Bayer-Monsanto merger creates agrichemical juggernaut
FRANKFURT AM MAIN: German chemicals and pharmaceuticals giant Bayer will seal a US$63billion merger with US-based Monsanto, creating an agrichemical juggernaut with lofty ambitions to feed the world but feared by environmentalists.
“Feeding a growing world population is a long-term trend, and we want to contribute to its solution,” Bayer chief executive Werner Baumann told business newspaper Handelsblatt in an interview Tuesday.
“Buying Monsanto brings big reputational risks, but also enormous market opportunities,” the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper judged.
Executives are betting big on projections that around 10 billion people will live on Earth by 2050, meaning more food must grow on the same amount of arable land.
They believe that can best be achieved with technologies rejected by green organisations and politicians, including geneticallymodified (GM) seeds designed to resist strong pesticides.
Modified crops and digital tools to help farmers adapt to the weather and monitor the health of their fields could also help swell harvests threatened by climate change.
“We will help our customers to grow more with less,” Baumann told journalists Monday – while
Feeding a growing world population is a long-term trend, and we want to contribute to its solution. Werner Baumann, Bayer chief executive
promising “we will apply the same rigour in achieving our sustainability targets as we do to our financial targets.”
Following Dow and DuPont’s 2017 merger and ChemChina’s acquisition of Swiss firm Syngenta, the Bayer-Monsanto tie-up is the latest in a string of mega-mergers in the chemical industry that have created giants in Europe, the US and Asia.
“Fewer and fewer firms are sharing out power over farming and groceries... determining what arrives on our plates at what price,” the Heinrich Boell Foundation, close to Germany’s Greens party, warned last year. — AFP