{"id":371,"date":"2010-10-13T09:35:00","date_gmt":"2010-10-13T13:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/2010\/10\/monsanto-downturn.html"},"modified":"2010-10-13T09:35:00","modified_gmt":"2010-10-13T13:35:00","slug":"monsanto-downturn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/2010\/10\/monsanto-downturn.html","title":{"rendered":"Monsanto Downturn"},"content":{"rendered":"Andrew Pollack writes in the New York Times that\n\nAfter Growth, Fortunes Turn for Monsanto<\/a>:\n
\n<\/a>\nAs recently as late December, Monsanto was named \u201ccompany of the\nyear\u201d by Forbes magazine. Last week, the company earned a different\naccolade from Jim Cramer, the television stock market commentator. \u201cThis\nmay be the worst stock of 2010,\u201d he proclaimed.\n<\/blockquote>\nI remember that!\n\n<\/a>\nThe month after Forbes did that,<\/a>\nCovalence did a survey that ranked Monsanto\n\nthe least ethical company in the world.<\/a>\nWorse than Philip Morris, Chevron, or Halliburton!\n

\nAbout that time we discovered \nMonsanto Corn Causes Liver and Kidney Damage in Rats<\/a>,\nand that \nMonsanto’s GM soy causes sterility and five times higher infant mortality in hamsters.<\/a>\n

\nMeanwhile, the\nU.S. Department of Justice was\ninvestigating Monsanto’s seed business.<\/a> At least \nseven U.S. states started their own\ninvestigations,<\/a> and later the U.S. EPA fined\nMonsanto $2.5 million for selling seeds illegally in Texas counties where\nthey were banned.\n

\n\n<\/a>\nSince then we’ve learned that\nPesticides Linked to ADHD<\/a>.\nSpecifically organophosphate pesticides.\nLike Glysophate (RoundUp).\nAnd that indicators of pesticides, including organophosphates,\nare found in the urine of 95% of school children<\/a>.\nWe already knew that\n\nGlysophoate causes birth defects in humans.<\/a>\n

\nAnyway, could all this bad news have some effect on Monsanto’s share price?\n\n\n

\n\n<\/a>\nThe company\u2019s stock, which rose steadily over several years to peak at\naround $140 a share in mid-2008, closed Monday at $47.77, having fallen\nabout 42 percent since the beginning of the year. Its earnings for the\nfiscal year that ended in August, which will be announced Wednesday,\nare expected to be well below projections made at the beginning of the\nyear, and the company has abandoned its profit goal for 2012 as well.\n

\nThe latest blow came last week, when early returns from this year\u2019s\nharvest showed that Monsanto\u2019s newest product, SmartStax corn, which\ncontains eight inserted genes, was providing yields no higher than the\ncompany\u2019s less expensive corn, which contains only three foreign genes.\n

\nMonsanto has already been forced to sharply cut prices on SmartStax and\non its newest soybean seeds, called Roundup Ready 2 Yield, as sales fell\nbelow projections.\n<\/blockquote>\nAs I noted back in May when Monsanto’s price dropped,\n“I think that’s CEO-speak for demand is down, competition is up, and\nMonsanto is retrenching in hopes of saving its core glysophate business.”\n

\n\n<\/a>\nBut there is more. Sales of Monsanto\u2019s Roundup, the widely used\nherbicide, has collapsed this year under an onslaught of low-priced\ngenerics made in China. Weeds are growing resistant to Roundup, dimming\nthe future of the entire Roundup Ready crop franchise. And the Justice\nDepartment is investigating Monsanto for possible antitrust violations.\n

\nUntil now, Monsanto\u2019s main challenge has come from opponents of\ngenetically modified crops, who have slowed their adoption in Europe and\nsome other regions.\n<\/blockquote>\nMaybe this is why Monsanto\napparently hired Blackwater<\/a>, excuse me, Xe, or, rather, its affiliate\nTotal Intelligence, “to provide operatives to infiltrate activist groups\norganizing against the multinational biotech firm.”\n

\nBut on with the NY Times story:\n

\n\n<\/a>\nNow, however, the skeptics also include farmers and\ninvestors who were once in Monsanto\u2019s camp.\n

\n\u201cMy personal view is that they overplayed their hand,\u201d William\nR. Young, managing director of ChemSpeak, a consultant to investors in\nthe chemical industry, said of Monsanto. \u201cThey are going to have to\ndemonstrate to the farmer the advantage of their products.\u201d\n<\/blockquote>\nThat’s probably not helped by the news that the\nbest way to profit by GM corn is not to grow it.<\/a>\n

\nEspecially when Roundup no longer stops the mutant pigweed which it bred.<\/a>\nInstead,\n\nplowing the pigweed under in the fall\nand planting a winter cover crop<\/a>\nallows eliminating the pigweed without paying for RoundUp.\n

\nHaiti\n\nhas rejected Monsanto seeds<\/a> and thus the pesticide poisons that come with them.\nMaybe the rest of the world is starting to follow.\n

\nSo sad for Monsanto. So good for the rest of us.\n

\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Andrew Pollack writes in the New York Times that After Growth, Fortunes Turn for Monsanto: As recently as late December, Monsanto was named \u201ccompany of the year\u201d by Forbes magazine. Last week, the company earned a different accolade from Jim Cramer, the television stock market commentator. \u201cThis may be the worst stock of 2010,\u201d he […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7,8,40,42,174,44,11,374],"tags":[93,2763,1137,2765,218,15,377,171,376,183,179,100,2767,803],"class_list":["post-371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agriculture","category-agrochemicals","category-economy","category-food-and-drink","category-glyphosate","category-health","category-law","category-plowing","tag-corn-2","tag-glysophate","tag-haiti","tag-law","tag-maize","tag-monsanto","tag-mutant","tag-pesticide","tag-pigweed","tag-poison","tag-roundup","tag-seed","tag-soybeans","tag-stock"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Gj0O-5Z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}