25/February/21

 

Bayer announced on Thursday steep losses for the year 2020 as it struggled to recover from a string of US lawsuits claiming its weedkiller causes cancer. The German chemical and pharmaceutical giant said in a statement that it posted an annual net loss of €10.5 billion ($12.8 billion), compared with a profit of just over €4 billion for 2019. The group was expected to end the year in the red after it agreed last June to set aside around $11 billion to settle a wave of US claims against its weedkiller Roundup. DW

 

 

Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador quietly rocked the agribusiness world with his New Year’s Eve decree to phase out use of the herbicide glyphosate and the cultivation of genetically modified corn. His administration sent an even stronger aftershock two weeks later, clarifying that the government would also phase out GM corn imports in three years and the ban would include not just corn for human consumption but yellow corn destined primarily for livestock. Industry and US government officials seemed shocked that their lobbying had failed to stop López Obrador from acting. IPS News

 

 

The use of weedkillers can increase the prevalence of antibiotic resistant bacteria in soil, a new study from the University of York shows. Scientists from China and the UK studied the effect of three widely used herbicides – glyphosate, glufosinate and dicamba – on soil bacterial communities. All three herbicides are used on GM herbicide-tolerant crops. Using soil microcosms, researchers discovered that herbicides increased the relative abundance of bacterial species that carried antibiotic resistance genes. GMWatch

 

 

In his new book on how to avoid a climate disaster, Bill Gates discusses his plans to model African food systems upon India’s “green revolution", in which a plant scientist increased crop yields and saved a billion lives, according to Gates. The obstacle to implementing a similar overhaul in Africa, he asserts, is that most farmers in poor countries don’t have the financial means to buy fertilizers. But Gates fails to mention that hunger is largely due to poverty, not scarcity. And the Gates Foundation's favoured agricultural model moves farmers toward ever-larger and less-diverse farming operations that rely on pesticides and climate-harming chemical fertilizers. US Right to Know