But today everything has changed, as large chemical and agribusiness firms have acquired or merged with seed companies and other agricultural input companies. They have successfully gained a foothold on genetically-modified (GM) crops with transgenic traits.
These primary factors and several others have facilitated a crescendo towards the global domination of agriculture by corporations, and thus the world's food supply.
The dismal state in which we find ourselves today did not come overnight, of course, but it did pick up rapid speed after the introduction of GM crops in the mid-1990s. Since that time, multinational corporations like Monsanto, DuPont, and Syngenta have seized a significant amount of control over the global seed industry, which has greatly limited agricultural diversity and freedom.
The ability to patent both seeds and seed traits has also added injury to insult, as the ability to obtain natural or heirloom seeds is becoming increasingly difficult, and many farmers feel they have no choice but to go with the flow.
Professor Philip H. Howard from the Department of Community, Agriculture, Recreation and Resource Studies at Michigan State University published a study in 2009 entitled Visualizing Consolidation in the Global Seed Industry: 1996 - 2008 that analyzes the trend in agriculture towards corporate dominance.
The report, which was featured in a special issue of the journal Renewable Agriculture, provides both an extensive data analysis of agriculture's dramatic transformation over the past several decades, as well as a highly-informative visual analysis of this truly shocking hostile takeover situation.
The 'Big Six" pharmaceutical and chemical companies have acquired, created joint ventures with hundreds of seed companies over the past 15 years
In order to help assist his readers in understanding the state of the seed industry, Prof. Howard developed a very informative graphic that displays the reality of who really controls the seed industry.Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta, Bayer, Dow, and BASF collectively own or partially-own hundreds of formerly-independent seed companies -- and Monsanto, of course, dominates them all.
You can view the graphic for yourself at the following link:
http://www.naturalnews.com/files/se...
As you will see, the blue circles in the diagram represent seed companies, while the red circles -- which happen to all be chemical or pharmaceutical companies -- control the vast majority of them. Solid gray arrows indicate complete ownership of a company, while gray lines indicate partial ownership.
One of the most obvious first impressions to be gathered from the diagram is Monsanto's excessive and widespread control over the seed industry. According to Prof. Howard's analysis, Monsanto acquired more than 50 seed companies just during the time represented by his study period, which spans the years between 1996 and 2008.
Monsanto had little-to-no involvement in the seed industry prior to the mid-1980s, but since that time has been rapidly eating up seed companies and furthering its development and control over the food supply through GMOs. Today, Monsanto is the world's largest seed company, and the transnational behemoth continues to acquire or otherwise create "partnerships" with various independent seed companies that are still in existence.
Behind Monsanto, the other five of the "Big Six" that Prof. Howard illustrates -- DuPont, Syngenta, Bayer, Dow, and BASF -- collectively own or control a great portion of the remaining major seed companies not owned or controlled by Monsanto. And one of the biggest factors that has contributed to this dismal setup is GMOs and transgenic, patentable seed traits that are shared among the industry players.
