Monsanto !

[ged]

Please read this article,thanx.
Monsanto Agrees to Buy De Ruiter Seeds
Monsanto Agrees to Buy De Ruiter Seeds for Roughly $862.7M Including Debt
Associated Press, March 31, 2008
Straight to the Source


from Yahoo!


ST. LOUIS (AP) -- Monsanto Co. said Monday it has agreed to acquire Netherlands-based De Ruiter Seeds Group BV, which produces seeds for the greenhouse market, for 546 million euros ($862.7 million) including debt. Monsanto did not disclose the amount of the debt included in the purchase price.

De Ruiter Seeds, which had global sales of about 108 million euros ($170.6 million), works with crops such as tomatoes, cucumbers, melons, peppers and rootstock.

After the acquisition, Monsanto's vegetable seed business will include De Ruiter Seeds, which will serve the protected-culture vegetable seed market; Seminis, which will serve the open-field vegetable seed market; and the International Seed Group, which will serve customers of regional seed businesses.

Monsanto Chief Financial Officer Terry Crews, who serves as CEO of Seminis, said the acquisition is expected to help boost Monsanto's vegetable seed platform into a $1 billion revenue business by 2012.

Monsanto said it plans to finance the acquisition with cash. The deal is expected to add to earnings per share, cash flow and revenue growth by the second full fiscal year following its completion.

Monsanto said it has not determined a timeline for the closing of the transaction because it remains subject to review and approval by several European-based regulatory authorities, among others.

Monsanto shares dropped $4.13, or 3.6 percent, to $110.14 in afternoon trading. The stock has traded between $53.95 and $129.28 during the past 52 weeks.

This is IMHO the wake up call for us,these people now have a foothold on our doorstep!
atb
ged

[Meanqueen]

Hi Ged, I have read it twice but I don't understand it

Ilona

[Mo]

Well I know Monsanto are biiiiggg and they sell GM seeds, but I never could make head or tail of that sort of thing either.
Can you spell it out for us.

[saint-spoon]

Seems to me that we’ll soon be at the mercy of a single giant seed providing monopoly; able to charge what they want for the very things that we need to grow food. Potentially this could raise food prices further although on it’s own I would think that unlikely as there will always be alternatives. More ominously it tends to be the case when a single organisation gets too big a hold on a market then all the other businesses get forced out of business or into fringe markets by the giant selling at unsustainably low prices for a limited period (just look at what happens when a PeStcos opens in a small town), that could be a bigger problem as the seed stock will be limited to what they want to sell to growers i.e. the most profitable regardless of quality.

I could of course be completely wrong.

[Mo]

Things are getting that way for gardeners.

Look how hard it is to get all the old varieties of fruit trees - I was trying to answer a query on here about pear trees, and Google would come up with anything on more than 4 sorts.

Luckily there are always the specialist that go in for saving rare sorts. But what I'd like is to be able to go into the nearest shop and get 4 kinds of winter Cauli, like I used to.

[ged]

Well put S-S,I could not have explained the situation any better myself!NOW is the time to start saving our own seeds!
atb
ged

[Meanqueen]

Thank you

Ilona

[misty]

I think we should be a bit afraid. We have an agricultral testing station here and that's bad enough when you don't know what they are growing.