall, the merger reappeared in the news in a noteworthy chain of events.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On September 14, Bayer upped its offer to $66 billion and Monsanto accepted, putting a third major seed company merger on the table, beside ChemChina’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.wsj.com/articles/chemchina-offers-more-than-43-billion-for-syngenta-1454480529\">$43 billion takeover\u003c/a> of Syngenta and Dow Chemical’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-24/dupont-earnings-top-estimates-on-sales-of-plastics-to-carmakers\">intended merger\u003c/a> with DuPont. On the day it was announced, the \u003cem>Washington Post\u003c/em> \u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2016/09/14/bayer-and-monsanto-merge-in-mega-deal-aimed-at-domi-worlds-food-supply/?utm_term=.70f457ae8a04\">called the Bayer-Monsanto deal\u003c/a> the “mega-deal that could reshape [the] world’s food supply.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Less than a week later, spokespeople for the companies behind all three mergers were asked to \u003ca href=\"https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/meetings/consolidation-and-competition-in-the-us-seed-and-agrochemical-industry\">testify\u003c/a> before the senate judiciary committee, on what senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) called a “\u003ca href=\"http://bigstory.ap.org/article/05fc5120c295442fbc7c0f2a11ce19cd/senate-panel-scrutinize-proposed-bayer-monsanto-merger\">merger tsunami\u003c/a>.” Then, just two days later, Monsanto \u003ca href=\"http://news.monsanto.com/press-release/corporate/monsanto-announces-global-licensing-agreement-broad-institute-key-genome-edi\">announced\u003c/a> it had licensed the rights to use CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing—a technology that has been \u003ca href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/16/the-gene-hackers\">called\u003c/a> the “Model T of genetics” for its power to change the way we live.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This rapid-fire timing may have been a coincidence, but it also may be a sign of what’s to come. And it’s just one of many indications that CRISPR/Cas9 and other next-generation gene editing technologies will likely be at the forefront of the seed industry in the years ahead. Some even see gene editing, which is said to be simpler, less expensive, and more consumer-friendly than traditional genetic engineering, as one factor \u003ca href=\"http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/2162211-why-crispr-is-key-to-massive-agribusiness-consolidations/\">driving\u003c/a> the mergers. And while that’s up for debate, it’s clearly an important part of the strategy for companies looking to control, and profit from, the world’s seeds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last week the European Union \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/05/business/syngenta-chemchina-takeover.html?mwrsm=Email&_r=0\">cleared the way\u003c/a> for the ChemChina–Syngenta takeover, suggesting the other two mergers may be imminent. If that happens, the resulting three companies would control nearly 60 percent of global seedstocks (including as much as 80 percent of U.S. corn seeds) and 70 percent of the global pesticide market. And these companies are also making a bid to control much more than seeds and pesticides. Monsanto, for example, is already making a play to control many other facets of modern agriculture—including tools for precision planting and high-tech \u003ca href=\"https://techcrunch.com/2013/10/02/monsanto-acquires-weather-big-data-company-climate-corporation-for-930m/\">weather prediction\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So while much of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2016/08/dna-crispr-gene-editing-science-ethics/\">media coverage\u003c/a> of \u003ca href=\"http://gizmodo.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-crispr-the-new-tool-1702114381\">gene editing\u003c/a> has pointed to its potential to break molds and change the genetic playing field, when it comes to agriculture, it will likely follow a more familiar path: CRISPR and other similar technology will most likely be used by scientists mainly to continue developing seeds that withstand consistent doses of pesticides on large, industrialized farms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Monsanto has been conducting research with genome-editing techniques for years, and we are excited to be integrating additional technology from licensing partners in to this body of work,” Tom Adams, biotechnology lead for Monsanto, said in an email. Over the past year, the company has announced several licensing agreements that will allow it to access gene-editing technologies, such as CRISPR/Cas9 and CRISPR-Cpf1 (which is said to be \u003ca href=\"http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14406\">more precise\u003c/a>), as well as a tool from Dow AgroScience called EXZACT™ Precision Technology\u003csup>®\u003c/sup> Platform\u003cu>,\u003c/u> among others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although Adams said this work is still in its early days, he added, “we believe that genome-editing techniques have great potential to improve and unlock capabilities across our leading germplasm and genome libraries to enable a wide variety of improvements across crop systems.” However, he added, “We do not view it as a replacement for plant biotechnology.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>SEED: The Untold Story will premiere on the PBS series \u003ci>Independent Lens\u003c/i> on \u003cspan class=\"aBn\" tabindex=\"0\" data-term=\"goog_1829742120\">\u003cspan class=\"aQJ\">April 17, 2017 at 10PM\u003c/span>\u003c/span>. \u003ca href=\"http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/seed-the-untold-story/\">Learn more\u003c/a>. \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://youtu.be/3ys0fgZ7hmA\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gene Editing vs. Genetic Engineering\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since 1996, Monsanto has released a series of genetically engineered herbicide-resistant seeds, beginning with Roundup Ready soybeans in 1996, and moving on to corn, cotton, sugar beets, canola, and more. Today, Roundup Ready crops account for over \u003ca href=\"https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/adoption-of-genetically-engineered-crops-in-the-us/recent-trends-in-ge-adoption.aspx\">94 percent of the soybeans and 89 percent of the corn\u003c/a> grown in the United States.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As these products have come to dominate the farm landscape, weeds have also become resistant to Roundup. According to the \u003ca href=\"http://wssa.net/wp-content/uploads/WSSA-Fact-Sheet-on-Superweeds_16-Sep-2014.pdf\">Weed Science Society of America\u003c/a>, “overreliance on herbicides with a single mechanism of action to control certain weeds has led to the selection of weeds resistant to that mechanism of action.” Similarly, incidents of pesticide resistance have also \u003ca href=\"https://www.wsj.com/articles/limits-sought-on-gmo-corn-as-pest-resistance-grows-1425587078\">been on the rise\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_116814\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 400px\">\u003cimg src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2017/04/170410-crispr-2.jpg\" alt=\"Roundup\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\" class=\"size-full wp-image-116814\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2017/04/170410-crispr-2.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2017/04/170410-crispr-2-160x120.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2017/04/170410-crispr-2-240x180.jpg 240w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2017/04/170410-crispr-2-375x281.jpg 375w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Roundup \u003ccite>( \u003ca href=\"https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeepersmedia/26673445341\">Mike Mozart\u003c/a>)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As a result, farmers often find themselves on what critics call a \u003ca href=\"http://www.panna.org/gmos-pesticides-profit/pesticide-treadmill\">pesticide treadmill\u003c/a>, where each new form of resistance requires a more powerful solution. Companies have spent the last several years working on seeds with “stacked traits,” which combine two or more genes of interest into a single plant. In the case of Monsanto, that has meant, for instance, \u003ca href=\"https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/09/03/are-you-ready-for-monsantos-1-billion-herbicide-fa.aspx\">breeding seeds\u003c/a> that tolerate both glyphosate and a second herbicide called dicamba.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The main difference between gene editing and classical genetic engineering is that the former allows scientists to manipulate the genetic makeup of an organism—by changing or “knocking out” the function of a gene—without introducing genes from other organisms. This last part is key, because it’s often the combination of parts of various organisms—such as genes from bacteria added to corn to create herbicide resistance or genes from an arctic flounder added to strawberries to make them able to withstand cold weather—that has made the public wary of GMOs in their food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the image of CRISPR/Cas9 and other gene editing tools as an “entirely pristine” technology that rules out all foreign DNA isn’t entirely accurate, says Maywa Montenegro, a Ph.D. candidate in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at University of California, Berkeley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They aren’t wrong in saying CRISPR doesn’t need to introduce foreign DNA, but it absolutely can. That’s what it’s very good at,” she said. “But it’s also important for people to understand that you can create huge, impactful changes in a plant’s functioning without introducing anything foreign.” De-activating, or knocking out, a gene function, can significantly change the plants and animals involved.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the case of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v32/n9/full/nbt.2969.html\">mildew-resistant wheat\u003c/a> developed in China, for instance, scientists were able to introduce “targeted mutations” using CRISPR/Cas9 without inserting new genes. In another example, Cibus, a San Diego-based startup, has produced (and commercialized) an \u003ca href=\"https://www.cibus.com/\">herbicide-resistant canola\u003c/a> using another early gene-editing technique called Rapid Trait Development System (RTDS).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company also \u003ca href=\"http://www.agriculture.com/technology/how-gene-editing-will-change-agriculture\">says\u003c/a> it has other crops, such as herbicide-resistant rice and flax seeds, in the pipeline. DuPont is also working with the Berkeley-based start-up Caribou Biosciences (founded by \u003ca href=\"http://www.dailycal.org/2016/02/18/caribou-biosciences-co-founded-campus-researcher-jennifer-doudna-receives-intellectual-property-rights-crispr-technology/\">Jennifer Doudna\u003c/a>, one of the founders and patent-holders of CRISPR/Cas9 technology) to develop gene-edited, drought-resistant corn and wheat varieties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The most widely discussed food produced using gene editing today is a \u003ca href=\"http://agsci.psu.edu/magazine/articles/2016/fall-winter/a-crispr-mushroom\">non-browning mushroom\u003c/a> developed using CRISPR/Cas9 at Pennsylvania State University. The mushroom received a great deal of media attention last spring, when the Penn State scientists received \u003ca href=\"https://www.aphis.usda.gov/biotechnology/downloads/reg_loi/15-321-01_air_response_signed.pdf\">a letter\u003c/a> from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) informing them that the agency would not be regulating its field testing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the time, a number of media outlets reported that the mushroom had “\u003ca href=\"http://www.nature.com/news/gene-edited-crispr-mushroom-escapes-us-regulation-1.19754\">escaped regulation\u003c/a>,” suggesting that gene editing was not only remarkably different than tradition genetic engineering in crucial ways, but that it also might be the key to avoiding government oversight. But on both accounts, the reality may be less cut and dried.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Will Gene-Edited Seeds be Regulated?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Doug Gurian-Sherman, director of sustainable agriculture and senior scientist for the \u003ca href=\"http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/\">Center for Food Safety\u003c/a> (CFS), says the letter USDA sent to Penn State about the non-browning mushroom was just one of over 30 that went out at that time in response to requests by a variety of entities working with gene-editing technology.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the USDA did clearly mention the fact that the mushroom didn’t contain any foreign DNA in its response, that wasn’t the only reason it abdicated its regulatory authority. Just as important, it seems, is the fact that the mushroom was not in any way considered a “plant pest.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You see, when it comes to regulating GMO crops, plant pests have been at the heart of the USDA’s regulation approach; all other genetically engineered products fall under the auspices of either the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). (A document from the Pew Charitable Trusts includes a \u003ca href=\"http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/reports/food_and_biotechnology/hhsbiotech0901pdf.pdf\">handy chart\u003c/a> detailing which agency is supposed to regulate what types of organisms.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.aphis.usda.gov/biotechnology/downloads/reg_loi/15-321-01_air_response_signed.pdf\">letter\u003c/a> sent to Penn State concluded with this sentence: “Please be advised that the white button mushroom variety described in your letter may still be subject to other regulatory authorities such as the FDA or EPA.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So gene editing was by no means the only factor at hand. “As soon as they put genes in from any plant pest they would immediately become regulated by USDA,” said Gurian-Sherman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, exactly how the FDA plans to regulate gene editing is yet to be seen. Since January, the agency has been \u003ca href=\"https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2017-00840.pdf\">seeking public input\u003c/a> on the topic in both medical research and agriculture. One core question at hand is whether gene editing will be considered “genetic engineering.” And at a time when a growing number of consumers want to know exactly what’s in their food—and around \u003ca href=\"http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=97567&page=1\">90 percent\u003c/a> of Americans say they want to see genetically engineered ingredients in food labeled—this is as much a question of consumer demand as it is a question of regulation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We already see lots of people who are supportive of genetic engineering, calling [gene editing] ‘advanced breeding,’” said Gurian-Sherman. But, he added, “In terms of most of the legal definitions of genetic engineering that are out there right now, it applies. I think it is a legitimate area for argument whether this is generally safer or not or more acceptable, but they clearly don’t want to label it genetic engineering.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Michael Hansen, senior staff scientist at Consumers Union, “the FDA’s documents now \u003ca href=\"https://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocumentsRegulatoryInformation/ucm059098.htm\">clearly say\u003c/a> their definition of bioengineering is the same as the \u003ca href=\"http://civileats.com/2017/04/10/monsantos-driverless-car-is-crispr-gene-editing-driving-seed-consolidation/definition%2520of%2520modern%2520biotechnolgy\">definition\u003c/a> of modern biotechnology held by \u003ca href=\"http://www.fao.org/fao-who-codexalimentarius/en/\">Codex Alimentarius\u003c/a>.” That’s the “Food Code” established by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization. The Codex definition refers to any organism made using “the application of in vitro nucleic acid techniques.” And since gene editing does precisely that, Hansen believes the answer is clear: Gene editing should be seen as genetic engineering.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But not everyone agrees. In an \u003ca href=\"http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v48/n2/full/ng.3505.html\">editorial\u003c/a> last January, for instance, the editors of \u003cem>Nature\u003c/em> endorsed “the principle of transparency in the production of genome-edited crops and livestock…with no further need for regulation or distinction of these goods from the products of traditional breeding.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>U.C. Berkeley’s Montenegro describes CRISPR/Cas9 as a kind of Swiss army knife with the potential to be paradigm-shifting. But, she adds that, for that reason, it calls for a lot more scrutiny and regulatory oversight\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hansen agrees. Using gene editing, he said, “You can identify a key sequence you want to cut. But wherever that sequence occurs in the genome, you would get a cut. And you will also get a cut at sequences that look similar.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hansen also points to the fact that scientists have experienced at least some \u003ca href=\"http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/febs.13586/full\">off-target effects\u003c/a> with most gene editing technology to date. He points to the case of an \u003ca href=\"http://www.nature.com/news/hiv-overcomes-crispr-gene-editing-attack-1.19712\">effort to destroy the HIV virus\u003c/a> with CRISPR/Cas9. Although scientists engineered T-cells with CRISPR to recognize and destroy HIV, he said, “it took the HIV just a couple of weeks to evolve resistance to CRISPR.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And in a recent effort to \u003ca href=\"http://arep.med.harvard.edu/pdf/Ostrov_Church_2016.pdf\">artificially synthesize\u003c/a> a new genome for \u003cem>E. coli\u003c/em>, a group of scientists decided not to use gene editing because, they wrote, “these strategies…likely would introduce off-target mutations.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite these concerns, CFS’s Gurian-Sherman says there are big questions about how regulatory bodies under the Trump administration will choose to respond to the technology. For one, he says, gene editing could be much harder to test for.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Detecting [transgenic] engineered changes, for a molecular biologist is really, really easy,” he said. But some of these [gene edits] are not going to leave much of a fingerprint, if at all, and they’re going to be very hard to trace,” he said. “So something like the kind of testing the \u003ca href=\"https://www.nongmoproject.org/\">Non-GMO Project\u003c/a> does probably wouldn’t be possible in foods edited with CRISPR.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, Monsanto appears to be preparing for the possibility of regulation. When Lux Research, an independent technology research and advisory firm, looked into the Monsanto-Bayer merger in December, they surmised that gene editing was an important part of Monsanto’s appeal to Bayer, but that it was by no means the only technology they’re banking on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Monsanto’s advantage in the space is that they’re super diverse and they have their hands in all the cookie jars,” said Laura Lee, the author of \u003ca href=\"https://members.luxresearchinc.com/research/report/21808\">Lux’s report\u003c/a>. “So they’d be able to advance traits using CRISPR, or if the regulatory bodies step in and decide to classify CRISPR as genetic modification or put a harmful label on it, they’ll have of other options.