Farmers, a bunch of government handout whiners:
Monsanto, Delta & Pine Face Lawsuits Over Roundup Ready Cotton
St. Louis, Jan. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Monsanto Co., a leading agricultural biotechnology company, faces lawsuits from dozens of farmers who claim the company's genetically altered Roundup Ready cotton failed to grow properly in some areas.
Roundup Ready cotton, developed by St. Louis-based Monsanto and Scott, Mississippi-based Delta & Pine Land Co., allows farmers to spray Monsanto's Roundup herbicide over the top of their crops, killing weeds while leaving plants unscathed.
About 300 farmers in Georgia and 54 farmers in Mississippi filed complaints with seed arbitration councils that mediate disputes between growers and seed companies. In Georgia, 21 farmers have filed suit in court, said Ernest Sellers, a lawyer who represents 100 dissatisfied Georgia farmers.
The lawsuits charge Monsanto and Delta & Pine with fraud and breach of warranty, according to documents filed on behalf of one farmer, Andrew Thompson, in the Superior Court of Brooks County, Georgia. Thompson claims the companies misrepresented the ability of Roundup-resistant cotton to withstand Roundup. Sellers said Thompson's suit is the same as those filed by the other farmers.
This is the second batch of complaints about Roundup Ready cotton that Monsanto and Delta & Pine have received in as many years. The companies introduced the cotton in 1997. That year, farmers planted it on 850,000 acres. About 50 growers, representing 30,000 acres in and around the northern Mississippi Delta, complained that the cotton produced bolls that were malformed or fell off the plant. Monsanto settled most of these complaints at the recommendation of the seed arbitration council.
Monsanto Won't Settle
This year farmers planted Roundup Ready cotton on 2.5 million acres. Monsanto said the complaints represent about 2 percent of the total planted. This year it won't settle. ''We stand fully behind the technology,'' said Gary Barton, a Monsanto spokesman. ''We will challenge these suits.''
Some farmers who planted Roundup Ready cotton successfully last year, had problems this year. Some who had problems last year grew a fine crop this year, farmers and agronomists said. ''Planting Roundup Ready cotton is like going to a casino and throwing dice,'' said Joe Townsend, a Mississippi cotton consultant. ''You may win and you may lose, and chances are if you stay in the game long enough you will lose.''
Farmers experienced different problems in different states. In Mississippi, affected plants shed bolls early and often, said Robert McCarty, director of the Bureau of Plant Industry at the Mississippi Department of Agriculture. ''The situation is very similar to last year, with boll-shed and loss of yield,'' he said. ''The thing we're going to have difficulty sorting out is if that's associated with the Roundup Ready gene or the weather, or a combination of both.''
Last year investigators from the Mississippi Agriculture Department examined the damaged crops but couldn't come up with a explanation for it. ''It just seems to be very erratic,'' McCarty said. ''It's unknown when you may develop an adverse reaction.''
Problems in Georgia
McCarty said the boll-shed problem also affected farmers in Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas. Most complaints, though, come from Georgia, where plants succumbed to bronze wilt, a cotton disease, cotton experts said.
Bronze wilt is associated with a particular genetic line used in many breeding programs across the U.S., though not much in Georgia, said Steve Brown, extension cotton specialist at the University of Georgia.
Brown said farmers who would not normally plant varieties based on the line did so this year because they wanted Monsanto's insect-resistant and herbicide-tolerant genes. The genes were only present in susceptible varieties, he said.
Universities like to test new varieties for at least three years before recommending them to farmers. ''Unfortunately, universities and other non-biased evaluators had access to these varieties about the same time farmers did,'' Brown said.
Problem Varieties
The problem varieties were produced by Paymaster, a Delta & Pine subsidiary. Paymaster's PM1220BG/RR contains two Monsanto- developed genes: one for insect-resistance and one for herbicide- tolerance. Paymaster PM1244RR contains the Roundup gene only. Both varieties were released for the first time this year. ''The basic problem is that the varieties collapsed,'' Brown said. ''Farmers bought them because they had new traits, but it's unwise to buy simply because of traits. It's got to be a strong performing variety as well.''
Last February, Monsanto and Delta & Pine withdrew five Roundup Ready varieties because of poor seed quality. These varieties were also produced by Paymaster.
Monsanto is in the process of acquiring Delta & Pine, which has about 70 percent of the U.S. cotton-seed marketRights Reserved.
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