RT
The US Department of Justice has reached a settlement that would allow Bayer AG’s $66 billion takeover of Monsanto Co, requiring the German company to sell $9 billion in agricultural assets first.
The merger as initially proposed would have harmed consumers and farmers by eliminating competition, the DOJ said. However, the Trump administration is satisfied with the terms of the settlement announced Tuesday.
“America’s farm system is of critical importance to our economy, to our food system, and to our way of life,” said Makan Delrahim, head of the DOJ’s antitrust division. “American farmers and consumers rely on head-to-head competition between Bayer and Monsanto.”
Last October, Bayer agreed to sell its Liberty herbicide brand, cotton and soybean seeds, and other seed capabilities to BASF SE, another German chemical corporation. That deal was worth €5.9 billion. Another sale to BASF was announced in April, with Bayer divesting of herbicides, wheat hybrids research and digital farming business that had combined sales amounting to €2.2 billion in 2017, according to Bloomberg.
EU regulators approved the merger in March.
Once combined, Bayer-Monsanto will be the world’s biggest agrochemical corporation, surpassing DowDuPont Inc. and China National, which acquired Syngenta AG last year.
Monsanto is the world’s leading producer of genetically modified (GMO) seeds, and has faced widespread criticism and protests over the effects its products have had on the environment and biodiversity. Roundup, Monsanto’s most popular herbicide, has been blamed for the collapse in the Monarch butterfly population as well as the “colony collapse disorder” decimating the honeybees in Europe and North America.
The company has also challenged scientific studies pointing to glyphosate, the neo-nicotinoid used in the Roundup family of herbicides, being a carcinogen.
Announcing the merger in 2016, Bayer CEO Werner Baumann said there was an opportunity for both companies to “get beyond this image and reputation thing” by rebranding Monsanto.
Comment: Well, what could possibly go wrong? Er. Everything?
You know something is really amiss when Walmart starts to get involved...
https://futurism.com/robot-bees-drones-walmart/
This is going to make a bad situation worse for so many reasons. a) It's the same reductionist mindset that creates such problems in the first place. In other words, mimicking nature in a bid to replace complex biodiversity dynamics doesn't work. b) It will be expensive as well as potentially harmful not just to other insects, making it more likely that it will further reduce the bee population not assist it. (Drone bees have rotor blades and are mechanical, ergo... c) This is a bid to make a big bucks not to solve the problem.
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New Scientist
A drone that can pollinate flowers may one day work side by side with bees to improve crop yields.
About three-quarters of global crop species, from apples to almonds, rely on pollination by bees and other insects. But pesticides, land clearing and climate change have caused declines in many of these creatures, creating problems for farmers.
Pollination is needed for reproduction in flowering plants. Male flower parts, or stamens, produce pollen that fertilises female parts, known as pistils, to make seeds. In self-pollinating flowers, the stamen sheds pollen directly onto the pistil.
Cross-pollination, however, requires the transfer of pollen from one plant to another. This mostly relies on pollen becoming stuck to the bodies of bees and other insects when they feed on flowers, and then being deposited on the next plant they visit. It has advantages over self-pollination, in that it increases genetic diversity and improves the quantity and quality of crops.
Eijiro Miyako at Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, and his colleagues have used the principle of cross-pollination in bees to make a drone that transports pollen between flowers.
Read more (+video)
See also: 'Drone Bees' Are Comically Inept, Expensive and Dangerous to Real Bees
RT
The devastating consequences of our declining bee population are being highlighted on the first ever ‘Bee Day.’ Around 80 percent of crops are pollinated by insects. RT asks if there are any alternatives to secure our food future.
According to Greenpeace, some 40 percent of commercial honeybees have been lost across the US since 2006. The decline is attributed to a rise in colony collapse disorder (CCD), a phenomenon that occurs when the majority of a colony’s worker bees suddenly disappear. The cause is unknown, although some experts offer various explanations ranging from infections, increased urbanisation, the loss of habitat, and the widespread use of pesticides.
Whatever the reason, insect pollination directly contributes to the production of a huge portion of the world’s food supply, so the dramatic decline of the honeybee should be a warning: either we get to the root of the problem or develop a technological alternative capable of performing the same function.
But is a technological solution even viable?
Research into robotic replacements for bees is being spearheaded by Eijiro Miyako at Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology. A manually controlled drone, the device is around four centimeters wide and is covered in horse hair treated with a gel designed to collect pollen.
Read more
NPR
Citing concerns for food production, the environment and biodiversity, the European Union is set to "completely ban" the outdoor use of neonicotinoid insecticides that have been blamed for killing bees, and for keeping other bees from laying eggs.
"All outdoor use of the three substances will be banned and the neonicotinoids in question will only be allowed in permanent greenhouses where no contact with bees is expected," the EU announced on Friday.
An EU committee approved the plan to tightly restrict use of the insecticides, acting upon scientific advice from the European Food Safety Authority to tighten existing restrictions and protect bees, crucial pollinators.
The EFSA said in February that it had confirmed risks to both honeybees and to wild bees such as bumblebees posed by neonicotinoid pesticides.
Read more
Science Daily
Two widely used
neonicotinoids -- a class of insecticide -- appear to significantly harm
honey bee colonies over the winter, particularly during colder winters,
according to a new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH).
The study replicated a 2012 finding from the same research group that
found a link between low doses of imidacloprid and Colony Collapse
Disorder (CCD), in which bees abandon their hives over the winter and
eventually die. The new study also found that low doses of a second
neonicotinoid, clothianidin, had the same negative effect.
Further,
although other studies have suggested that CCD-related mortality in
honey bee colonies may come from bees' reduced resistance to mites or
parasites as a result of exposure to pesticides, the new study found
that bees in the hives exhibiting CCD had almost identical levels of
pathogen infestation as a group of control hives, most of which survived
the winter. This finding suggests that the neonicotinoids are causing
some other kind of biological mechanism in bees that in turn leads to
CCD.
Read more
Heather Callaghan
Activist Post
This is an update to the original post on April 17, 2013.
No, this is not a tabloid - it's real.
According to several videos, which are posted below, robotic insects
have made their first controlled flight. According to the creators of
Robobee:
The demonstration of the first controlled flight of an insect-sized
robot is the culmination of more than a decade's work . . . Half the
size of a paperclip, weighing less than a tenth of a gram, the robot was
inspired by the biology of a fly, with submillimeter-scale anatomy and
two wafer-thin wings that flap almost invisibly, 120 times per second.
In addition to the recent suggestion from insecticide producers that we should "plant more flowers"
to aid the declining bee population, Harvard's School of Engineering
and Applied Sciences has been working with staff from the Department of
Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and Northeastern University's
Department of Biology to develop robot bees. These insectoid automatons would be capable of a multitude of tasks:
autonomous pollination, search and rescue, hazardous exploration,
military surveillance, climate mapping, and traffic monitoring - to name
a few.
Greenpeace has issued a disturbing new PSA which postulates on what such
a world would potentially look like as these robot bees gain autonomy
and begin fully populating the natural world.