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>“More Accessible” Technology\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While CRISPR and other gene editing tools are seen as more affordable and more efficient, they’re also being touted as more accessible than traditional genetic engineering—and they are already being used in small private laboratories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We think the fact that this science is accessible to and being explored by many researchers across the public and private sectors is exciting—and will only improve the types of products that will ultimately be accessible to farmers,” said Monsanto’s Tom Adams.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Indeed, most traditional genetically engineered traits take years and cost millions to produce (an average of $\u003ca href=\"https://croplife.org/wp-content/uploads/pdf_files/Getting-a-Biotech-Crop-to-Market-Phillips-McDougall-Study.pdf\">136 million\u003c/a> to be exact). So bringing that number down could bring more constituents into the fold, despite the consolidation at the top.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But seeds produced this way will still be subject to strict intellectual property fines, says Gurian-Sherman. “[CRISPR] won’t be as controllable by the big companies, but the patenting (or lack thereof) could really be a limiting factor for smaller companies,” he said. Case in point, a non-exclusive license to use CRISPR/Cas9 is valued at \u003ca href=\"https://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobsherkow/2017/02/21/how-much-is-a-crispr-patent-license-worth/#141d34066b77\">$265 million\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, if that license is used to create a handful of seed traits, it could be more than worth the investment for a company like Monsanto—particularly if it can deliver on sought-after traits such as drought tolerance. And it might lead one to deduce that a newly merged company such as Monsanto-Bayer would use gene editing to bring down its overall R&D budget.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But that’s not necessarily the case, says Montenegro. In addition to facing pressure from the Trump Administration to spend mightily in the U.S., she points to an economic phenomenon called \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox\">Jevons paradox\u003c/a>, wherein technology makes a process more efficient, but that efficiency ends up leading to increasing demand. (Jevon first observed the phenomenon while observing the coal industry of the 19th Century.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another important question is whether this more accessible technology will be put to use to create seeds designed for alternative or more sustainable farming systems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Montenegro says she has heard from one plant breeder at the University of Minnesota who was interested in using CRISPR/Cas9 for \u003ca href=\"http://open-pollinated-seeds.org.uk/participatory-plant-breeding/\">participatory plant breeding\u003c/a>—a tactic involving farmers that is often used in the developing world—and to breed plants that could be amenable to diversified organic farming systems. But she says it’s not likely that a wider playing field will change the basic premise of the bulk of the work done using gene-editing technology—which is to engineer seeds used on large-scale industrial farms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“While I don’t want to foreclose the possibility of using CRISPR for agroecology, [companies and institutions] are underinvesting and undercutting basic agroecology research to such a large degree that even the lower-hanging fruit hasn’t yet been picked,” Montenegro said. This “massive asymmetry” makes her doubtful that the technology will help researchers tread new paths when it comes to sustainable practices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gurian-Sherman is no more optimistic. “There are ways you can breed or adapt crops for sustainable agricultural systems that don’t rely on inputs like fertilizers and pesticides as much,” he said. “You can breed crops that attract natural enemies, or take advantage of the slower release of organic nutrients from cover crops and manure. I can go on and on about traits that are valuable to sustainable farming. But that’s not going to be of interest to these companies because they’re actually antithetical to their business models.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Consumers Union’s Hansen says the current excitement about gene editing reminds him of the very early days or genetic engineering. “In the late 80s and early 90s, they were saying they’d be able to do everything with GE. Thirty years later, all you have is herbicide-tolerant plants and Bt plants. Or that’s the vast majority.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was created in partnership with \u003ca href=\"https://itvs.org/\">ITVS\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>About the Author\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nTwilight Greenaway is the Managing Editor of Civil Eats. Her articles about food and farming have appeared in The New York Times, NPR.org, The Guardian, TakePart, Modern Farmer, Gastronomica and on Grist, where she served as the food editor from 2011-2012. See more at \u003ca href=\"http://www.twilightgreenaway.com/\">TwilightGreenaway.com\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"Gene editing technology is being heralded as a game-changer, but it raises serious questions as five of the Big Six agriculture and chemical companies seek to merge.","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1492181846,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":55,"wordCount":3177},"headData":{"title":"Monsanto’s Driverless Car: Is CRISPR Gene Editing Driving Seed Consolidation? | KQED","description":"Gene editing technology is being heralded as a game-changer, but it raises serious questions as five of the Big Six agriculture and chemical companies seek to merge.","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":"","schema":{"@context":"http://schema.org","@type":"Article","headline":"Monsanto’s Driverless Car: Is CRISPR Gene Editing Driving Seed Consolidation?","datePublished":"2017-04-14T14:57:26.000Z","dateModified":"2017-04-14T14:57:26.000Z","image":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"}},"disqusIdentifier":"116810 https://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/?p=116810","disqusUrl":"https://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/2017/04/14/monsantos-driverless-car-is-crispr-gene-editing-driving-seed-consolidation/","disqusTitle":"Monsanto’s Driverless Car: Is CRISPR Gene Editing Driving Seed Consolidation?","nprByline":"\u003ca href=\"http://civileats.com/author/tgreenaway/\">Twilight Greenaway\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/author/civileat/\">Civil Eats\u003c/a>","path":"/bayareabites/116810/monsantos-driverless-car-is-crispr-gene-editing-driving-seed-consolidation","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>When the CEOs of both Monsanto and Bayer met with Donald Trump to talk about their potential merger just three days before the inauguration, they made some \u003ca href=\"https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-01-17/bayer-to-invest-8-billion-and-add-3-000-jobs-trump-aide-says\">big promises\u003c/a>. If the union between the world’s largest seed company and the German multinational chemical, pharmaceutical, and life-sciences company is blessed by antitrust regulators, the companies have pledged to add 3,000 high-tech American jobs and to combine—rather than consolidate and trim—their R&D budgets to the tune of $16 billion over the next six years, or $2.7 billion a year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The two companies have been locked in a dance since May 2016, when Monsanto \u003ca href=\"https://www.wsj.com/articles/monsanto-rejects-bayer-merger-offer-says-its-open-to-talks-1464110057\">rejected\u003c/a> Bayer’s initial $62 billion offer. Then, last fall, the merger reappeared in the news in a noteworthy chain of events.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On September 14, Bayer upped its offer to $66 billion and Monsanto accepted, putting a third major seed company merger on the table, beside ChemChina’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.wsj.com/articles/chemchina-offers-more-than-43-billion-for-syngenta-1454480529\">$43 billion takeover\u003c/a> of Syngenta and Dow Chemical’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-24/dupont-earnings-top-estimates-on-sales-of-plastics-to-carmakers\">intended merger\u003c/a> with DuPont. On the day it was announced, the \u003cem>Washington Post\u003c/em> \u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2016/09/14/bayer-and-monsanto-merge-in-mega-deal-aimed-at-domi-worlds-food-supply/?utm_term=.70f457ae8a04\">called the Bayer-Monsanto deal\u003c/a> the “mega-deal that could reshape [the] world’s food supply.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Less than a week later, spokespeople for the companies behind all three mergers were asked to \u003ca href=\"https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/meetings/consolidation-and-competition-in-the-us-seed-and-agrochemical-industry\">testify\u003c/a> before the senate judiciary committee, on what senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) called a “\u003ca href=\"http://bigstory.ap.org/article/05fc5120c295442fbc7c0f2a11ce19cd/senate-panel-scrutinize-proposed-bayer-monsanto-merger\">merger tsunami\u003c/a>.” Then, just two days later, Monsanto \u003ca href=\"http://news.monsanto.com/press-release/corporate/monsanto-announces-global-licensing-agreement-broad-institute-key-genome-edi\">announced\u003c/a> it had licensed the rights to use CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing—a technology that has been \u003ca href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/16/the-gene-hackers\">called\u003c/a> the “Model T of genetics” for its power to change the way we live.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This rapid-fire timing may have been a coincidence, but it also may be a sign of what’s to come. And it’s just one of many indications that CRISPR/Cas9 and other next-generation gene editing technologies will likely be at the forefront of the seed industry in the years ahead. Some even see gene editing, which is said to be simpler, less expensive, and more consumer-friendly than traditional genetic engineering, as one factor \u003ca href=\"http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/2162211-why-crispr-is-key-to-massive-agribusiness-consolidations/\">driving\u003c/a> the mergers. And while that’s up for debate, it’s clearly an important part of the strategy for companies looking to control, and profit from, the world’s seeds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last week the European Union \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/05/business/syngenta-chemchina-takeover.html?mwrsm=Email&_r=0\">cleared the way\u003c/a> for the ChemChina–Syngenta takeover, suggesting the other two mergers may be imminent. If that happens, the resulting three companies would control nearly 60 percent of global seedstocks (including as much as 80 percent of U.S. corn seeds) and 70 percent of the global pesticide market. And these companies are also making a bid to control much more than seeds and pesticides. Monsanto, for example, is already making a play to control many other facets of modern agriculture—including tools for precision planting and high-tech \u003ca href=\"https://techcrunch.com/2013/10/02/monsanto-acquires-weather-big-data-company-climate-corporation-for-930m/\">weather prediction\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So while much of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2016/08/dna-crispr-gene-editing-science-ethics/\">media coverage\u003c/a> of \u003ca href=\"http://gizmodo.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-crispr-the-new-tool-1702114381\">gene editing\u003c/a> has pointed to its potential to break molds and change the genetic playing field, when it comes to agriculture, it will likely follow a more familiar path: CRISPR and other similar technology will most likely be used by scientists mainly to continue developing seeds that withstand consistent doses of pesticides on large, industrialized farms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Monsanto has been conducting research with genome-editing techniques for years, and we are excited to be integrating additional technology from licensing partners in to this body of work,” Tom Adams, biotechnology lead for Monsanto, said in an email. Over the past year, the company has announced several licensing agreements that will allow it to access gene-editing technologies, such as CRISPR/Cas9 and CRISPR-Cpf1 (which is said to be \u003ca href=\"http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14406\">more precise\u003c/a>), as well as a tool from Dow AgroScience called EXZACT™ Precision Technology\u003csup>®\u003c/sup> Platform\u003cu>,\u003c/u> among others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although Adams said this work is still in its early days, he added, “we believe that genome-editing techniques have great potential to improve and unlock capabilities across our leading germplasm and genome libraries to enable a wide variety of improvements across crop systems.” However, he added, “We do not view it as a replacement for plant biotechnology.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>SEED: The Untold Story will premiere on the PBS series \u003ci>Independent Lens\u003c/i> on \u003cspan class=\"aBn\" tabindex=\"0\" data-term=\"goog_1829742120\">\u003cspan class=\"aQJ\">April 17, 2017 at 10PM\u003c/span>\u003c/span>. \u003ca href=\"http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/seed-the-untold-story/\">Learn more\u003c/a>. \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/3ys0fgZ7hmA'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/3ys0fgZ7hmA'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gene Editing vs. Genetic Engineering\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since 1996, Monsanto has released a series of genetically engineered herbicide-resistant seeds, beginning with Roundup Ready soybeans in 1996, and moving on to corn, cotton, sugar beets, canola, and more. Today, Roundup Ready crops account for over \u003ca href=\"https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/adoption-of-genetically-engineered-crops-in-the-us/recent-trends-in-ge-adoption.aspx\">94 percent of the soybeans and 89 percent of the corn\u003c/a> grown in the United States.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As these products have come to dominate the farm landscape, weeds have also become resistant to Roundup. According to the \u003ca href=\"http://wssa.net/wp-content/uploads/WSSA-Fact-Sheet-on-Superweeds_16-Sep-2014.pdf\">Weed Science Society of America\u003c/a>, “overreliance on herbicides with a single mechanism of action to control certain weeds has led to the selection of weeds resistant to that mechanism of action.” Similarly, incidents of pesticide resistance have also \u003ca href=\"https://www.wsj.com/articles/limits-sought-on-gmo-corn-as-pest-resistance-grows-1425587078\">been on the rise\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_116814\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 400px\">\u003cimg src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2017/04/170410-crispr-2.jpg\" alt=\"Roundup\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\" class=\"size-full wp-image-116814\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2017/04/170410-crispr-2.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2017/04/170410-crispr-2-160x120.jpg 160w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2017/04/170410-crispr-2-240x180.jpg 240w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2017/04/170410-crispr-2-375x281.jpg 375w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Roundup \u003ccite>( \u003ca href=\"https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeepersmedia/26673445341\">Mike Mozart\u003c/a>)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As a result, farmers often find themselves on what critics call a \u003ca href=\"http://www.panna.org/gmos-pesticides-profit/pesticide-treadmill\">pesticide treadmill\u003c/a>, where each new form of resistance requires a more powerful solution. Companies have spent the last several years working on seeds with “stacked traits,” which combine two or more genes of interest into a single plant. In the case of Monsanto, that has meant, for instance, \u003ca href=\"https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/09/03/are-you-ready-for-monsantos-1-billion-herbicide-fa.aspx\">breeding seeds\u003c/a> that tolerate both glyphosate and a second herbicide called dicamba.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The main difference between gene editing and classical genetic engineering is that the former allows scientists to manipulate the genetic makeup of an organism—by changing or “knocking out” the function of a gene—without introducing genes from other organisms. This last part is key, because it’s often the combination of parts of various organisms—such as genes from bacteria added to corn to create herbicide resistance or genes from an arctic flounder added to strawberries to make them able to withstand cold weather—that has made the public wary of GMOs in their food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the image of CRISPR/Cas9 and other gene editing tools as an “entirely pristine” technology that rules out all foreign DNA isn’t entirely accurate, says Maywa Montenegro, a Ph.D. candidate in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at University of California, Berkeley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They aren’t wrong in saying CRISPR doesn’t need to introduce foreign DNA, but it absolutely can. That’s what it’s very good at,” she said. “But it’s also important for people to understand that you can create huge, impactful changes in a plant’s functioning without introducing anything foreign.” De-activating, or knocking out, a gene function, can significantly change the plants and animals involved.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the case of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v32/n9/full/nbt.2969.html\">mildew-resistant wheat\u003c/a> developed in China, for instance, scientists were able to introduce “targeted mutations” using CRISPR/Cas9 without inserting new genes. In another example, Cibus, a San Diego-based startup, has produced (and commercialized) an \u003ca href=\"https://www.cibus.com/\">herbicide-resistant canola\u003c/a> using another early gene-editing technique called Rapid Trait Development System (RTDS).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company also \u003ca href=\"http://www.agriculture.com/technology/how-gene-editing-will-change-agriculture\">says\u003c/a> it has other crops, such as herbicide-resistant rice and flax seeds, in the pipeline. DuPont is also working with the Berkeley-based start-up Caribou Biosciences (founded by \u003ca href=\"http://www.dailycal.org/2016/02/18/caribou-biosciences-co-founded-campus-researcher-jennifer-doudna-receives-intellectual-property-rights-crispr-technology/\">Jennifer Doudna\u003c/a>, one of the founders and patent-holders of CRISPR/Cas9 technology) to develop gene-edited, drought-resistant corn and wheat varieties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The most widely discussed food produced using gene editing today is a \u003ca href=\"http://agsci.psu.edu/magazine/articles/2016/fall-winter/a-crispr-mushroom\">non-browning mushroom\u003c/a> developed using CRISPR/Cas9 at Pennsylvania State University. The mushroom received a great deal of media attention last spring, when the Penn State scientists received \u003ca href=\"https://www.aphis.usda.gov/biotechnology/downloads/reg_loi/15-321-01_air_response_signed.pdf\">a letter\u003c/a> from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) informing them that the agency would not be regulating its field testing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the time, a number of media outlets reported that the mushroom had “\u003ca href=\"http://www.nature.com/news/gene-edited-crispr-mushroom-escapes-us-regulation-1.19754\">escaped regulation\u003c/a>,” suggesting that gene editing was not only remarkably different than tradition genetic engineering in crucial ways, but that it also might be the key to avoiding government oversight. But on both accounts, the reality may be less cut and dried.