For Immediate Release
Media Contacts:
OCM President Mike Callicrate, 785-332-8218
John Hansen, OCM Vice President, 402-476-8815
(June 30, 2015) –The Organization for Competitive Markets Board of Directors passed a resolution opposing Monsanto’s purchase of Syngenta. The buyout would allow the world’s largest seed company to acquire the world’s largest agricultural chemical company and merge them into one company.
“Farmers in the U.S. and around the world are facing unprecedented marketplace concentration in the markets they buy their production inputs from as well as the agricultural markets they sell their products into. In both cases, that market concentration has not served the best interests of agricultural producers,” said Mike Callicrate, OCM President. “The more market concentration there is, the less true competition there is. When there is less competition, someone usually gets overcharged or underpaid.”
OCM Vice President John Hansen said, “OCM is a national non-profit educational organization that works to create more transparent, accessible, fair, and competitive agricultural markets. The Monsanto purchase of Syngenta raises major red flags for our organization for several reasons. The Monsanto purchase of Syngenta increases the marketplace concentration in two ag supply sectors while also reducing competition in both sectors. The potential purchase also concentrates more intellectual property into fewer commercial hands, which gives Monsanto the ability to control the choices available in the ag seed and ag chemical marketplaces. That is a truly troubling prospect. Neither of these companies is struggling to compete. Both companies dominate their respective sectors. This potential purchase is about expanding marketplace domination.”
The OCM Board of Directors passed the resolution opposing the Monsanto purchase of Syngenta in hopes the nation’s regulatory agencies will not allow further market debilitating market concentration. “The failure of our nation’s anti-trust regulators to protect farmers and ranchers and society as a whole from non-competitive market consolidation and concentration across the board has resulted in higher prices paid by farmers and ranchers for ag inputs, and fewer choices in the marketplace,” said Mike Callicrate. “We want our anti-trust regulators to do their job, and that means regulate in a fashion that produces more competition instead of less competition.”
