Bayer buys Monsanto

The takeover cost $56 billion.  It’s the largest acquisition of 2016.

DuPont, which sells seeds, will probably merge with Dow Chemical shortly.

Agrium, a Canadian company that produces phosphate, is merging with another Canadian company, the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan. 

Syngenta of Switzerland, producer of pesticides, was taken over by the China National Chemical Corporation earlier this year.

Most farmers think prices of seeds, fertilizer, and sprays will go up.  After all, as competition decreases, companies can raise their prices.  They have done so in the past.

It would really help if we all demanded and bought organic produce and non-GMO farm products.

While I’m on the subject of agriculture, I’d like to point out that Trump’s advisor on agricultural matters is Sid Miller, Texas Commissioner of Agriculture, who created the “cupcake amnesty” for sugary school food and welcomed deep fryers and soft drinks back to Texas schools, where they had been banned for years because of Texas’s soaring obesity rates.  (Mr. Miller also compared Syrian refugees to rattlesnakes and suggested using the atomic bomb on the Muslim world.) 

The info on the mergers came from “Bayer and Monsanto in $56 Billion Deal,” New York Times, (Sept. 15, 2016, p. B1, B-2).  The plea to buy organic is all my own.  I’ll let you think about how the Trump administration would handle agricultural issues.