April 2017
Special agribusiness newsletter:
- Find out about the outcomes of the Monsanto Tribunal
- Read about the growing movement against the Bayer-Monsanto and other planned agribusiness mega-mergers
- Take action to #StopGlyphosate
- Find out about Syngenta's latest PR trick.. and more!
Today five eminent judges delivered a legal opinion resulting from the Monsanto Tribunal, an international civil society initiative to hold Monsanto accountable for human rights violations, for crimes against humanity, and for ecocide. The Tribunal took place in The Hague, Netherlands in October 2016 and the legal opinion was livestreamed in several languages.
Nina Holland (Corporate Europe Observatory) welcomed the Tribunal’s outcome:
The verdict of the Monsanto Tribunal has our fullest support. Its legal opinion makes it crystal clear that corporations like Monsanto violate our right to live in a healthy environment and how they get around the international laws meant to protect people and planet.
With the current wave of mega-mergers in the agribusiness sector, the biggest pesticide producers are becoming even more powerful. But so is our call to regulate them!
Read our full reaction to the outcome.
Watch Manu Chao’s new song in support of the Monsanto Tribunal. Seeds of Freedom is dedicated to the struggle for peasant and seed freedom and against Monsanto, Bayer and destructive agriculture.
Over 680,00 people have already signed the European Citizen’s Initiative (ECI) to #StopGlyphosate. We need to reach one million signatures by June. The ECI calls on the European Commission to ban glyphosate; reform the pesticide approval procedure, and to set EU-wide mandatory reduction targets for pesticide use.
Add your name to the ECI and share it with your friends.
Together with 200 other organisations we signed an open letter raising objections to the planned mergers of six giant agriculture corporations. The signatories together represent millions of members and include farmer, farmworker, beekeeper, religious, international development, and environmental groups.
The letter was sent to the European Commission and Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, and states that the proposed mergers of Dow Chemical with DuPont, Monsanto with Bayer AG, and Syngenta with ChemChina will lead to an unacceptable monopoly, with three companies controlling around 70% of the world's agro-chemicals and more than 60% of commercial seeds. This will "exacerbate the problems caused by industrial farming – with negative consequences for the public, farmers and farm workers, consumers, the environment, and food security".
Take action: Sign We Move EU’s petition to stop the Bayer-Santo merger
17 April: International Day of Peasants Struggle
CEO joined farmers in Belgium facing expulsion from their land which is going to be concreted over as part of a road expansion. A coalition of 30 civil society groups planted potatoes with the farmers and celebrated the food sovereignty movement. This action was part of the International Day of Action of Peasants Struggle.
Challenging the agribusiness lobby
Over 30 organisations took action against agribusiness’ big lobbying event of the year: the Forum for the Future of Agriculture. The annual event is organised by Syngenta and the EU lobby group of large landowners (ELO). Delegates had to walk over a ‘die-in’ of people representing the loss of life and biodiversity caused by agribusiness and pesticides. In the afternoon civil society gathered for a lunch at the entrance of the congress and drew a red line on the ground against industrialised agriculture.
Participants to the Forum for the Future of Agriculture, an annual lobbying event organised by Syngenta and the EU lobby of large landowners, were greeted with a “special” video message, an "Address from His Holiness The Pope". We found out that actually, the video did not come from the Vatican. Read our story here.
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