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US: Senate looking closer at agriculture merger

By  |  September 20, 2016

It’s taken months of negotiating, but last week Monsanto Inc. accepted a $66 billion offer from Bayer AG. However, due to plans to reduce the number of major agrochemical companies in the US and Europe from 6 to 4, the US Senate is concerned about rising costs for farmers.

Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, noted thatlow crop prices and higher seed prices are putting farmers under “tremendous pressure” as the agriculture economy has slowed in the last couple of years.

Grassley spoke before the Senate hearing scheduled on Tuesday and mentioned his concerns about the consolidation of the agricultural biotech industry noting that the Department of Justice is looking at the Dow Chemical and Dupont merger and the Federal Trade Commission is reviewing the merger between Syngenta AG and China National Chemical Corp.

Full Content: Phys.org

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