Bloomberg : Bayer / Monsanto / Weighs Roundup exit / Legal Bills ....................................
bloomberg.com
or :
archive.li
excerpts :
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The chemical that revolutionized farming over the last 50 years is in trouble.
Glyphosate, once vaunted for its ability to kill plants and spare animals, is under assault on both fronts. In the UK, weeds are for the first time refusing to die after being sprayed with the herbicide
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Bayer has coughed up more than $10 billion in legal costs over a product it inherited last decade with its $63 billion acquisition of agrochemical producer Monsanto.
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The litigation has cast such a massive cloud over Bayer’s stock, which is down more than 70% since the Monsanto deal
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Marketed as a cleaner and safer alternative to older herbicides, for 30 years glyphosate has offered a relatively simple commercial model: Farmers pay a premium for seeds that are genetically altered to resist the herbicide in hopes of boosting their profits through cheaper, easier weed management.
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When Monsanto first developed glyphosate for agriculture in its St. Louis labs in the early 1970s, it wasn’t obvious that it would ever turn a profit. A tiny molecule, it works by binding to an enzyme in all plant cells (that animals lack) that helps create essential amino acids for growth. As a result, it pretty much kills everything -- weed or crop -- that’s green and grows.
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Monsanto promoted its chemical as a great way to foster more “ no-till” agriculture, in which farmers stop plowing their land with tractors and thus reduce carbon emissions and negative impacts like soil erosion and nutrient loss.
But that strategy only really triumphed after Monsanto scientists stumbled on a glyphosate resistance gene in an unlikely place -- the waste ponds of the company’s glyphosate factory on the banks of the Mississippi River. There, bacteria had evolved a gene that blunted the chemical’s attack and were thriving. The Monsanto scientists isolated the genetic matter and transferred copies into soybean seeds, kicking off the farming world’s new, genetically modified era.
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Some farmers are turning to wheeled robots and aerial drones to hunt down weeds, then either zap them with lasers or douse them with microdoses of herbicides.
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