Food For Thought
Opinion: The most consequential ag story in 2018 is …
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In the past year Dave Dickey has blogged and waxed on a number of consequential agricultural events. Find out which ag story was the the most consequential in 2018.
Big Ag Watch (https://big-agwatch.org/tag/bayer/)
In the past year Dave Dickey has blogged and waxed on a number of consequential agricultural events. Find out which ag story was the the most consequential in 2018.
Since the recent merger of Bayer AG and Monsanto, Bayer has been vague on their strategy in handling the inherited lawsuits against Monsanto.
Ironically I was on some R-and-R in St. Louis, headquarters to Monsanto, when a California jury dropped the mother of all H-bombs on Bayer’s newest acquisition: Monsanto’s flagship weed killer Roundup contributed to high school groundsman Dewayne Johnson’s non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Put bluntly the jury ruled Roundup causes cancer and it awarded terminally-ill Johnson $39 million in compensatory and $250 million in punitive damages. Yup $289 million total. Bayer, which purchased Monsanto just two months ago, has taken a massive financial hit, losing more than 10 percent of share value. So how did Monsanto and Bayer lose?
The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting sits down for a Q&A with Charles Benbrook, lead attorney for Monsanto. Benbrook talks about a recent trial and what it could mean for the future of glyphosate.
Agribusiness company Monsanto has been ordered to pay roughly $290 million in damages to a California man who claims his cancer was caused by Roundup, a popular Monsanto herbicide.
Bayer’s announcement that it is terminating the Monsanto brand as part of its takeover of the St. Louis agri-business company unfortunately won’t come close to ending controversies surrounding Monsanto. Can you say clean up on aisle four? One needs to look no further than the massive cancer trial that got underway in early July to understand the huge stakes Bayer is facing. The trial – in a nutshell – is whether or not California native DeWayne “Lee”Johnson developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma from exposure to Monsanto’s flagship product weedkiller Roundup. Johnson sprayed the chemical for years as part of his jobs serving as a goundskeeper for a school district in Benicia, California.
Despite Bayer’s $66 billion move – yeah with a B – to acquire Monsanto, there remains serious doubt among some advocates that the U.S. Department of Justice did not do enough to protect farmers and other stakeholders from escalating seed and chemical costs and the unappetizing possibility of fewer choices at the retail marketplace.
U.S. Agriculture enters 2018 with a whole lotta unresolved issues from 2017. Here are seven yuge ones to keep an eye on in the new year.