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Will Gene-Edited Seeds be Regulated?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Doug Gurian-Sherman, director of sustainable agriculture and senior scientist for the \u003ca href=\"http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/\">Center for Food Safety\u003c/a> (CFS), says the letter USDA sent to Penn State about the non-browning mushroom was just one of over 30 that went out at that time in response to requests by a variety of entities working with gene-editing technology.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the USDA did clearly mention the fact that the mushroom didn’t contain any foreign DNA in its response, that wasn’t the only reason it abdicated its regulatory authority. Just as important, it seems, is the fact that the mushroom was not in any way considered a “plant pest.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You see, when it comes to regulating GMO crops, plant pests have been at the heart of the USDA’s regulation approach; all other genetically engineered products fall under the auspices of either the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). (A document from the Pew Charitable Trusts includes a \u003ca href=\"http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/reports/food_and_biotechnology/hhsbiotech0901pdf.pdf\">handy chart\u003c/a> detailing which agency is supposed to regulate what types of organisms.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.aphis.usda.gov/biotechnology/downloads/reg_loi/15-321-01_air_response_signed.pdf\">letter\u003c/a> sent to Penn State concluded with this sentence: “Please be advised that the white button mushroom variety described in your letter may still be subject to other regulatory authorities such as the FDA or EPA.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So gene editing was by no means the only factor at hand. “As soon as they put genes in from any plant pest they would immediately become regulated by USDA,” said Gurian-Sherman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, exactly how the FDA plans to regulate gene editing is yet to be seen. Since January, the agency has been \u003ca href=\"https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2017-00840.pdf\">seeking public input\u003c/a> on the topic in both medical research and agriculture. One core question at hand is whether gene editing will be considered “genetic engineering.” And at a time when a growing number of consumers want to know exactly what’s in their food—and around \u003ca href=\"http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=97567&page=1\">90 percent\u003c/a> of Americans say they want to see genetically engineered ingredients in food labeled—this is as much a question of consumer demand as it is a question of regulation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We already see lots of people who are supportive of genetic engineering, calling [gene editing] ‘advanced breeding,’” said Gurian-Sherman. But, he added, “In terms of most of the legal definitions of genetic engineering that are out there right now, it applies. I think it is a legitimate area for argument whether this is generally safer or not or more acceptable, but they clearly don’t want to label it genetic engineering.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Michael Hansen, senior staff scientist at Consumers Union, “the FDA’s documents now \u003ca href=\"https://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocumentsRegulatoryInformation/ucm059098.htm\">clearly say\u003c/a> their definition of bioengineering is the same as the \u003ca href=\"http://civileats.com/2017/04/10/monsantos-driverless-car-is-crispr-gene-editing-driving-seed-consolidation/definition%2520of%2520modern%2520biotechnolgy\">definition\u003c/a> of modern biotechnology held by \u003ca href=\"http://www.fao.org/fao-who-codexalimentarius/en/\">Codex Alimentarius\u003c/a>.” That’s the “Food Code” established by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization. The Codex definition refers to any organism made using “the application of in vitro nucleic acid techniques.” And since gene editing does precisely that, Hansen believes the answer is clear: Gene editing should be seen as genetic engineering.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But not everyone agrees. In an \u003ca href=\"http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v48/n2/full/ng.3505.html\">editorial\u003c/a> last January, for instance, the editors of \u003cem>Nature\u003c/em> endorsed “the principle of transparency in the production of genome-edited crops and livestock…with no further need for regulation or distinction of these goods from the products of traditional breeding.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>U.C. Berkeley’s Montenegro describes CRISPR/Cas9 as a kind of Swiss army knife with the potential to be paradigm-shifting. But, she adds that, for that reason, it calls for a lot more scrutiny and regulatory oversight\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hansen agrees. Using gene editing, he said, “You can identify a key sequence you want to cut. But wherever that sequence occurs in the genome, you would get a cut. And you will also get a cut at sequences that look similar.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hansen also points to the fact that scientists have experienced at least some \u003ca href=\"http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/febs.13586/full\">off-target effects\u003c/a> with most gene editing technology to date. He points to the case of an \u003ca href=\"http://www.nature.com/news/hiv-overcomes-crispr-gene-editing-attack-1.19712\">effort to destroy the HIV virus\u003c/a> with CRISPR/Cas9. Although scientists engineered T-cells with CRISPR to recognize and destroy HIV, he said, “it took the HIV just a couple of weeks to evolve resistance to CRISPR.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And in a recent effort to \u003ca href=\"http://arep.med.harvard.edu/pdf/Ostrov_Church_2016.pdf\">artificially synthesize\u003c/a> a new genome for \u003cem>E. coli\u003c/em>, a group of scientists decided not to use gene editing because, they wrote, “these strategies…likely would introduce off-target mutations.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite these concerns, CFS’s Gurian-Sherman says there are big questions about how regulatory bodies under the Trump administration will choose to respond to the technology. For one, he says, gene editing could be much harder to test for.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Detecting [transgenic] engineered changes, for a molecular biologist is really, really easy,” he said. But some of these [gene edits] are not going to leave much of a fingerprint, if at all, and they’re going to be very hard to trace,” he said. “So something like the kind of testing the \u003ca href=\"https://www.nongmoproject.org/\">Non-GMO Project\u003c/a> does probably wouldn’t be possible in foods edited with CRISPR.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, Monsanto appears to be preparing for the possibility of regulation. When Lux Research, an independent technology research and advisory firm, looked into the Monsanto-Bayer merger in December, they surmised that gene editing was an important part of Monsanto’s appeal to Bayer, but that it was by no means the only technology they’re banking on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Monsanto’s advantage in the space is that they’re super diverse and they have their hands in all the cookie jars,” said Laura Lee, the author of \u003ca href=\"https://members.luxresearchinc.com/research/report/21808\">Lux’s report\u003c/a>. “So they’d be able to advance traits using CRISPR, or if the regulatory bodies step in and decide to classify CRISPR as genetic modification or put a harmful label on it, they’ll have of other options.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>“More Accessible” Technology\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While CRISPR and other gene editing tools are seen as more affordable and more efficient, they’re also being touted as more accessible than traditional genetic engineering—and they are already being used in small private laboratories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We think the fact that this science is accessible to and being explored by many researchers across the public and private sectors is exciting—and will only improve the types of products that will ultimately be accessible to farmers,” said Monsanto’s Tom Adams.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Indeed, most traditional genetically engineered traits take years and cost millions to produce (an average of $\u003ca href=\"https://croplife.org/wp-content/uploads/pdf_files/Getting-a-Biotech-Crop-to-Market-Phillips-McDougall-Study.pdf\">136 million\u003c/a> to be exact). So bringing that number down could bring more constituents into the fold, despite the consolidation at the top.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But seeds produced this way will still be subject to strict intellectual property fines, says Gurian-Sherman. “[CRISPR] won’t be as controllable by the big companies, but the patenting (or lack thereof) could really be a limiting factor for smaller companies,” he said. Case in point, a non-exclusive license to use CRISPR/Cas9 is valued at \u003ca href=\"https://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobsherkow/2017/02/21/how-much-is-a-crispr-patent-license-worth/#141d34066b77\">$265 million\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, if that license is used to create a handful of seed traits, it could be more than worth the investment for a company like Monsanto—particularly if it can deliver on sought-after traits such as drought tolerance. And it might lead one to deduce that a newly merged company such as Monsanto-Bayer would use gene editing to bring down its overall R&D budget.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But that’s not necessarily the case, says Montenegro. In addition to facing pressure from the Trump Administration to spend mightily in the U.S., she points to an economic phenomenon called \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox\">Jevons paradox\u003c/a>, wherein technology makes a process more efficient, but that efficiency ends up leading to increasing demand. (Jevon first observed the phenomenon while observing the coal industry of the 19th Century.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another important question is whether this more accessible technology will be put to use to create seeds designed for alternative or more sustainable farming systems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Montenegro says she has heard from one plant breeder at the University of Minnesota who was interested in using CRISPR/Cas9 for \u003ca href=\"http://open-pollinated-seeds.org.uk/participatory-plant-breeding/\">participatory plant breeding\u003c/a>—a tactic involving farmers that is often used in the developing world—and to breed plants that could be amenable to diversified organic farming systems. But she says it’s not likely that a wider playing field will change the basic premise of the bulk of the work done using gene-editing technology—which is to engineer seeds used on large-scale industrial farms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“While I don’t want to foreclose the possibility of using CRISPR for agroecology, [companies and institutions] are underinvesting and undercutting basic agroecology research to such a large degree that even the lower-hanging fruit hasn’t yet been picked,” Montenegro said. This “massive asymmetry” makes her doubtful that the technology will help researchers tread new paths when it comes to sustainable practices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gurian-Sherman is no more optimistic. “There are ways you can breed or adapt crops for sustainable agricultural systems that don’t rely on inputs like fertilizers and pesticides as much,” he said. “You can breed crops that attract natural enemies, or take advantage of the slower release of organic nutrients from cover crops and manure. I can go on and on about traits that are valuable to sustainable farming. But that’s not going to be of interest to these companies because they’re actually antithetical to their business models.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Consumers Union’s Hansen says the current excitement about gene editing reminds him of the very early days or genetic engineering. “In the late 80s and early 90s, they were saying they’d be able to do everything with GE. Thirty years later, all you have is herbicide-tolerant plants and Bt plants. Or that’s the vast majority.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was created in partnership with \u003ca href=\"https://itvs.org/\">ITVS\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"floatright"},"numeric":["floatright"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>About the Author\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nTwilight Greenaway is the Managing Editor of Civil Eats. Her articles about food and farming have appeared in The New York Times, NPR.org, The Guardian, TakePart, Modern Farmer, Gastronomica and on Grist, where she served as the food editor from 2011-2012. See more at \u003ca href=\"http://www.twilightgreenaway.com/\">TwilightGreenaway.com\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/bayareabites/116810/monsantos-driverless-car-is-crispr-gene-editing-driving-seed-consolidation","authors":["byline_bayareabites_116810"],"categories":["bayareabites_1874","bayareabites_11028","bayareabites_10028","bayareabites_4084","bayareabites_1245","bayareabites_2035","bayareabites_358","bayareabites_60"],"tags":["bayareabites_15412","bayareabites_12277","bayareabites_10787","bayareabites_10773","bayareabites_14236","bayareabites_15823","bayareabites_8523"],"featImg":"bayareabites_116813","label":"bayareabites"},"bayareabites_112764":{"type":"posts","id":"bayareabites_112764","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"bayareabites","id":"112764","score":null,"sort":[1476823284000]},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"farmers-antitrust-activists-are-worried-that-big-ag-is-only-getting-bigger","title":"Farmers, Antitrust Activists Are Worried That Big Ag Is Only Getting Bigger","publishDate":1476823284,"format":"standard","headTitle":"Bay Area Bites | KQED Food","labelTerm":{"site":"bayareabites"},"content":"\u003cp>Like most farmers, Mark Nelson, who grows corn, soybeans and wheat near Louisburg, Kan., is getting squeezed. He's paying three times more for seed than he used to, while his corn sells for less than half what it brought four years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It's a – that's a challenge,\" Nelson says. \"You're not going to be in the black, let's put it that way.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Low commodity prices are rippling up and down the farm-economy food chain — from the farm to the boardroom — and it has many of the huge companies that control farm inputs looking to a new future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most of the seeds and chemicals used to grow the world's crops come from just a handful of big companies, and the largest of those multinational companies — Monsanto, Bayer, Dow, DuPont, and Syngenta — are trying to get even bigger.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The prospect of fewer, larger companies controlling so much of the basic food supply is giving some farmers and antitrust advocates heartburn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With massive supplies of the world's most important crops, like corn and soybeans, prices have plummeted. Seed industry consultant Bud Hughes says that doesn't just affect farmers. The massive companies that supply farmers are hurting, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"To be cost effective, they've got to look for cost synergies, they've got to look to become a lower-cost provider, and find efficiencies in their research engines, find efficiencies in their cost of goods, etcetera,\" Hughes says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And to do that, agri-giants are pairing up like teenagers at a dance. German company Bayer is trying to merge with Monsanto, the world's dominant GMO seed company. Bayer is known for its aspirin, of course, but it's also a leading pesticide company and holds some very successful genetic seed-trait patents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dow is trying to hook up with DuPont; both companies have enormous agricultural divisions. Then there's ChemChina, which is trying to buy Swiss biotech giant Syngenta.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The burst of mergers is making some people in farm country nervous.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It's scary,\" says Clyde Sylvester, owner of Sylvester Ranch Seeds, near Ottawa, Kan. \"It's not good for the farmer.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Corn and soybean fields surround Sylvester's business. It seems a long way from the corporate headquarters of firms like Bayer or Syngenta.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"This is a family operation,\" Sylvester says, standing near the farmhouse at the center of his operation. \"My dad started the operation in 1945, been selling seed ever since then.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back then, many farmers dabbled in the seed business. Public land grant universities did most of the research and shared it freely. Now, Sylvester, like many of the other 100 or so other mid-sized farm seed companies, license technology and seed traits from the big companies to use in his own branded corn and soybean seeds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, the companies he works with compete against each other. After the mergers, at least two of them may not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Lack of competition,\" bemoans Sylvester. \"When you look at it, the world's food supply is going to be controlled by what – three companies?\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The proposed biotech mergers are setting off alarms in Washington, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley \u003ca href=\"http://harvestpublicmedia.org/content/senate-committee-hears-both-sides-proposed-ag-company-mergers\">called a hearing on Capitol Hill\u003c/a> to discuss the mergers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I'm afraid that this consolidation wave may have become a tsunami,\" Grassley said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the hearing, company executives defended the mergers. Monsanto's Robb Fraley, chief technology officer, testified that biotech companies are racing to keep ahead of climate change, pesticide-resistant weeds and the population explosion. To do that, he says they need to spend big on science.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Because the solutions we need can only come if companies can embrace new technology, if they can increase their investments and accelerate R & D. And that's why you are seeing this latest round of investments across our industry,\" said Farley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But, \u003ca href=\"http://www.antitrustinstitute.org/content/diana-l-moss\">Diana Moss\u003c/a>, president of the American Antitrust Institute, says the mergers are motivated more by the quest for profit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"The proposed mergers could well increase prices for biotechnology, eliminate choices for growers, slow down innovation and raise food prices to consumers,\" Moss testified.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Moss says she opposes a system where three companies control four out of every five corn seeds sold in the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"This isn't only happening in agriculture or biotech — it's happening in many other sectors,\" Moss warns. \"We have sort of an epidemic of declining competition in the U.S. and internationally. We have major sectors dominated by just a handful of firms.