December 13, 2017

Elizabeth Warren Just Let Loose on Trump and Monsanto

She is no fan of the ag giant’s pending mega-merger.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaks at the Open Market Institute.Screengrab/YouTube

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Back in September 2016, US agribusiness titan Monsanto and German chemical conglomerate Bayer agreed to a $66 billion merger, making way for a globe-spanning firm with huge shares of the world’s seed and pesticide markets. The deal remains unconsummated, still under scrutiny by antitrust authorities. Donald Trump signaled readiness to bless the deal before taking office, but his administration has been pretty silent about it since. 

Enter Trump’s nemesis, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D.-Mass.). In a recent speech before the Open Markets Institute, Warren denounced rising levels of corporate consolidation—massive companies merging into vast market-dominating entities that invest a share of their profits in lobbying and financing campaigns, shaping the political system to their own ends. 

At one point—snippet below—Warren turned her attention to one of the most consolidated sectors of the US economy: agribusiness. And she called on the Trump administration to nix Bayer-Monsanto. “If the Bayer-Monsanto merger is approved, one gigantic company would supply one-quarter of the entire world’s seeds and pesticides,” she noted. (Her math matches up pretty closely with my assessment). 

As Warren notes, the Trump administration has already blessed a similar merger between former rivals Dow and DuPont, which will eventually roll out a seed/agrichemical giant bigger than Monsanto at its current size. It also signed off on the takeover of Swiss pesticide giant and ChemChina.  If Monsanto/Bayer gets the green light as well, then just three corporations will own the lion’s share of the globe’s seed and pesticide markets, giving them enormous leverage over farmers world wide. And these companies’ aggressive push into “precision agriculture”—taking farmers’ field data and selling them advice on what to plant and spray—only adds to their power. 

Warren can’t stop Trump from approving Bayer-Monsanto. But she seems intent to make sure everyone understands the consequences if he does. 

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate