Following consumer and government reaction in Europe and Japan, farmers in the US farms who have converted to planting GM crops are having second thoughts. Some recent developments seem to suggest that producers and governments are paying attention to consumer reaction: 

• The world’s biggest life science companies and grain processors will face a multi-billion dollar antitrust action to be launched in up to 30 countries later this year. The unprecedented lawsuits will claim that companies such as Monsanto, DuPoint and Novartis are exploiting bioengineering techniques to gain a stranglehold on agricultural markets. The action is being brought jointly by the Foundation on Economic Trends run by Washington-based biotech activist Jeremy Rifkin and the US-based National Family farm Coalition, together with individual farmers across Latin America, Asia, Europe and North America.

• US farmers paid premium prices this spring to sow many of their fields with genetically engineered corn and soybean seed, but now as the fall harvest nears, more of the international buyers they depend upon are saying that they do not want those crops. 

• In late July 1999, Japanese Kirin Brewery Co, announced that starting in 2001, it would use only corn that had not been genetically engineered. Sapporo Breweries Ltd. would also revert to traditional corn. Japan, now wants mandatory labeling of gene-altered products, is the largest importer of U.S. crops.

• Mexico’s top producer of corn flour for tortillas is avoiding altered grain. Mexico is the second largest importer of U.S. corn. 

• Local grain elevators, which buy and store truckloads of corn to sell to the exporters, have begun asking farmers to separate some types of gene-altered corn from ordinary corn to appease international buyers. (About a third of US crops, including soybeans and corn, are exported. This year, US farmers planted an estimated 60 million acres (the size of Britain) with genetically engineered corn and soybean seeds, accounting for nearly half of all soybeans in the United States and about a third of all corn. 

• US companies like Gerber Products Co and H.J Heinz Co, makers of baby foods have announced that they will not use genetically altered corn or soy ingredients.

• Mexico, which bought $500 million of US corn in 1998, Grupo Maseca, the company that is the leading producer of corn flour and recently that it would avoid importing genetically modified grain.  South Korea, another large importer of US grain said they were considering switching to importing from China because of concern on genetically modified crops. 

• A subsidiary of Honda Motor Co, said that it would build a plant in the United States and hire farmers to supply it only with unaltered, conventional soybeans. The soybeans, exported back to Japan, would be made into tofu. 

• Monsanto, the international life science group, has completed the sale of its Stone-seeds business to a private equity group. The decision to sell Stoneville was taken after Monsanto announced plans to acquire Delta & Pine in a share swap deal for $1.2 bn earlier this year.  After spending more than $8 billion in the past two years to acquire some of the largest seed companies in the world and millions more to pioneer the development of genetically engineered foods, Monsanto Co is facing growing skepticism about its debt management (currently standing at 60% of current capitalization) and mounting resistance to some of its bioengineered crops. The stock price of Monsanto has been languishing for months, the company needs to improve its standing with investors and the public.

• Farmers have been told by grain traders to segregate their grains, and their thinking about whether they should plant GM crops next season.

The advancement of technology in farming has gone way ahead of the politics, the power of the market is now surging as a balancing force, a somewhat break-circuit mechanism to slow down the development of GM crops. Life sciences and governments would have to step up their effort to prove and persuade consumers that GM crops are a boon if they were to protect the billions of dollars of investments.
 
 

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