Jack Kaskey
DuPont is sending dozens of ex-police officers across North America to prevent a practice that generations of farmers once took for granted.
The second-biggest seed company, and the best seller of genetically modified soya bean seed, is looking for evidence of farmers illegally saving their seeds from harvests for replanting next season, which is not allowed under sales contracts. The Wilmington, Delaware-based company was inspecting Canadian fields and would begin in the US next year, Randy Schlatter, a DuPont senior manager, said this week.
DuPont is protecting its sales of Roundup Ready soya beans, so called because they tolerate being sprayed by Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide. For years enforcement was done by Monsanto, which created Roundup Ready and dominates the $13.3 billion (R118bn) biotech seed industry, although it is moving on to a new line of seeds, now that patents are expiring. That leaves DuPont to play the bad guy, enforcing alternative patents so cheaper “illegal beans” do not get planted.
“Farmers are never going to get cheap access to these genetically engineered varieties,” said Charles Benbrook, a research professor at Washington State University’s Centre for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources. “The biotech industry has trumped the legitimate economic interests of the farmer again by raising the ante on intellectual property.”
Monsanto controls about 28 percent of the soya bean market in the US, the largest producer and exporter last year, while Dupont has about 36 percent. The weed-killer tolerant seeds and related licences generated $1.77bn in sales for Monsanto in the year to August, 13 percent of the company’s total. DuPont had $1.37bn in soya bean revenue last year, 3.6 percent of total sales, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The grain is used to make animal feed, cooking oil, tofu and biofuels, and it is the biggest crop after maize in the US.
DuPont shares have declined 5.1 percent this year. Monsanto has gained 30 percent.
Attacks on the genetically modified food industry are not new. Farmers criticised Monsanto in the 2008 Oscar-nominated documentary Food, Inc. for contracts that keep them from saving seeds.
Law suits
The St Louis-based company had sued 145 US farmers for saving Roundup Ready soya beans since 1997, winning all 11 cases that went to trial, said Kelli Powers, a Monsanto spokeswoman. The US Supreme Court agreed last month to consider the legality of such planting restrictions.
DuPont markets Roundup Ready soya beans under licence from Monsanto, which is shifting to a newer version of the crop along with most of the rest of the industry. Some farmers were anticipating a return to low-cost seed after patents on the original beans expired, Benbrook said.
Monsanto chief executive Hugh Grant raised such a prospect in 2010 when he said that growers could replant Roundup Ready soya beans after the patents lapsed.
“Our challenge is to get customers to understand the fact that strong intellectual property protection is a benefit that ends up at the customer level,” Schlatter, who works for DuPont’s intellectual property programme office, said. His company holds more than 225 soya bean patents.
“If we can’t make a profit, we can’t invest and we can’t bring out new products.”
Monsanto widely licenses its technology, getting the two versions of Roundup Ready soya beans into 82 percent of the global crop last year and 94 percent in the US. Patents on original Roundup Ready beans expired in Canada last year and they expire in the US in late 2014.
Soya beans are easier for farmers to replicate than other hybrid crops such as maize because second-generation beans don’t lose vigour, tempting farmers to hold on to seeds.
The Supreme Court on October 5 agreed to review a federal appeals court decision that farmer Vernon Hugh Bowman infringed Monsanto’s patents when he purchased and planted Roundup Ready soya beans from a grain elevator to save money. The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit rejected Bowman’s contention that Monsanto had “exhausted” its patent rights by the time he bought the seed.
Monsanto pulled out of the Argentine soya bean market a decade ago after the country stopped enforcing Roundup Ready patents. Pirated Roundup Ready beans are ubiquitous in the country, and Monsanto is working on agreements to get paid for a newer technology so it can re-enter the market.
Inspections
Monsanto, which carries out the same kind of farm visits as DuPont, was shifting enforcement efforts to its new Roundup Ready 2 technology, Powers said. It has switched most US customers to the new genetic trait, with 13 million hectares planted last year and about 18 million hectares estimated for next year.
Dow Chemical, which competes in the biotech seed market, did not need farm inspectors because it was licensing the new Roundup Ready 2 trait from Monsanto, said Garry Hamlin, a Dow spokesman.
DuPont has contracted Agro Protection International for its farm audits. Agro typically hired retired police officers to visit growers, company president Dennis Birtles said. It had about 45 employees inspecting farms in Canada and was adding as many as 35 to begin work for DuPont in the US next year. “Everyone always goes to the idea that we are trying to intimidate people and nothing could be further from the truth. We are trying to create deterrence.” – Bloomberg