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Look at telecommunications, she says, health insurance, or even grocery stores.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Regulators will likely force merging agricultural companies to sell off parts of their businesses. That could create openings for competitors, which in theory could lead to the next generation of biotech companies. But for the near term, it seems likely that an industry tasked with feeding more and more people will be controlled by fewer and fewer companies. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Copyright 2016 \u003ca href=\"http://www.kcur.org/\">KCUR-FM\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"Five of the largest agrochemical companies are currently involved in mergers that may lead to four companies controlling many of the basics that big grain farmers use to grow food globally.","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1476823284,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":30,"wordCount":830},"headData":{"title":"Farmers, Antitrust Activists Are Worried That Big Ag Is Only Getting Bigger | KQED","description":"Five of the largest agrochemical companies are currently involved in mergers that may lead to four companies controlling many of the basics that big grain farmers use to grow food globally.","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":"","schema":{"@context":"http://schema.org","@type":"Article","headline":"Farmers, Antitrust Activists Are Worried That Big Ag Is Only Getting Bigger","datePublished":"2016-10-18T20:41:24.000Z","dateModified":"2016-10-18T20:41:24.000Z","image":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"}},"disqusIdentifier":"112764 http://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/?p=112764","disqusUrl":"https://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/2016/10/18/farmers-antitrust-activists-are-worried-that-big-ag-is-only-getting-bigger/","disqusTitle":"Farmers, Antitrust Activists Are Worried That Big Ag Is Only Getting Bigger","nprByline":"Frank Morris, \u003ca href=\"http://www.kcur.org/\" target=\"_blank\">KCUR-FM\u003c/a> at NPR Food","nprImageAgency":"Frank Morris","nprStoryId":"498308185","nprApiLink":"http://api.npr.org/query?id=498308185&apiKey=MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004","nprHtmlLink":"http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/10/18/498308185/farmers-antitrust-activists-are-worried-that-big-ag-is-only-getting-bigger?ft=nprml&f=498308185","nprRetrievedStory":"1","nprPubDate":"Tue, 18 Oct 2016 16:10:00 -0400","nprStoryDate":"Tue, 18 Oct 2016 13:41:00 -0400","nprLastModifiedDate":"Tue, 18 Oct 2016 16:10:08 -0400","path":"/bayareabites/112764/farmers-antitrust-activists-are-worried-that-big-ag-is-only-getting-bigger","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Like most farmers, Mark Nelson, who grows corn, soybeans and wheat near Louisburg, Kan., is getting squeezed. He's paying three times more for seed than he used to, while his corn sells for less than half what it brought four years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It's a – that's a challenge,\" Nelson says. \"You're not going to be in the black, let's put it that way.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Low commodity prices are rippling up and down the farm-economy food chain — from the farm to the boardroom — and it has many of the huge companies that control farm inputs looking to a new future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most of the seeds and chemicals used to grow the world's crops come from just a handful of big companies, and the largest of those multinational companies — Monsanto, Bayer, Dow, DuPont, and Syngenta — are trying to get even bigger.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The prospect of fewer, larger companies controlling so much of the basic food supply is giving some farmers and antitrust advocates heartburn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With massive supplies of the world's most important crops, like corn and soybeans, prices have plummeted. Seed industry consultant Bud Hughes says that doesn't just affect farmers. The massive companies that supply farmers are hurting, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"To be cost effective, they've got to look for cost synergies, they've got to look to become a lower-cost provider, and find efficiencies in their research engines, find efficiencies in their cost of goods, etcetera,\" Hughes says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And to do that, agri-giants are pairing up like teenagers at a dance. German company Bayer is trying to merge with Monsanto, the world's dominant GMO seed company. Bayer is known for its aspirin, of course, but it's also a leading pesticide company and holds some very successful genetic seed-trait patents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dow is trying to hook up with DuPont; both companies have enormous agricultural divisions. Then there's ChemChina, which is trying to buy Swiss biotech giant Syngenta.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The burst of mergers is making some people in farm country nervous.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It's scary,\" says Clyde Sylvester, owner of Sylvester Ranch Seeds, near Ottawa, Kan. \"It's not good for the farmer.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Corn and soybean fields surround Sylvester's business. It seems a long way from the corporate headquarters of firms like Bayer or Syngenta.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"This is a family operation,\" Sylvester says, standing near the farmhouse at the center of his operation. \"My dad started the operation in 1945, been selling seed ever since then.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back then, many farmers dabbled in the seed business. Public land grant universities did most of the research and shared it freely. Now, Sylvester, like many of the other 100 or so other mid-sized farm seed companies, license technology and seed traits from the big companies to use in his own branded corn and soybean seeds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, the companies he works with compete against each other. After the mergers, at least two of them may not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Lack of competition,\" bemoans Sylvester. \"When you look at it, the world's food supply is going to be controlled by what – three companies?\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The proposed biotech mergers are setting off alarms in Washington, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley \u003ca href=\"http://harvestpublicmedia.org/content/senate-committee-hears-both-sides-proposed-ag-company-mergers\">called a hearing on Capitol Hill\u003c/a> to discuss the mergers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I'm afraid that this consolidation wave may have become a tsunami,\" Grassley said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the hearing, company executives defended the mergers. Monsanto's Robb Fraley, chief technology officer, testified that biotech companies are racing to keep ahead of climate change, pesticide-resistant weeds and the population explosion. To do that, he says they need to spend big on science.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Because the solutions we need can only come if companies can embrace new technology, if they can increase their investments and accelerate R & D. And that's why you are seeing this latest round of investments across our industry,\" said Farley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But, \u003ca href=\"http://www.antitrustinstitute.org/content/diana-l-moss\">Diana Moss\u003c/a>, president of the American Antitrust Institute, says the mergers are motivated more by the quest for profit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"The proposed mergers could well increase prices for biotechnology, eliminate choices for growers, slow down innovation and raise food prices to consumers,\" Moss testified.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Moss says she opposes a system where three companies control four out of every five corn seeds sold in the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"This isn't only happening in agriculture or biotech — it's happening in many other sectors,\" Moss warns. \"We have sort of an epidemic of declining competition in the U.S. and internationally. We have major sectors dominated by just a handful of firms.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Look at telecommunications, she says, health insurance, or even grocery stores.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Regulators will likely force merging agricultural companies to sell off parts of their businesses. That could create openings for competitors, which in theory could lead to the next generation of biotech companies. But for the near term, it seems likely that an industry tasked with feeding more and more people will be controlled by fewer and fewer companies. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Copyright 2016 \u003ca href=\"http://www.kcur.org/\">KCUR-FM\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/bayareabites/112764/farmers-antitrust-activists-are-worried-that-big-ag-is-only-getting-bigger","authors":["byline_bayareabites_112764"],"categories":["bayareabites_1874","bayareabites_10028","bayareabites_4084","bayareabites_2035"],"tags":["bayareabites_15659","bayareabites_15466","bayareabites_15658","bayareabites_15467","bayareabites_12209","bayareabites_10773"],"featImg":"bayareabites_112765","label":"bayareabites"},"bayareabites_112143":{"type":"posts","id":"bayareabites_112143","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"bayareabites","id":"112143","score":null,"sort":[1474268295000]},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"epa-weighs-in-on-glyphosate-says-it-doesnt-cause-cancer","title":"EPA Weighs In On Glyphosate, Says It Doesn't Cause Cancer","publishDate":1474268295,"format":"standard","headTitle":"Bay Area Bites | KQED Food","labelTerm":{},"content":"\u003cp>No chemical used by farmers, it seems, gets more attention than glyphosate, also known by its trade name, Roundup. That's mainly because it is a cornerstone of the shift to genetically modified crops, many of which have been modified to tolerate glyphosate. This, in turn, persuaded farmers to rely on this chemical for easy control of their weeds. (Easy, at least, until weeds evolved to become immune to glyphosate, but that's a different story.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Glyphosate had been considered among the safest of herbicides. So it was a shock to many, last year, when the International Agency for Research on Cancer \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/03/24/394912399/a-top-weedkiiller-probably-causes-cancer-should-we-be-scared\">announced\u003c/a> that this chemical is probably carcinogenic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since that announcement, however, others have looked at the same collection of data and come to contrary conclusions. The European Food Safety Agency convened a group of experts who \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/11/13/455810235/european-cancer-experts-dont-agree-on-how-risky-roundup-is\">concluded\u003c/a> that glyphosate probably does not cause cancer. So did the UN's \u003ca href=\"http://www.who.int/foodsafety/jmprsummary2016.pdf?ua=1\">Food and Agriculture Organization\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now the Environmental Protection Agency has issued its own \u003ca href=\"http://src.bna.com/iE2\">report\u003c/a>, and it also concludes that glyphosate is not likely to cause cancer in humans. Outside scientists will review the report in October.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report is part of a lengthy process by which EPA is reviewing many agricultural chemicals, and deciding whether farmers will be allowed to use them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>European regulators, meanwhile, are locked in a political battle over whether glyphosate use will continue to be permitted on that continent. The European Commission has \u003ca href=\"http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-16-2012_en.htm\">authorized\u003c/a> continued sales of the chemical, but only temporarily.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003cem>Copyright 2016 \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/\" target=\"_blank\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/em> \u003c/p>\n\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"The Environmental Protection Agency says that the country's most widely used weedkiller, glyphosate, does not cause cancer. The chemical has been under intense international scrutiny.","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1474268295,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":9,"wordCount":252},"headData":{"title":"EPA Weighs In On Glyphosate, Says It Doesn't Cause Cancer | KQED","description":"The Environmental Protection Agency says that the country's most widely used weedkiller, glyphosate, does not cause cancer. The chemical has been under intense international scrutiny.","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":"","schema":{"@context":"http://schema.org","@type":"Article","headline":"EPA Weighs In On Glyphosate, Says It Doesn't Cause Cancer","datePublished":"2016-09-19T06:58:15.000Z","dateModified":"2016-09-19T06:58:15.000Z","image":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"}},"disqusIdentifier":"112143 http://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/?p=112143","disqusUrl":"https://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/2016/09/18/epa-weighs-in-on-glyphosate-says-it-doesnt-cause-cancer/","disqusTitle":"EPA Weighs In On Glyphosate, Says It Doesn't Cause Cancer","source":"Health and Nutrition","sourceUrl":"https://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/category/health-and-nutrition/","nprImageCredit":"Seth Perlman","nprByline":"Dan Charles, NPR Food","nprImageAgency":"AP","nprStoryId":"494301343","nprApiLink":"http://api.npr.org/query?id=494301343&apiKey=MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004","nprHtmlLink":"http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/09/17/494301343/epa-weighs-in-on-glyphosate-says-it-doesnt-cause-cancer?ft=nprml&f=494301343","nprRetrievedStory":"1","nprPubDate":"Sat, 17 Sep 2016 09:49:00 -0400","nprStoryDate":"Sat, 17 Sep 2016 09:49:00 -0400","nprLastModifiedDate":"Sat, 17 Sep 2016 09:49:58 -0400","path":"/bayareabites/112143/epa-weighs-in-on-glyphosate-says-it-doesnt-cause-cancer","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>No chemical used by farmers, it seems, gets more attention than glyphosate, also known by its trade name, Roundup. That's mainly because it is a cornerstone of the shift to genetically modified crops, many of which have been modified to tolerate glyphosate. This, in turn, persuaded farmers to rely on this chemical for easy control of their weeds. (Easy, at least, until weeds evolved to become immune to glyphosate, but that's a different story.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Glyphosate had been considered among the safest of herbicides. So it was a shock to many, last year, when the International Agency for Research on Cancer \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/03/24/394912399/a-top-weedkiiller-probably-causes-cancer-should-we-be-scared\">announced\u003c/a> that this chemical is probably carcinogenic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since that announcement, however, others have looked at the same collection of data and come to contrary conclusions. The European Food Safety Agency convened a group of experts who \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/11/13/455810235/european-cancer-experts-dont-agree-on-how-risky-roundup-is\">concluded\u003c/a> that glyphosate probably does not cause cancer. So did the UN's \u003ca href=\"http://www.who.int/foodsafety/jmprsummary2016.pdf?ua=1\">Food and Agriculture Organization\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now the Environmental Protection Agency has issued its own \u003ca href=\"http://src.bna.com/iE2\">report\u003c/a>, and it also concludes that glyphosate is not likely to cause cancer in humans. Outside scientists will review the report in October.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report is part of a lengthy process by which EPA is reviewing many agricultural chemicals, and deciding whether farmers will be allowed to use them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>European regulators, meanwhile, are locked in a political battle over whether glyphosate use will continue to be permitted on that continent. The European Commission has \u003ca href=\"http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-16-2012_en.htm\">authorized\u003c/a> continued sales of the chemical, but only temporarily.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003cem>Copyright 2016 \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/\" target=\"_blank\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/em> \u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/bayareabites/112143/epa-weighs-in-on-glyphosate-says-it-doesnt-cause-cancer","authors":["byline_bayareabites_112143"],"categories":["bayareabites_1874","bayareabites_10028","bayareabites_1245","bayareabites_2035","bayareabites_358"],"tags":["bayareabites_635","bayareabites_11952","bayareabites_14237","bayareabites_10773","bayareabites_14236"],"featImg":"bayareabites_112144","label":"source_bayareabites_112143"},"bayareabites_111121":{"type":"posts","id":"bayareabites_111121","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"bayareabites","id":"111121","score":null,"sort":[1470072146000]},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"crime-in-the-fields-how-monsanto-and-scofflaw-farmers-hurt-soybeans-in-arkansas","title":"Crime In The Fields: How Monsanto And Scofflaw Farmers Hurt Soybeans In Arkansas","publishDate":1470072146,"format":"standard","headTitle":"Bay Area Bites | KQED Food","labelTerm":{"site":"bayareabites"},"content":"\u003cp>When agricultural extension agent Tom Barber drives the country roads of eastern Arkansas this summer, his trained eye can spot the damage: soybean leaves contorted into cup-like shapes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He's \u003ca href=\"http://www.arkansas-crops.com/2016/07/07/dicamba-potential-soybean/\">seeing\u003c/a> it in field after field. Similar damage is turning up in Tennessee and in the \"boot-heel\" region of Missouri. Tens of thousands of acres are affected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is no natural phenomenon of weather or disease. It's almost certainly the result of a crime. The disfigured leaves are evidence that a neighboring farmer sprayed a herbicide called \u003ca href=\"http://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/dicamba_gen.html\">dicamba\u003c/a>, probably in violation of the law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dicamba has been around for decades, and it is notorious for a couple of things: It vaporizes quickly and blows with the wind. And it's especially toxic to soybeans, even at ridiculously low concentrations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Damage from drifting pesticides isn't unfamiliar to farmers. But the reason for this year's plague of dicamba damage is unprecedented. \"I've never seen anything like this before,\" says \u003ca href=\"http://personnel-directory.uaex.edu/People/uaex905809/Robert-Scott\">Bob Scott\u003c/a>, a weed specialist from the University of Arkansas. \"This is a unique situation that Monsanto created.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The story starts with Monsanto because the St. Louis-based biotech giant launched, this year, an updated version of its herbicide-tolerant soybean seeds. This new \u003ca href=\"http://www.monsanto.com/products/pages/roundup-ready-2-xtend-soybeans.aspx\">version\u003c/a>, which Monsanto calls \"Xtend,\" isn't just engineered to tolerate sprays of glyphosate, aka Roundup. It's also immune to dicamba.