14 I EUROPEAN SEED I EUROPEAN-SEED.COM I t is rare for any merger to be described, by the agreeing parties, as any- thing more than a modest technical restructuring beneficial to customers and shareholders alike. Actors in agricul- tural mergers have the added advantage of implying that their deal will, in some way, end hunger or at least contribute to greater food security. It was surpris- ing, then, the agreement between Bayer and Monsanto last September attracted so much international concern. Bayer management – both in announcing the agreement and in the media ever since – have played the world hunger card, but even the acquisition-acquiescent finan- cial press allowed that, there could be justifiable concerns for food security. The concern, of course, is because the Bayer- Monsanto hook-up was the third merger announced over a matter of months bring- ing together the biggest players in seeds and pesticides. The first deal – between ChemChina and Syngenta – stirred some interest mostly because the bid was by a Chinese company – not one of the Big Six Gene Giants. The second bid joining Dow and DuPont was less surprising but mostly stirred industry interest because it pretty much guaranteed that Monsanto, Bayer and BASF would also be forced into the market to shop for partners. EMERGENCY DEBATE A few weeks after the Bayer/Monsanto news, the Civil Society Mechanism (the assemblage of Civil Society Organizations - CSO) participating in the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) in Rome called for an emergency debate on the concentration of the seed and pesticide industry and, more widely, for the oli- gopoly implications of corporate con- centration for world food security. The civil society request was pro forma - no one was surprised by the CSO demand and no one expected the highly political intergovernmental committee to accept. Governments don’t like being railroaded and last-minute changes to agendas are easy to block. To everybody’s amaze- ment, the committee’s chair, Sudan’s Agricultural Minister, supported the call, transforming the weeklong meet- ings into a series of skirmishes by those for and against a debate on the mergers. The G-77 and China (the global South) Agricultural Mega-Mergers – History Lessons THE ETC GROUP SHARES ITS CONCERNS OVER THE THREE ANNOUNCED ACQUISITIONS. BY: PAT MOONEY, ETC GROUP Illustration: ETC Group