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monsanto created dicamba-resistant soybeans (and cotton) in an effort to stay a step ahead of the weeds. The strategy of planting Roundup-resistant crops and spraying Roundup to kill weeds isn't working so well anymore, because weeds have evolved resistance to glyphosate. Adding genes for dicamba resistance, so the thinking went, would give farmers the option of spraying dicamba as well, which would clear out the weeds that survive glyphosate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There was just one hitch in the plan. A very big hitch, as it turned out. The Environmental Protection Agency has not yet approved the new dicamba weedkiller that Monsanto created for farmers to spray on its new dicamba-resistant crops. That new formulation of dicamba, according to Monsanto, has been formulated so that it won't vaporize as easily, and won't be as likely to harm neighboring crops. If the EPA approves the new weedkiller, it may impose restrictions on how and when the chemical may be used.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But, Monsanto went ahead and started selling its dicamba-resistant soybeans before this herbicide was approved. It gave farmers a new weed-killing tool that they couldn't legally use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monsanto says it did so because these seeds weren't just resistant to dicamba; they also offered higher yields, which farmers wanted. In an email to The Salt, Phil Miller, Monsanto's vice president for global regulatory and government affairs, wrote that \"there's incredible value in the Xtend technology independent of herbicide applications: There is great demand for strong yield performance and our latest industry leading genetics.\" Monsanto says it also made it clear to farmers that they were not allowed to spray dicamba on these dicamba-resistant beans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Farmers themselves, however, may have had other ideas. Robert Goodson, an agricultural extension agent in Phillips County, Ark., believes that some farmers were hoping that the EPA would approve the new dicamba weedkiller in the course of the growing season, so they'd get to spray it over their crops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Or maybe some farmers secretly intended to violate the law, using regular old dicamba, even without EPA approval.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Farmers in this part of the country are struggling to control a weed called Palmer amaranth, also known as pigweed. Many of the weedkillers they've used in the past don't work anymore. Weed expert Bob Scott says they're desperate for new tools. \"If we didn't need this so bad, we wouldn't be having this conversation,\" he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Maybe in the back of their mind they thought, 'Well, I'm not going to hurt anything if I do [spray dicamba],' \" says Tom Barber. \"Some of these guys may have thought they didn't have an option, they had to use dicamba or they'd lose the crop. I don't know what they were thinking.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whatever the original motivation for buying Xtend seed, some scofflaw farmers did try to take advantage of it by spraying dicamba on their soybean fields. Swaths of vulnerable soybeans on neighboring fields are \u003ca href=\"http://deltafarmpress.com/soybeans/dicamba-drift-incidents-have-ripple-effect?page=1\">showing\u003c/a> the damage. \"There's a tremendous amount of injury on soybean fields,\" says Barber. There also are reports of damage to vegetable crops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Barber says farmers whose fields are damaged are especially angry, because they're already under economic stress because of low crop prices. \"They see their soybeans out there all cupped up and stunted, their reaction is not good,\" Barber says. \"We've seen cases of herbicide drift before. Usually the farmers work it out among themselves. But it's getting to the point now, it's made a lot of farmers upset with their neighbors. It's an unfortunate thing.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than 100 farmers in Missouri have filed formal complaints with the state's Department of Agriculture. In Arkansas, 25 complaints have been filed. If investigators decide that a farmer has sprayed dicamba illegally, the farmer can be fined. In Arkansas, the maximum fine for a violation is $1,000, but \"our fines aren't stopping them,\" says Susie Nichols, who is in charge of pesticide regulation for Arkansas. State regulators are considering raising that to $5,000 or even more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nichols says the Arkansas Plant Board also is considering new regulations that could drastically restrict the use of dicamba, even if the EPA does approve the use of Monsanto's new and reformulated version.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Weed scientists from the University of Arkansas believe that the new version of dicamba also could damage nearby soybean fields. So if any farmers are permitted to use it on soybeans, other farmers may be forced to buy Monsanto's dicamba-resistant soybean varieties just to protect themselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Barber, that threat is adding to farmers' frustration. \"They're afraid that they're not going to be able to grow what they want to grow. They're afraid that they're going to be forced to go with that technology.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There's one final and, for farmers, unwelcome twist to this story. If they do manage to limit dicamba's collateral damage, and start to use it widely, there's new \u003ca href=\"http://www.uaex.edu/media-resources/news/january2016/01-26-2016-Ark-Pigweed-Dicamba.aspx\">evidence\u003c/a> that the chemical may quickly become ineffective.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.weedsummit.ca/speakers/jason-norsworthy\">Jason Norsworthy\u003c/a>, a weed expert at the University of Arkansas, wanted to see if pigweed could evolve resistance to dicamba. In a greenhouse, he sprayed pigweed plants with light doses of dicamba — not enough to kill most of the plants, but enough to give an advantage to any individual plants that might be slightly resistant to the herbicide. He recovered seeds from surviving plants and repeated the process. After just three generations, he found pigweed plants that were able to survive full-dose sprays of dicamba. Most likely, the same process would occur rather quickly in field conditions, leaving farmers once again desperate for a new solution to their pigweed problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Extension agent Robert Goodson says that in the long run, farmers in Arkansas may be forced to take a different approach to managing weeds, probably by growing different crops. Instead of soybeans, farmers may grow more sorghum, rice or other crops. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Copyright 2016 \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/\" target=\"_blank\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/em> \u003c/p>\n\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"A new type of genetically engineered crop is tempting farmers to use a weedkiller illegally. The illicit chemical use has damaged nearby crops and provoked conflict among neighbors.","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1470072146,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":26,"wordCount":1240},"headData":{"title":"Crime In The Fields: How Monsanto And Scofflaw Farmers Hurt Soybeans In Arkansas | KQED","description":"A new type of genetically engineered crop is tempting farmers to use a weedkiller illegally. The illicit chemical use has damaged nearby crops and provoked conflict among neighbors.","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":"","schema":{"@context":"http://schema.org","@type":"Article","headline":"Crime In The Fields: How Monsanto And Scofflaw Farmers Hurt Soybeans In Arkansas","datePublished":"2016-08-01T17:22:26.000Z","dateModified":"2016-08-01T17:22:26.000Z","image":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"}},"disqusIdentifier":"111121 http://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/?p=111121","disqusUrl":"https://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/2016/08/01/crime-in-the-fields-how-monsanto-and-scofflaw-farmers-hurt-soybeans-in-arkansas/","disqusTitle":"Crime In The Fields: How Monsanto And Scofflaw Farmers Hurt Soybeans In Arkansas","nprByline":"Dan Charles, NPR Food","nprImageAgency":"Courtesy of the University of Arkansas","nprStoryId":"487809643","nprApiLink":"http://api.npr.org/query?id=487809643&apiKey=MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004","nprHtmlLink":"http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/08/01/487809643/crime-in-the-fields-how-monsanto-and-scofflaw-farmers-hurt-soybeans-in-arkansas?ft=nprml&f=487809643","nprRetrievedStory":"1","nprPubDate":"Mon, 01 Aug 2016 07:00:00 -0400","nprStoryDate":"Mon, 01 Aug 2016 07:00:29 -0400","nprLastModifiedDate":"Mon, 01 Aug 2016 07:00:29 -0400","path":"/bayareabites/111121/crime-in-the-fields-how-monsanto-and-scofflaw-farmers-hurt-soybeans-in-arkansas","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>When agricultural extension agent Tom Barber drives the country roads of eastern Arkansas this summer, his trained eye can spot the damage: soybean leaves contorted into cup-like shapes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He's \u003ca href=\"http://www.arkansas-crops.com/2016/07/07/dicamba-potential-soybean/\">seeing\u003c/a> it in field after field. Similar damage is turning up in Tennessee and in the \"boot-heel\" region of Missouri. Tens of thousands of acres are affected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is no natural phenomenon of weather or disease. It's almost certainly the result of a crime. The disfigured leaves are evidence that a neighboring farmer sprayed a herbicide called \u003ca href=\"http://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/dicamba_gen.html\">dicamba\u003c/a>, probably in violation of the law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dicamba has been around for decades, and it is notorious for a couple of things: It vaporizes quickly and blows with the wind. And it's especially toxic to soybeans, even at ridiculously low concentrations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Damage from drifting pesticides isn't unfamiliar to farmers. But the reason for this year's plague of dicamba damage is unprecedented. \"I've never seen anything like this before,\" says \u003ca href=\"http://personnel-directory.uaex.edu/People/uaex905809/Robert-Scott\">Bob Scott\u003c/a>, a weed specialist from the University of Arkansas. \"This is a unique situation that Monsanto created.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The story starts with Monsanto because the St. Louis-based biotech giant launched, this year, an updated version of its herbicide-tolerant soybean seeds. This new \u003ca href=\"http://www.monsanto.com/products/pages/roundup-ready-2-xtend-soybeans.aspx\">version\u003c/a>, which Monsanto calls \"Xtend,\" isn't just engineered to tolerate sprays of glyphosate, aka Roundup. It's also immune to dicamba.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monsanto created dicamba-resistant soybeans (and cotton) in an effort to stay a step ahead of the weeds. The strategy of planting Roundup-resistant crops and spraying Roundup to kill weeds isn't working so well anymore, because weeds have evolved resistance to glyphosate. Adding genes for dicamba resistance, so the thinking went, would give farmers the option of spraying dicamba as well, which would clear out the weeds that survive glyphosate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There was just one hitch in the plan. A very big hitch, as it turned out. The Environmental Protection Agency has not yet approved the new dicamba weedkiller that Monsanto created for farmers to spray on its new dicamba-resistant crops. That new formulation of dicamba, according to Monsanto, has been formulated so that it won't vaporize as easily, and won't be as likely to harm neighboring crops. If the EPA approves the new weedkiller, it may impose restrictions on how and when the chemical may be used.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But, Monsanto went ahead and started selling its dicamba-resistant soybeans before this herbicide was approved. It gave farmers a new weed-killing tool that they couldn't legally use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monsanto says it did so because these seeds weren't just resistant to dicamba; they also offered higher yields, which farmers wanted. In an email to The Salt, Phil Miller, Monsanto's vice president for global regulatory and government affairs, wrote that \"there's incredible value in the Xtend technology independent of herbicide applications: There is great demand for strong yield performance and our latest industry leading genetics.\" Monsanto says it also made it clear to farmers that they were not allowed to spray dicamba on these dicamba-resistant beans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Farmers themselves, however, may have had other ideas. Robert Goodson, an agricultural extension agent in Phillips County, Ark., believes that some farmers were hoping that the EPA would approve the new dicamba weedkiller in the course of the growing season, so they'd get to spray it over their crops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Or maybe some farmers secretly intended to violate the law, using regular old dicamba, even without EPA approval.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Farmers in this part of the country are struggling to control a weed called Palmer amaranth, also known as pigweed. Many of the weedkillers they've used in the past don't work anymore. Weed expert Bob Scott says they're desperate for new tools. \"If we didn't need this so bad, we wouldn't be having this conversation,\" he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Maybe in the back of their mind they thought, 'Well, I'm not going to hurt anything if I do [spray dicamba],' \" says Tom Barber. \"Some of these guys may have thought they didn't have an option, they had to use dicamba or they'd lose the crop. I don't know what they were thinking.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whatever the original motivation for buying Xtend seed, some scofflaw farmers did try to take advantage of it by spraying dicamba on their soybean fields. Swaths of vulnerable soybeans on neighboring fields are \u003ca href=\"http://deltafarmpress.com/soybeans/dicamba-drift-incidents-have-ripple-effect?page=1\">showing\u003c/a> the damage. \"There's a tremendous amount of injury on soybean fields,\" says Barber. There also are reports of damage to vegetable crops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Barber says farmers whose fields are damaged are especially angry, because they're already under economic stress because of low crop prices. \"They see their soybeans out there all cupped up and stunted, their reaction is not good,\" Barber says. \"We've seen cases of herbicide drift before. Usually the farmers work it out among themselves. But it's getting to the point now, it's made a lot of farmers upset with their neighbors. It's an unfortunate thing.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than 100 farmers in Missouri have filed formal complaints with the state's Department of Agriculture. In Arkansas, 25 complaints have been filed. If investigators decide that a farmer has sprayed dicamba illegally, the farmer can be fined. In Arkansas, the maximum fine for a violation is $1,000, but \"our fines aren't stopping them,\" says Susie Nichols, who is in charge of pesticide regulation for Arkansas. State regulators are considering raising that to $5,000 or even more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nichols says the Arkansas Plant Board also is considering new regulations that could drastically restrict the use of dicamba, even if the EPA does approve the use of Monsanto's new and reformulated version.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Weed scientists from the University of Arkansas believe that the new version of dicamba also could damage nearby soybean fields. So if any farmers are permitted to use it on soybeans, other farmers may be forced to buy Monsanto's dicamba-resistant soybean varieties just to protect themselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Barber, that threat is adding to farmers' frustration. \"They're afraid that they're not going to be able to grow what they want to grow. They're afraid that they're going to be forced to go with that technology.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There's one final and, for farmers, unwelcome twist to this story. If they do manage to limit dicamba's collateral damage, and start to use it widely, there's new \u003ca href=\"http://www.uaex.edu/media-resources/news/january2016/01-26-2016-Ark-Pigweed-Dicamba.aspx\">evidence\u003c/a> that the chemical may quickly become ineffective.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.weedsummit.ca/speakers/jason-norsworthy\">Jason Norsworthy\u003c/a>, a weed expert at the University of Arkansas, wanted to see if pigweed could evolve resistance to dicamba. In a greenhouse, he sprayed pigweed plants with light doses of dicamba — not enough to kill most of the plants, but enough to give an advantage to any individual plants that might be slightly resistant to the herbicide. He recovered seeds from surviving plants and repeated the process. After just three generations, he found pigweed plants that were able to survive full-dose sprays of dicamba. Most likely, the same process would occur rather quickly in field conditions, leaving farmers once again desperate for a new solution to their pigweed problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Extension agent Robert Goodson says that in the long run, farmers in Arkansas may be forced to take a different approach to managing weeds, probably by growing different crops. Instead of soybeans, farmers may grow more sorghum, rice or other crops. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"floatright"},"numeric":["floatright"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Copyright 2016 \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/\" target=\"_blank\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/em> \u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/bayareabites/111121/crime-in-the-fields-how-monsanto-and-scofflaw-farmers-hurt-soybeans-in-arkansas","authors":["byline_bayareabites_111121"],"categories":["bayareabites_1874","bayareabites_10028","bayareabites_4084","bayareabites_2035","bayareabites_358","bayareabites_60"],"tags":["bayareabites_15550","bayareabites_10787","bayareabites_10773","bayareabites_14756","bayareabites_15549"],"featImg":"bayareabites_111122","label":"bayareabites"},"bayareabites_109550":{"type":"posts","id":"bayareabites_109550","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"bayareabites","id":"109550","score":null,"sort":[1463700185000]},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"if-monsanto-disappears-will-it-matter","title":"If Monsanto Disappears, Will It Matter?","publishDate":1463700185,"format":"standard","headTitle":"Bay Area Bites | KQED Food","labelTerm":{"site":"bayareabites"},"content":"\u003cp>Later this week, in hundreds of cities around the globe, from Ouagadougou, Burkino Faso, to Lancaster, Pa., protesters will \"\u003ca href=\"http://www.march-against-monsanto.com/may21/\">March Against Monsanto\u003c/a>.\" Will they still march if there's no Monsanto?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This company, which invented genetically engineered crops and turned itself into the world's biggest seller of seeds, has come to represent, in a shorthand way, lots of things that some people love to hate: genetically modified food; patents on seeds; lawsuits against farmers for saving and replanting those seeds; and corporate influence over government food policy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monsanto has swallowed many other companies — especially seed companies — over the years, which helped build its fearsome reputation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, however, comes news that Monsanto might go from swallower to swallowee. Bayer, a German-based company that's probably best known as the inventor of aspirin, has \u003ca href=\"http://www.news.bayer.com/baynews/baynews.nsf/id/Bayer-Confirms-Preliminary-Discussion-Regarding-Acquisition-of-Monsanto\">offered\u003c/a> to buy Monsanto for $42 billion. Bayer is a much bigger company than Monsanto because it also owns large divisions that make pharmaceuticals and industrial chemicals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The proposed deal faces big \u003ca href=\"http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-19/bayer-s-pursuit-of-45-billion-monsanto-greeted-with-skepticism\">obstacles\u003c/a>. Bayer's stock dropped by 8 percent on the news. Shareholders evidently weren't happy about the idea of taking on a load of debt to finance the deal. Monsanto may also be unhappy. One analyst called Bayer's offer \"\u003ca href=\"http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/05/18/bayer-offered-40-billion-for-monsanto-why-investor.aspx\">insulting\u003c/a>\" and predicted that Monsanto's owners would demand a much higher price.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, it's interesting to contemplate the potential impact, if the deal went through. In raw business terms, it would continue a dramatic wave of \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/04/06/472960018/big-seed-consolidation-is-shrinking-the-industry-even-further\">consolidation\u003c/a> among the companies that sell seeds and pesticides to farmers. Two other such deals are currently in the works. DuPont is merging with Dow, and the China National Chemical Corporation is buying Syngenta, which is currently the world's biggest seller of agricultural chemicals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bayer is a much bigger player in the pesticide business, which has landed it in controversy of its own. It is the biggest seller of \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/03/27/175278607/are-agricultures-most-popular-insecticides-killing-our-bees\">neonicotinoid\u003c/a> insecticides, which are applied as seed treatments on corn and soybeans, and have been \u003ca href=\"http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/are-pesticides-to-blame-for-the-massive-bee-die-off/\">blamed\u003c/a> for harming bees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the most fascinating aspect of the deal might be its political and social impact. The name Monsanto would probably disappear. Suddenly, the leading seller of GMOs would be European, rather than American. Would that matter? It's hard to say, but it seems possible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Years ago, when I was doing research for my book about the origins of GMOs, some Monsanto executives told me their theory for why so many Europeans opposed GMOs. The resistance to Monsanto's technology, they told me, was secretly supported by Europe's big pesticide companies, who felt threatened by biotechnology's potential to replace pesticides in agriculture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I never believed that theory. But there certainly was plenty of animosity, over the years, between Monsanto and its European competitors. It would be a striking twist of fate if Bayer, one of those European chemical giants, ended up buying Monsanto.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>\u003cbr>\nCopyright 2016 \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/\" target=\"_blank\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/em> \u003c/p>\n\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"The German-based company Bayer wants to buy Monsanto. It would be the latest in a wave of consolidation among companies that sell seeds and pesticides to farmers.","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1463700185,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":12,"wordCount":486},"headData":{"title":"If Monsanto Disappears, Will It Matter? | KQED","description":"The German-based company Bayer wants to buy Monsanto. It would be the latest in a wave of consolidation among companies that sell seeds and pesticides to farmers.","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":"","schema":{"@context":"http://schema.org","@type":"Article","headline":"If Monsanto Disappears, Will It Matter?","datePublished":"2016-05-19T23:23:05.000Z","dateModified":"2016-05-19T23:23:05.000Z","image":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"}},"disqusIdentifier":"109550 http://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/?p=109550","disqusUrl":"https://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/2016/05/19/if-monsanto-disappears-will-it-matter/","disqusTitle":"If Monsanto Disappears, Will It Matter?","nprImageCredit":"Seth Perlman","nprByline":"Dan Charles, NPR Food","nprImageAgency":"AP","nprStoryId":"478678011","nprApiLink":"http://api.npr.org/query?id=478678011&apiKey=MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004","nprHtmlLink":"http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/05/19/478678011/if-monsanto-disappears-will-it-matter?ft=nprml&f=478678011","nprRetrievedStory":"1","nprPubDate":"Thu, 19 May 2016 15:58:00 -0400","nprStoryDate":"Thu, 19 May 2016 15:57:00 -0400","nprLastModifiedDate":"Thu, 19 May 2016 15:58:07 -0400","path":"/bayareabites/109550/if-monsanto-disappears-will-it-matter","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Later this week, in hundreds of cities around the globe, from Ouagadougou, Burkino Faso, to Lancaster, Pa., protesters will \"\u003ca href=\"http://www.march-against-monsanto.com/may21/\">March Against Monsanto\u003c/a>.\" Will they still march if there's no Monsanto?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This company, which invented genetically engineered crops and turned itself into the world's biggest seller of seeds, has come to represent, in a shorthand way, lots of things that some people love to hate: genetically modified food; patents on seeds; lawsuits against farmers for saving and replanting those seeds; and corporate influence over government food policy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monsanto has swallowed many other companies — especially seed companies — over the years, which helped build its fearsome reputation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, however, comes news that Monsanto might go from swallower to swallowee. Bayer, a German-based company that's probably best known as the inventor of aspirin, has \u003ca href=\"http://www.news.bayer.com/baynews/baynews.nsf/id/Bayer-Confirms-Preliminary-Discussion-Regarding-Acquisition-of-Monsanto\">offered\u003c/a> to buy Monsanto for $42 billion. Bayer is a much bigger company than Monsanto because it also owns large divisions that make pharmaceuticals and industrial chemicals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The proposed deal faces big \u003ca href=\"http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-19/bayer-s-pursuit-of-45-billion-monsanto-greeted-with-skepticism\">obstacles\u003c/a>. Bayer's stock dropped by 8 percent on the news. Shareholders evidently weren't happy about the idea of taking on a load of debt to finance the deal. Monsanto may also be unhappy. One analyst called Bayer's offer \"\u003ca href=\"http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/05/18/bayer-offered-40-billion-for-monsanto-why-investor.aspx\">insulting\u003c/a>\" and predicted that Monsanto's owners would demand a much higher price.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, it's interesting to contemplate the potential impact, if the deal went through. In raw business terms, it would continue a dramatic wave of \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/04/06/472960018/big-seed-consolidation-is-shrinking-the-industry-even-further\">consolidation\u003c/a> among the companies that sell seeds and pesticides to farmers. Two other such deals are currently in the works. DuPont is merging with Dow, and the China National Chemical Corporation is buying Syngenta, which is currently the world's biggest seller of agricultural chemicals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bayer is a much bigger player in the pesticide business, which has landed it in controversy of its own. It is the biggest seller of \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/03/27/175278607/are-agricultures-most-popular-insecticides-killing-our-bees\">neonicotinoid\u003c/a> insecticides, which are applied as seed treatments on corn and soybeans, and have been \u003ca href=\"http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/are-pesticides-to-blame-for-the-massive-bee-die-off/\">blamed\u003c/a> for harming bees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the most fascinating aspect of the deal might be its political and social impact. The name Monsanto would probably disappear. Suddenly, the leading seller of GMOs would be European, rather than American. Would that matter? It's hard to say, but it seems possible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Years ago, when I was doing research for my book about the origins of GMOs, some Monsanto executives told me their theory for why so many Europeans opposed GMOs. The resistance to Monsanto's technology, they told me, was secretly supported by Europe's big pesticide companies, who felt threatened by biotechnology's potential to replace pesticides in agriculture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I never believed that theory. But there certainly was plenty of animosity, over the years, between Monsanto and its European competitors. It would be a striking twist of fate if Bayer, one of those European chemical giants, ended up buying Monsanto.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>\u003cbr>\nCopyright 2016 \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/\" target=\"_blank\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/em> \u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/bayareabites/109550/if-monsanto-disappears-will-it-matter","authors":["byline_bayareabites_109550"],"categories":["bayareabites_10028","bayareabites_4084","bayareabites_2035"],"tags":["bayareabites_15466","bayareabites_15467","bayareabites_10787","bayareabites_10773"],"featImg":"bayareabites_109551","label":"bayareabites"},"bayareabites_96915":{"type":"posts","id":"bayareabites_96915","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"bayareabites","id":"96915","score":null,"sort":[1434150827000]},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"mighty-farming-microbes-companies-harness-bacteria-to-give-crops-a-boost","title":"Mighty Farming Microbes: Companies Harness Bacteria To Give Crops A Boost","publishDate":1434150827,"format":"audio","headTitle":"Bay Area Bites | KQED Food","labelTerm":{"site":"bayareabites"},"content":"\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Listen to the Story on All Things Considered:\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nhttp://pd.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/atc/2015/06/20150612_atc_prospecting_for_microbes_to_give_crops_a_boost.mp3\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What if farmers, instead of picking up some agricultural chemicals at their local dealer, picked up a load of agricultural microbes instead?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's something to contemplate, because some big names in the pesticide business — like Bayer and Monsanto — are putting money behind attempts to turn soil microbes into tools that farmers can use to give their crops a boost.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's a symptom of the soaring interest in the ways microbes affect all of life. In our bodies, they help fight off disease. In the soil, they help deliver nutrients to plants, and perhaps much more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The most direct way to take advantage of microbes in farming — an approach that's been around for decades, in fact — is to deploy them as weapons against insects or weeds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pam Marrone, founder of \u003ca href=\"http://www.marronebioinnovations.com/\">Marrone Bio Innovations\u003c/a>, in Davis, Calif., has been spent most of her professional life looking for such microbial pesticides and bringing them to market.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She shows me a few of her newest candidates: colonies of microorganisms growing in little round petri dishes. Some are fuzzy; some are slimy. Marrone thinks they're beautiful. \"They're all different colors,\" she points out. \"You've got orange, blue, purple, black, boring tan and magenta.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_96917\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2015/06/microbes-1_custom-08fc68fda07264aa23c9f9ba295e360c77830ef5-e1434150438822.jpg\" alt=\"Petri dishes filled with colonies of microorganisms at Marrone Bio Innovations, in Davis, Calif.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1279\" class=\"size-full wp-image-96917\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Petri dishes filled with colonies of microorganisms at Marrone Bio Innovations, in Davis, Calif. \u003ccite>(Dan Charles/NPR )\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The real test of their value, though, will be seeing whether they can kill a few other living creatures in this laboratory: crop-eating insects. The company maintains a collection of cabbage loopers, beet army worms, corn rootworms, green peach aphids, spider mites and a few others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Marrone is also looking for microbes that kill weeds — and she thinks she may have found one. The company's scientists discovered it in soil collected from the garden of a Buddhist temple in Japan. It doesn't harm insects, but it kills many plants. Marrone thinks that it might eventually be a weedkiller that organic farmers can use. She says there's huge demand for such a thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I can go into a chemical distributor in the Central Valley of California and say, 'What's your greatest unmet need?' and honest to God, this chemical dealer will tell me it's organic weed control,\" she says. \"It's remarkable.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Marrone is hoping to submit a pile of data to the Environmental Protection Agency later this year, asking for approval to sell this microbe-produced herbicide to farmers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Biopesticides have long been popular in small corners of agriculture, like organic farming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now big chemical companies are jumping in. That's partly because organic farming is growing. But even conventional farmers are under pressure to use fewer toxic chemicals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the search for useful microbes has now expanded to include a whole new way to use microbes on the farm. Some call it \"probiotics for crops.\" There are microbes that somehow seem to give crops a boost.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We don't know how they work, necessarily,\" says Matthew Ashby, the founder and chief scientist of a tiny startup company called \u003ca href=\"http://www.taxon.com/index.php\">Taxon Biosciences\u003c/a>, in Tiburon, Calif.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the wall at Taxon there's a computer printout that reaches from ceiling to floor. It's a list of all the microbes Taxon found in about a hundred different soil samples. Each microbe was identified through its DNA sequence. The sheer number of microbes on the list is astounding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_96918\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 400px\">\u003cimg src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2015/06/mark-ashby_enl-4a8107ea4efa1767bab5de2a55c617e45684d569-400x480.jpg\" alt=\"Matthew Ashby, co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Taxon Biosciences.\" width=\"400\" height=\"480\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-96918\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2015/06/mark-ashby_enl-4a8107ea4efa1767bab5de2a55c617e45684d569-400x480.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2015/06/mark-ashby_enl-4a8107ea4efa1767bab5de2a55c617e45684d569-800x960.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2015/06/mark-ashby_enl-4a8107ea4efa1767bab5de2a55c617e45684d569-960x1151.jpg 960w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2015/06/mark-ashby_enl-4a8107ea4efa1767bab5de2a55c617e45684d569.jpg 1103w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Matthew Ashby, co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Taxon Biosciences. \u003ccite>(Dan Charles/NPR )\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\"I asked our sequencing manager to print out eight feet of this, so it would fit on the wall,\" Ashby says. \"If we printed out the entire data set, it would be over a mile long.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ashby says if you take a close look at this overwhelming list, you find clues about what the microbes are doing. For instance, some microbes show up consistently in soil samples from fields that produce bumper harvests of corn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"When you always find a microbe there when a plant is doing well, there might be something to that,\" he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maybe those microbes are making corn more productive. Maybe farmers could add those beneficial microbes to their fields, and see an effect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A year and a half ago, DuPont, the giant multinational that sells pesticides and seeds, among many other things, paid a visit to Taxon. Frank DeGennaro, director of DuPont Biologicals, was on that trip. He says the delegation was really impressed; the car ride home was filled with excited chatter about possibilities, \"and I said, 'I think there's something here. I think we should have another discussion.' \"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In April, Dupont \u003ca href=\"http://www.dupont.com/corporate-functions/media-center/press-releases/dupont-acquires-taxon-biosciences.html\">announced\u003c/a> it was buying Taxon. This summer, at thousands of small plots across the Midwest, it's carrying out trials to see whether Taxon's microbes really do boost corn yields.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other big companies that sell pesticides and seeds — like \u003ca href=\"http://news.monsanto.com/press-release/corporate/novozymes-and-monsanto-complete-closing-bioag-alliance\">Monsanto\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"http://beecare.bayer.com/media-center/press-releases/press-release-detail/bayer-cropscience-acquires-us-based-biological-company-agraquest-for-close-to-us-500-million\">Bayer Cropscience\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.syngenta.com/global/corporate/en/news-center/news-releases/Pages/120919.aspx\">Syngenta\u003c/a> — have made similar deals to boost their microbe-discovery capacity. Some, in fact, are much bigger than the Taxon deal. All of these companies are betting that the next great tool that farmers use to grow more food may be found in the soil under our feet. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Copyright 2015 \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/\" target=\"_blank\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/em> \u003c/p>\n\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"Will agricultural chemical dealers start selling microbes? Some big pesticide companies are investing in efforts to turn soil bacteria into tools that farmers can use to grow more food.","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1434151370,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":26,"wordCount":889},"headData":{"title":"Mighty Farming Microbes: Companies Harness Bacteria To Give Crops A Boost | KQED","description":"Will agricultural chemical dealers start selling microbes? Some big pesticide companies are investing in efforts to turn soil bacteria into tools that farmers can use to grow more food.","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":"","schema":{"@context":"http://schema.org","@type":"Article","headline":"Mighty Farming Microbes: Companies Harness Bacteria To Give Crops A Boost","datePublished":"2015-06-12T23:13:47.000Z","dateModified":"2015-06-12T23:22:50.000Z","image":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"}},"disqusIdentifier":"96915 http://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/?p=96915","disqusUrl":"https://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/2015/06/12/mighty-farming-microbes-companies-harness-bacteria-to-give-crops-a-boost/","disqusTitle":"Mighty Farming Microbes: Companies Harness Bacteria To Give Crops A Boost","nprByline":"Dan Charles, \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/author/nprfood/\">NPR Food\u003c/a>","nprStoryId":"413692617","nprApiLink":"http://api.npr.org/query?id=413692617&apiKey=MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004","nprHtmlLink":"http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/06/12/413692617/mighty-farming-microbes-companies-harness-bacteria-to-give-crops-a-boost?ft=nprml&f=413692617","nprRetrievedStory":"1","nprPubDate":"Fri, 12 Jun 2015 18:33:00 -0400","nprStoryDate":"Fri, 12 Jun 2015 16:44:00 -0400","nprLastModifiedDate":"Fri, 12 Jun 2015 17:27:42 -0400","nprAudio":"http://pd.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/atc/2015/06/20150612_atc_prospecting_for_microbes_to_give_crops_a_boost.mp3?orgId=1&topicId=1053&d=258&p=2&story=413692617&t=progseg&e=413811411&seg=13&ft=nprml&f=413692617","nprAudioM3u":"http://api.npr.org/m3u/1413995723-6ca2b1.m3u?orgId=1&topicId=1053&d=258&p=2&story=413692617&t=progseg&e=413811411&seg=13&ft=nprml&f=413692617","path":"/bayareabites/96915/mighty-farming-microbes-companies-harness-bacteria-to-give-crops-a-boost","audioUrl":"http://pd.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/atc/2015/06/20150612_atc_prospecting_for_microbes_to_give_crops_a_boost.mp3?orgId=1&topicId=1053&d=258&p=2&story=413692617&t=progseg&e=413811411&seg=13&ft=nprml&f=413692617","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Listen to the Story on All Things Considered:\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nhttp://pd.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/atc/2015/06/20150612_atc_prospecting_for_microbes_to_give_crops_a_boost.mp3\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What if farmers, instead of picking up some agricultural chemicals at their local dealer, picked up a load of agricultural microbes instead?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's something to contemplate, because some big names in the pesticide business — like Bayer and Monsanto — are putting money behind attempts to turn soil microbes into tools that farmers can use to give their crops a boost.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's a symptom of the soaring interest in the ways microbes affect all of life. In our bodies, they help fight off disease. In the soil, they help deliver nutrients to plants, and perhaps much more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The most direct way to take advantage of microbes in farming — an approach that's been around for decades, in fact — is to deploy them as weapons against insects or weeds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pam Marrone, founder of \u003ca href=\"http://www.marronebioinnovations.com/\">Marrone Bio Innovations\u003c/a>, in Davis, Calif., has been spent most of her professional life looking for such microbial pesticides and bringing them to market.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She shows me a few of her newest candidates: colonies of microorganisms growing in little round petri dishes. Some are fuzzy; some are slimy. Marrone thinks they're beautiful. \"They're all different colors,\" she points out. \"You've got orange, blue, purple, black, boring tan and magenta.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_96917\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2015/06/microbes-1_custom-08fc68fda07264aa23c9f9ba295e360c77830ef5-e1434150438822.jpg\" alt=\"Petri dishes filled with colonies of microorganisms at Marrone Bio Innovations, in Davis, Calif.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1279\" class=\"size-full wp-image-96917\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Petri dishes filled with colonies of microorganisms at Marrone Bio Innovations, in Davis, Calif. \u003ccite>(Dan Charles/NPR )\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The real test of their value, though, will be seeing whether they can kill a few other living creatures in this laboratory: crop-eating insects. The company maintains a collection of cabbage loopers, beet army worms, corn rootworms, green peach aphids, spider mites and a few others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Marrone is also looking for microbes that kill weeds — and she thinks she may have found one. The company's scientists discovered it in soil collected from the garden of a Buddhist temple in Japan. It doesn't harm insects, but it kills many plants. Marrone thinks that it might eventually be a weedkiller that organic farmers can use. She says there's huge demand for such a thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I can go into a chemical distributor in the Central Valley of California and say, 'What's your greatest unmet need?' and honest to God, this chemical dealer will tell me it's organic weed control,\" she says. \"It's remarkable.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Marrone is hoping to submit a pile of data to the Environmental Protection Agency later this year, asking for approval to sell this microbe-produced herbicide to farmers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Biopesticides have long been popular in small corners of agriculture, like organic farming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now big chemical companies are jumping in. That's partly because organic farming is growing. But even conventional farmers are under pressure to use fewer toxic chemicals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the search for useful microbes has now expanded to include a whole new way to use microbes on the farm. Some call it \"probiotics for crops.\" There are microbes that somehow seem to give crops a boost.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We don't know how they work, necessarily,\" says Matthew Ashby, the founder and chief scientist of a tiny startup company called \u003ca href=\"http://www.taxon.com/index.php\">Taxon Biosciences\u003c/a>, in Tiburon, Calif.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the wall at Taxon there's a computer printout that reaches from ceiling to floor. It's a list of all the microbes Taxon found in about a hundred different soil samples. Each microbe was identified through its DNA sequence. The sheer number of microbes on the list is astounding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_96918\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 400px\">\u003cimg src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2015/06/mark-ashby_enl-4a8107ea4efa1767bab5de2a55c617e45684d569-400x480.jpg\" alt=\"Matthew Ashby, co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Taxon Biosciences.\" width=\"400\" height=\"480\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-96918\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2015/06/mark-ashby_enl-4a8107ea4efa1767bab5de2a55c617e45684d569-400x480.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2015/06/mark-ashby_enl-4a8107ea4efa1767bab5de2a55c617e45684d569-800x960.jpg 800w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2015/06/mark-ashby_enl-4a8107ea4efa1767bab5de2a55c617e45684d569-960x1151.jpg 960w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/24/2015/06/mark-ashby_enl-4a8107ea4efa1767bab5de2a55c617e45684d569.jpg 1103w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Matthew Ashby, co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Taxon Biosciences. \u003ccite>(Dan Charles/NPR )\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\"I asked our sequencing manager to print out eight feet of this, so it would fit on the wall,\" Ashby says. \"If we printed out the entire data set, it would be over a mile long.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ashby says if you take a close look at this overwhelming list, you find clues about what the microbes are doing. For instance, some microbes show up consistently in soil samples from fields that produce bumper harvests of corn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"When you always find a microbe there when a plant is doing well, there might be something to that,\" he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maybe those microbes are making corn more productive. Maybe farmers could add those beneficial microbes to their fields, and see an effect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A year and a half ago, DuPont, the giant multinational that sells pesticides and seeds, among many other things, paid a visit to Taxon. Frank DeGennaro, director of DuPont Biologicals, was on that trip. He says the delegation was really impressed; the car ride home was filled with excited chatter about possibilities, \"and I said, 'I think there's something here. I think we should have another discussion.' \"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In April, Dupont \u003ca href=\"http://www.dupont.com/corporate-functions/media-center/press-releases/dupont-acquires-taxon-biosciences.html\">announced\u003c/a> it was buying Taxon. This summer, at thousands of small plots across the Midwest, it's carrying out trials to see whether Taxon's microbes really do boost corn yields.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other big companies that sell pesticides and seeds — like \u003ca href=\"http://news.monsanto.com/press-release/corporate/novozymes-and-monsanto-complete-closing-bioag-alliance\">Monsanto\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"http://beecare.bayer.com/media-center/press-releases/press-release-detail/bayer-cropscience-acquires-us-based-biological-company-agraquest-for-close-to-us-500-million\">Bayer Cropscience\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.syngenta.com/global/corporate/en/news-center/news-releases/Pages/120919.aspx\">Syngenta\u003c/a> — have made similar deals to boost their microbe-discovery capacity. Some, in fact, are much bigger than the Taxon deal. All of these companies are betting that the next great tool that farmers use to grow more food may be found in the soil under our feet. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Copyright 2015 \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/\" target=\"_blank\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/em> \u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/bayareabites/96915/mighty-farming-microbes-companies-harness-bacteria-to-give-crops-a-boost","authors":["byline_bayareabites_96915"],"categories":["bayareabites_1874","bayareabites_10028","bayareabites_4084","bayareabites_10916","bayareabites_2035","bayareabites_358","bayareabites_60"],"tags":["bayareabites_14563","bayareabites_14564","bayareabites_12209","bayareabites_11952","bayareabites_14565","bayareabites_11176","bayareabites_10773","bayareabites_184","bayareabites_14562"],"featImg":"bayareabites_96916","label":"bayareabites"},"bayareabites_96795":{"type":"posts","id":"bayareabites_96795","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"bayareabites","id":"96795","score":null,"sort":[1433894697000]},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"monsanto-angling-for-global-pesticide-dominance-woos-syngenta","title":"Monsanto, Angling For Global Pesticide Dominance, Woos Syngenta","publishDate":1433894697,"format":"standard","headTitle":"Bay Area Bites | KQED Food","labelTerm":{"site":"bayareabites"},"content":"\u003cp>Selling seeds and pesticides used to be a sleepy, slow-moving business. That was, until about 20 years ago, when the chemical company Monsanto introduced genetically modified crops and started buying up seed companies. Ever since, companies in this industry have been maneuvering like hungry fish in a pond, occasionally dining on pieces of each other, hoping to survive through size and speed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monsanto, now the world's \u003ca href=\"http://www.seedsavers.org/site/pdf/HeritageFarmCompanion_BigSix.pdf\">biggest\u003c/a> seed company, is attempting its biggest bite ever. It wants to acquire Syngenta, a Switzerland-based company that sells pesticides and seeds, for $45 billion. Syngenta is currently the world's biggest seller of agricultural chemicals, and it is ranked third in seed sales.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Syngenta has \u003ca href=\"http://www.syngenta.com/global/corporate/en/news-center/news-releases/Pages/150608.aspx\">rejected\u003c/a> the deal, at least for now. The European company says Monsanto is offering a \"grossly inadequate\" price. It is also wary of pursuing a deal that government regulators in some parts of the world might end up blocking. The company also says it worries about the \"reputational risk\" of combining with Monsanto — implying that Monsanto is the corporate equivalent of a high school boy who's not cool.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, a dose of cultural and personal animosity does appear to stand in the way of a deal. This past week, Syngenta took the unusual step of publicly \u003ca href=\"http://www.syngenta.com/global/corporate/SiteCollectionDocuments/pdf/media-releases/en/monsanto-letters-2015.pdf\">releasing\u003c/a> two letters in which Monsanto's CEO, Hugh Grant, made his case for a merger. In the first letter, Grant had expressly asked that the offer be \"kept strictly confidential.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I've been watching this with fascination,\" says \u003ca href=\"http://vestaron.com/innovative-company/corporate-officers/\">John Sorenson\u003c/a>, the former president of Syngenta's global biotechnology division. Sorenson now is CEO of a startup company in Kalamazoo, Mich., called Vestaron. He says that his former employer fits the European stereotype: hierarchical in structure, deliberate in making decisions, sometimes slow-moving. Monsanto, on the other hand, is \"very American — Wild West.\" It has been aggressive, nimble, and single-minded. As a result, it is also widely reviled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Can you imagine them merging?\" I ask.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"No!\" Sorenson says, with a laugh. \"But I would not underestimate Monsanto.\" When Monsanto pursues something, he says, \"it's relentless.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Ultimately, it comes down to price,\" Sorenson says. If Monsanto offers enough money, Syngenta's shareholders will make sure the sale goes through. Sorenson says if he were forced to place a bet, he'd estimate the chance of a deal at about 60 percent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To preserve competition in the seed industry, and make the deal more palatable to antitrust regulators, Monsanto is promising to sell off Syngenta's seed business. It is also proposing to move the combined company's headquarters to London and to adopt a new name.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dropping the Monsanto name might not be a bad move. One attempt to \u003ca href=\"http://www.harrisinteractive.com/vault/2015%20RQ%20Media%20Release%20Report_020415.pdf\">measure\u003c/a> the reputations of 100 top companies, conducted by Harris Interactive, ranked Monsanto fourth from the bottom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Copyright 2015 \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/\" target=\"_blank\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/em> \u003c/p>\n\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"The world's biggest seed company wants to buy the world's biggest pesticide company. Syngenta is playing hard to get, but a veteran industry executive says the deal may happen.","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1433894697,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":13,"wordCount":477},"headData":{"title":"Monsanto, Angling For Global Pesticide Dominance, Woos Syngenta | KQED","description":"The world's biggest seed company wants to buy the world's biggest pesticide company. Syngenta is playing hard to get, but a veteran industry executive says the deal may happen.","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":"","schema":{"@context":"http://schema.org","@type":"Article","headline":"Monsanto, Angling For Global Pesticide Dominance, Woos Syngenta","datePublished":"2015-06-10T00:04:57.000Z","dateModified":"2015-06-10T00:04:57.000Z","image":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"}},"disqusIdentifier":"96795 http://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/?p=96795","disqusUrl":"https://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/2015/06/09/monsanto-angling-for-global-pesticide-dominance-woos-syngenta/","disqusTitle":"Monsanto, Angling For Global Pesticide Dominance, Woos Syngenta","nprByline":"Dan Charles, \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/author/nprfood/\">NPR Food\u003c/a>","nprStoryId":"413125856","nprApiLink":"http://api.npr.org/query?id=413125856&apiKey=MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004","nprHtmlLink":"http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/06/09/413125856/monsanto-angling-for-global-pesticide-dominance-woos-syngenta?ft=nprml&f=413125856","nprRetrievedStory":"1","nprPubDate":"Tue, 09 Jun 2015 17:18:00 -0400","nprStoryDate":"Tue, 09 Jun 2015 16:08:00 -0400","nprLastModifiedDate":"Tue, 09 Jun 2015 17:18:18 -0400","path":"/bayareabites/96795/monsanto-angling-for-global-pesticide-dominance-woos-syngenta","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Selling seeds and pesticides used to be a sleepy, slow-moving business. That was, until about 20 years ago, when the chemical company Monsanto introduced genetically modified crops and started buying up seed companies. Ever since, companies in this industry have been maneuvering like hungry fish in a pond, occasionally dining on pieces of each other, hoping to survive through size and speed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monsanto, now the world's \u003ca href=\"http://www.seedsavers.org/site/pdf/HeritageFarmCompanion_BigSix.pdf\">biggest\u003c/a> seed company, is attempting its biggest bite ever. It wants to acquire Syngenta, a Switzerland-based company that sells pesticides and seeds, for $45 billion. Syngenta is currently the world's biggest seller of agricultural chemicals, and it is ranked third in seed sales.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Syngenta has \u003ca href=\"http://www.syngenta.com/global/corporate/en/news-center/news-releases/Pages/150608.aspx\">rejected\u003c/a> the deal, at least for now. The European company says Monsanto is offering a \"grossly inadequate\" price. It is also wary of pursuing a deal that government regulators in some parts of the world might end up blocking. The company also says it worries about the \"reputational risk\" of combining with Monsanto — implying that Monsanto is the corporate equivalent of a high school boy who's not cool.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, a dose of cultural and personal animosity does appear to stand in the way of a deal. This past week, Syngenta took the unusual step of publicly \u003ca href=\"http://www.syngenta.com/global/corporate/SiteCollectionDocuments/pdf/media-releases/en/monsanto-letters-2015.pdf\">releasing\u003c/a> two letters in which Monsanto's CEO, Hugh Grant, made his case for a merger. In the first letter, Grant had expressly asked that the offer be \"kept strictly confidential.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I've been watching this with fascination,\" says \u003ca href=\"http://vestaron.com/innovative-company/corporate-officers/\">John Sorenson\u003c/a>, the former president of Syngenta's global biotechnology division. Sorenson now is CEO of a startup company in Kalamazoo, Mich., called Vestaron. He says that his former employer fits the European stereotype: hierarchical in structure, deliberate in making decisions, sometimes slow-moving. Monsanto, on the other hand, is \"very American — Wild West.\" It has been aggressive, nimble, and single-minded. As a result, it is also widely reviled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Can you imagine them merging?\" I ask.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"No!\" Sorenson says, with a laugh. \"But I would not underestimate Monsanto.\" When Monsanto pursues something, he says, \"it's relentless.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Ultimately, it comes down to price,\" Sorenson says. If Monsanto offers enough money, Syngenta's shareholders will make sure the sale goes through. Sorenson says if he were forced to place a bet, he'd estimate the chance of a deal at about 60 percent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To preserve competition in the seed industry, and make the deal more palatable to antitrust regulators, Monsanto is promising to sell off Syngenta's seed business. It is also proposing to move the combined company's headquarters to London and to adopt a new name.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dropping the Monsanto name might not be a bad move. One attempt to \u003ca href=\"http://www.harrisinteractive.com/vault/2015%20RQ%20Media%20Release%20Report_020415.pdf\">measure\u003c/a> the reputations of 100 top companies, conducted by Harris Interactive, ranked Monsanto fourth from the bottom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Copyright 2015 \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/\" target=\"_blank\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/em> \u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/bayareabites/96795/monsanto-angling-for-global-pesticide-dominance-woos-syngenta","authors":["byline_bayareabites_96795"],"categories":["bayareabites_10916","bayareabites_2035","bayareabites_60"],"tags":["bayareabites_10773","bayareabites_13644"],"featImg":"bayareabites_96796","label":"bayareabites"},"bayareabites_88863":{"type":"posts","id":"bayareabites_88863","meta":{"index":"posts_1591205157","site":"bayareabites","id":"88863","score":null,"sort":[1413468168000]},"guestAuthors":[],"slug":"new-gmos-get-a-regulatory-green-light-with-a-hint-of-yellow","title":"New GMOs Get A Regulatory Green Light, With A Hint Of Yellow","publishDate":1413468168,"format":"aside","headTitle":"Bay Area Bites | KQED Food","labelTerm":{"site":"bayareabites"},"content":"\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_88864\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1000px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2014/10/glyphosate-crops_enl-428a3594d783d20539d1da64cade4e31b4b920bb-e1413467600915.jpg\">\u003cimg src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2014/10/glyphosate-crops_enl-428a3594d783d20539d1da64cade4e31b4b920bb-e1413467600915.jpg\" alt=\"Corn farmer Jerry McCulley sprays the weedkiller glyphosate across his cornfield in Auburn, Ill., in 2010. An increasing number of weeds have now evolved resistance to the chemical. Photo: Seth Perlman/AP\" width=\"1000\" height=\"643\" class=\"size-full wp-image-88864\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Corn farmer Jerry McCulley sprays the weedkiller glyphosate across his cornfield in Auburn, Ill., in 2010. An increasing number of weeds have now evolved resistance to the chemical. Photo: Seth Perlman/AP\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>by \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/people/143160021/daniel-charles\" target=\"_blank\">Dan Charles\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/10/15/356416365/new-gmos-get-a-regulatory-green-light-with-a-hint-of-yellow\" target=\"_blank\">The Salt at NPR Food\u003c/a> (10/15/14)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Government regulators have approved a new generation of genetically engineered corn and soybeans. They're the latest weapon in an arms race between farmers and weeds, and the government's green light is provoking angry opposition from environmentalists.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The actual \u003ca href=\"http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/bd4379a92ceceeac8525735900400c27/72fde554930f3f6985257d7200591180!OpenDocument\">decision\u003c/a>, at first glance, seems narrow and technical. The Environmental Protection Agency has announced it had \"registered\" a new weedkiller formula that contains two older herbicides: glyphosate (better known as Roundup) and 2, 4-D.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Versions of these weedkillers have been around for decades. But farmers in six Midwestern states will be allowed to use the new formula, called Enlist Duo, on their corn and soybeans. And that counts as big news.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_88868\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2014/10/modified-crops.jpg\">\u003cimg src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2014/10/modified-crops.jpg\" alt=\"The federal government announced that farmers can now plant soybeans like these ones genetically engineered by the biotech company Dow Agrosciences to tolerate doses of two weedkillers. Photo: Dow AgroSciences/AP \" width=\"300\" class=\"size-full wp-image-88868\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The federal government announced that farmers can now plant soybeans like these ones genetically engineered by the biotech company Dow Agrosciences to tolerate doses of two weedkillers. Photo: Dow AgroSciences/AP\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Farmers will now be able to plant new \u003ca href=\"http://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USDAAPHIS/bulletins/cf9cff\">types\u003c/a> of corn and soybeans that have been genetically engineered by the biotech company Dow Agrosciences to tolerate doses of those two weedkillers. (The beauty of herbicide-resistant crops is that they make the herbicides exquisitely selective: They kill the weeds but not the crop.) So farmers can spray either glyphosate or 2, 4-D (or both) to wipe out weeds without harming their corn or soybeans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that may actually be one of the most significant developments the world of weedkilling in more than a decade.\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another similar new weedkilling combination of the chemical dicamba and genetically engineered, dicamba-resistant crops is awaiting government approval. Promoters of these new herbicide-crop combinations say they are a big step forward. Critics are calling them a mindless step into ever-increasing dependence on toxic chemicals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There's demand for such technologies because the last great weed-fighting weapon is starting to fail. Over the past two decades, farmers have come to rely, to an extraordinary extent, on glyphosate paired with \"Roundup Ready\" crops. But an increasing number of weeds have now evolved resistance to glyphosate. Farmers have had to resort to weedkilling chemicals that are more costly and often harder to manage. Many of those chemicals can't be sprayed directly on crops because they'd kill them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Environmentalists and critics of genetically engineered crops condemned the EPA's decision Wednesday, arguing that it leads farmers \"further down the futile path of chemical dependency,\" in the words of Andrew Kimbrell from the Center for Food Safety. Mary Ellen Kustin, from the Environmental Working Group, said in a \u003ca href=\"http://www.ewg.org/release/epa-ignores-public-outcry-approves-dangerous-weed-killer\">statement\u003c/a> that \"this continued arms race between chemical companies and superweeds is a threat to sustainable farming and public health. EPA's decision to up the ante of Roundup by approving Enlist Duo is unconscionable.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, the EPA's green light to Enlist Duo did contain some unusual provisions that the agency could eventually use to restrict its use. The EPA is requiring that Dow monitor the use of the new herbicide, work with farmers to avoid overusing it and come up plans to fight weeds that become resistant to the new weedkiller. In addition, the EPA's approval of Enlist Duo is temporary, and will expire in six years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the same day that the EPA approved the new herbicide, the U.S. Department of Agriculture \u003ca href=\"http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?contentid=2014/10/0227.xml&contentidonly=true\">announced\u003c/a> a new program aimed at fighting the problem of herbicide-resistant weeds. According to the USDA statement, this problem \"will not be solved solely through the application of new herbicides.\" USDA scientists will carry out research on non-chemical ways to control weeds, such as cover crops, and promote their use among farmers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Copyright 2014 \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/\" target=\"_blank\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n","blocks":[],"excerpt":"Farmers will be able to plant types of corn and soybeans that can tolerate doses of two weedkillers. It may be one of the most significant developments the world of weedkilling in more than a decade.\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>","status":"publish","parent":0,"modified":1413468168,"stats":{"hasAudio":false,"hasVideo":false,"hasChartOrMap":false,"iframeSrcs":[],"hasGoogleForm":false,"hasGallery":false,"hasHearkenModule":false,"hasPolis":false,"paragraphCount":14,"wordCount":647},"headData":{"title":"New GMOs Get A Regulatory Green Light, With A Hint Of Yellow | KQED","description":"Farmers will be able to plant types of corn and soybeans that can tolerate doses of two weedkillers. It may be one of the most significant developments the world of weedkilling in more than a decade. ","ogTitle":"","ogDescription":"","ogImgId":"","twTitle":"","twDescription":"","twImgId":"","schema":{"@context":"http://schema.org","@type":"Article","headline":"New GMOs Get A Regulatory Green Light, With A Hint Of Yellow","datePublished":"2014-10-16T14:02:48.000Z","dateModified":"2014-10-16T14:02:48.000Z","image":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"}},"disqusIdentifier":"88863 http://blogs.kqed.org/bayareabites/?p=88863","disqusUrl":"https://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/2014/10/16/new-gmos-get-a-regulatory-green-light-with-a-hint-of-yellow/","disqusTitle":"New GMOs Get A Regulatory Green Light, With A Hint Of Yellow","nprByline":"Dan Charles","nprStoryId":"356416365","nprApiLink":"http://api.npr.org/query?id=356416365&apiKey=MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004","nprHtmlLink":"http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/10/15/356416365/new-gmos-get-a-regulatory-green-light-with-a-hint-of-yellow?ft=3&f=356416365","nprRetrievedStory":"1","nprPubDate":"Wed, 15 Oct 2014 19:01:00 -0400","nprStoryDate":"Wed, 15 Oct 2014 18:51:00 -0400","nprLastModifiedDate":"Wed, 15 Oct 2014 19:01:37 -0400","path":"/bayareabites/88863/new-gmos-get-a-regulatory-green-light-with-a-hint-of-yellow","audioTrackLength":null,"parsedContent":[{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_88864\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1000px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2014/10/glyphosate-crops_enl-428a3594d783d20539d1da64cade4e31b4b920bb-e1413467600915.jpg\">\u003cimg src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2014/10/glyphosate-crops_enl-428a3594d783d20539d1da64cade4e31b4b920bb-e1413467600915.jpg\" alt=\"Corn farmer Jerry McCulley sprays the weedkiller glyphosate across his cornfield in Auburn, Ill., in 2010. An increasing number of weeds have now evolved resistance to the chemical. Photo: Seth Perlman/AP\" width=\"1000\" height=\"643\" class=\"size-full wp-image-88864\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Corn farmer Jerry McCulley sprays the weedkiller glyphosate across his cornfield in Auburn, Ill., in 2010. An increasing number of weeds have now evolved resistance to the chemical. Photo: Seth Perlman/AP\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>by \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/people/143160021/daniel-charles\" target=\"_blank\">Dan Charles\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/10/15/356416365/new-gmos-get-a-regulatory-green-light-with-a-hint-of-yellow\" target=\"_blank\">The Salt at NPR Food\u003c/a> (10/15/14)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Government regulators have approved a new generation of genetically engineered corn and soybeans. They're the latest weapon in an arms race between farmers and weeds, and the government's green light is provoking angry opposition from environmentalists.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The actual \u003ca href=\"http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/bd4379a92ceceeac8525735900400c27/72fde554930f3f6985257d7200591180!OpenDocument\">decision\u003c/a>, at first glance, seems narrow and technical. The Environmental Protection Agency has announced it had \"registered\" a new weedkiller formula that contains two older herbicides: glyphosate (better known as Roundup) and 2, 4-D.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Versions of these weedkillers have been around for decades. But farmers in six Midwestern states will be allowed to use the new formula, called Enlist Duo, on their corn and soybeans. And that counts as big news.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_88868\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2014/10/modified-crops.jpg\">\u003cimg src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2014/10/modified-crops.jpg\" alt=\"The federal government announced that farmers can now plant soybeans like these ones genetically engineered by the biotech company Dow Agrosciences to tolerate doses of two weedkillers. Photo: Dow AgroSciences/AP \" width=\"300\" class=\"size-full wp-image-88868\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The federal government announced that farmers can now plant soybeans like these ones genetically engineered by the biotech company Dow Agrosciences to tolerate doses of two weedkillers. Photo: Dow AgroSciences/AP\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Farmers will now be able to plant new \u003ca href=\"http://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USDAAPHIS/bulletins/cf9cff\">types\u003c/a> of corn and soybeans that have been genetically engineered by the biotech company Dow Agrosciences to tolerate doses of those two weedkillers. (The beauty of herbicide-resistant crops is that they make the herbicides exquisitely selective: They kill the weeds but not the crop.) So farmers can spray either glyphosate or 2, 4-D (or both) to wipe out weeds without harming their corn or soybeans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}},{"type":"component","content":"","name":"ad","attributes":{"named":{"label":"fullwidth"},"numeric":["fullwidth"]}},{"type":"contentString","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that may actually be one of the most significant developments the world of weedkilling in more than a decade.\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another similar new weedkilling combination of the chemical dicamba and genetically engineered, dicamba-resistant crops is awaiting government approval. Promoters of these new herbicide-crop combinations say they are a big step forward. Critics are calling them a mindless step into ever-increasing dependence on toxic chemicals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There's demand for such technologies because the last great weed-fighting weapon is starting to fail. Over the past two decades, farmers have come to rely, to an extraordinary extent, on glyphosate paired with \"Roundup Ready\" crops. But an increasing number of weeds have now evolved resistance to glyphosate. Farmers have had to resort to weedkilling chemicals that are more costly and often harder to manage. Many of those chemicals can't be sprayed directly on crops because they'd kill them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Environmentalists and critics of genetically engineered crops condemned the EPA's decision Wednesday, arguing that it leads farmers \"further down the futile path of chemical dependency,\" in the words of Andrew Kimbrell from the Center for Food Safety. Mary Ellen Kustin, from the Environmental Working Group, said in a \u003ca href=\"http://www.ewg.org/release/epa-ignores-public-outcry-approves-dangerous-weed-killer\">statement\u003c/a> that \"this continued arms race between chemical companies and superweeds is a threat to sustainable farming and public health. EPA's decision to up the ante of Roundup by approving Enlist Duo is unconscionable.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, the EPA's green light to Enlist Duo did contain some unusual provisions that the agency could eventually use to restrict its use. The EPA is requiring that Dow monitor the use of the new herbicide, work with farmers to avoid overusing it and come up plans to fight weeds that become resistant to the new weedkiller. In addition, the EPA's approval of Enlist Duo is temporary, and will expire in six years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the same day that the EPA approved the new herbicide, the U.S. Department of Agriculture \u003ca href=\"http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?contentid=2014/10/0227.xml&contentidonly=true\">announced\u003c/a> a new program aimed at fighting the problem of herbicide-resistant weeds. According to the USDA statement, this problem \"will not be solved solely through the application of new herbicides.\" USDA scientists will carry out research on non-chemical ways to control weeds, such as cover crops, and promote their use among farmers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Copyright 2014 \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/\" target=\"_blank\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>","attributes":{"named":{},"numeric":[]}}],"link":"/bayareabites/88863/new-gmos-get-a-regulatory-green-light-with-a-hint-of-yellow","authors":["byline_bayareabites_88863"],"categories":["bayareabites_1874","bayareabites_10028","bayareabites_4084","bayareabites_10916","bayareabites_2035","bayareabites_358","bayareabites_60"],"tags":["bayareabites_515","bayareabites_11270","bayareabites_13892","bayareabites_11952","bayareabites_10787","bayareabites_10773","bayareabites_10776","bayareabites_3582","bayareabites_10921"],"featImg":"bayareabites_88864","label":"bayareabites"}},"programsReducer":{"possible":{"id":"possible","title":"Possible","info":"Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. 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Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.","airtime":"SUN 2pm","imageSrc":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Possible-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg","officialWebsiteLink":"https://www.possible.fm/","meta":{"site":"news","source":"Possible"},"link":"/radio/program/possible","subscribe":{"apple":"https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/possible/id1677184070","spotify":"https://open.spotify.com/show/730YpdUSNlMyPQwNnyjp4k"}},"1a":{"id":"1a","title":"1A","info":"1A is home to the national conversation. 1A brings on great guests and frames the best debate in ways that make you think, share and engage.","airtime":"MON-THU 11pm-12am","imageSrc":"https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/1a.jpg","officialWebsiteLink":"https://the1a.org/","meta":{"site":"news","source":"npr"},"link":"/radio/program/1a","subscribe":{"npr":"https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/RBrW","apple":"https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=1188724250&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory","tuneIn":"https://tunein.com/radio/1A-p947376/","rss":"https://feeds.npr.org/510316/podcast.xml"}},"all-things-considered":{"id":"all-things-considered","title":"All Things Considered","info":"Every weekday, \u003cem>All Things Considered\u003c/em> hosts Robert Siegel, Audie Cornish, Ari Shapiro, and Kelly McEvers present the program's trademark mix of news, interviews, commentaries, reviews, and offbeat features. 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Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />","airtime":"SUN 9pm-10pm","imageSrc":"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Code-Switch-Life-Kit-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg","meta":{"site":"radio","source":"npr"},"link":"/radio/program/code-switch-life-kit","subscribe":{"apple":"https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/1112190608?mt=2&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory","google":"https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubnByLm9yZy9yc3MvcG9kY2FzdC5waHA_aWQ9NTEwMzEy","spotify":"https://open.spotify.com/show/3bExJ9JQpkwNhoHvaIIuyV","rss":"https://feeds.npr.org/510312/podcast.xml"}},"commonwealth-club":{"id":"commonwealth-club","title":"Commonwealth Club of California Podcast","info":"The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. 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