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Who Owns Nature? - ETC Group PDF

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1 1 2 0 0 8 Who Owns Nature? Corporate Power and the Final Frontier in the Commodification of Life November 2008 Communiqué November 2008 Issue #100 Who Owns Nature? Corporate Power and the Final Frontier in the Commodification of Life ETC Group www.etcgroup.org November 2008 Publication Design by Wordsmith Services and yellowDog : creative Original Artwork by Stig Table of Contents Problems, Fascinations and Opportunities: A Preface 3 Who Owns Nature? 4 Graphic: Top 10 Corporations: Global Market Share by Sector 4 The Context 5 Chart: Value of Global Mergers & Acquisitions 7 Section 1: Corporate Farm Inputs: Seeds, Agrochemicals, Fertilizers 11 Seed Industry 11 World’s Top 10 Seed Companies 11 Chart: Global Commercial Seed Market 11 Chart: Top 10 Share of Global Proprietary Seed Market 12 Chart: Global Proprietary Seed Market, 2007 12 Agrochemical Industry 15 World’s Top 10 Pesticide Firms 15 Chart: Global Agrochemical Market, 2007 sales 15 Fertilizer Industry 17 World’s Biggest Fertilizer Companies 17 Chart: Corporate Food Chain At-a-Glance 18 Section 2: Corporate Food Outputs: Food & Beverage Manufacturing, Global Grocery Retailers 21 Food & Beverage Manufacturing Industry 21 World’s Top 10 Food & Beverage Corporations 21 Grocery Retailing Industry 22 World’s Top 10 Global Food Retailers 22 Chart: Global Food Retailers: Top 10 Account for 40% of Groceries Sold by Top 100 22 Chart: Global Food & Beverage Companies: Top 10 Account for 35% of Packaged Food Sold by Top 100 23 Cartoon by Tom Toles 23 Section 3: Corporate Medicine & Health: Big Pharma, Biotech, Animal Pharmaceutical, Bioinformatics 25 Corporate Medicine & Health At-a-Glance 25 Pharmaceutical Industry 25 World’s Top 10 Pharmaceutical Companies 25 Chart: Top 10’s Market Share of Top 100 Companies 26 Cartoon by Paul Noth 27 Biotechnology Industry 28 World’s Top 10 Publicly-Traded Biotechnology Companies 28 Biotech’s Top 10 Blockbuster Drugs, 2007 29 Veterinary Pharmaceutical Industry 30 World’s Top 10 Animal Pharma Companies 30 The BioInformation Industry 31 Major Players In DNA Data Generation 32 Major Players In Software, Hardware, DNA Data Processing, Storing and Analyzing 33 Section 4: Commodifying Nature’s Last Straw? Extreme Genetic Engineering and the Post-Petroleum Sugar Economy 35 Cartoon by Stig 38 Synthetic Biology Players and Corporate Partners 40 The New Biomas(s)ters: Converging Technologies Crystallize Corporate Power 41 Leading Commercial Gene Synthesis Companies 42 Petroleum Refining: Top 10 42 Chemical Industry: Top 10 42 Forest, Paper & Packaging Corporations: Top 10 43 Companies Involved in Oilseed, Grain and Sugar Processing/Trading: Top 11 43 Conclusion 45 The Global Economy: Who’s Got the Power 48 Problems, Fascinations and Opportunities: A Preface Three decades ago, humanity had a Industry got what it wanted. From thou- sil fuels can be made from the carbon problem; science had a fascination; sands of seed companies and public found in plants. The oceans’ algae, the and industry had an opportunity. Our breeding institutions three decades Amazon’s trees and savanna grasses problem was injustice. The ranks of the ago, ten companies now control more can provide the (purportedly) renew- hungry were expanding while the ranks than two-thirds of global proprietary able raw materials to feed people, of farmers were thinning. Meanwhile, seed sales. From dozens of pesticide fuel cars, manufacture widgets, and science was fascinated by biotechnol- companies three decades ago, ten now cure diseases while fending off global ogy – the idea that we could genetically control almost 90% of agrochemical warming. In order for industry to realize engineer crops and livestock (and sales worldwide. From almost a thou- this vision, governments must accept people) with traits that could overcome sand biotech startups 15 years ago, ten that this technology is too expensive. all our problems. Agribusiness saw an companies now have three-quarters of Competitors must be convinced it is opportunity to extract the enormous industry revenue. And, six of the lead- too risky. Regulations need to be dis- surplus value that was laced throughout ers in seeds are also six of the leaders mantled and monopoly patents need to the food chain. The hugely-decentral- in pesticides and biotech. Over the past be approved. ized food system held pockets of profit three decades, a handful of companies just crying out to be centralized. All has gained control of that one-quarter New technologies don’t industry had to do was convince gov- of the world’s annual biomass (crops, have to be socially useful ernments that biotech’s gene revolution livestock, fisheries, etc.) that has or technically superior in could end hunger without harming the been integrated into the world market environment. Biotechnology was pre- economy. order to be profitable. sented as too risky for small companies Today, humanity has a problem; sci- and too expensive for public research- ence has a fascination; and industry ers. In order to bring this technology to has an opportunity. Our problem is And, as it was with biotechnology, the the world, public breeders would have hunger and injustice in a world of cli- new technologies don’t need to be to stop competing with private breed- mate chaos. Science’s fascination is socially useful or technically superior ers, regulators would have to look the with convergence at the nano-scale (i.e., they don’t have to work) in order other way when pesticide companies – including the potential to design new to be profitable. All they have to do is bought seed companies which, in turn, life forms from the bottom-up. Industry’s chase away the competition and coerce bought other seed companies. Govern- opportunity lies in the three-quarters of governments into surrendering control. ments would have to protect industry’s the world’s biomass that (although used Once the market is monopolized, how investments by offering patents first on and useful) remains outside the global the technology performs is irrelevant. plants and then on genes. Consumer market economy. With the aid of new safety regulations, hard-won over the technologies, industry believes that any course of a century, would have to yield chemical made from the carbon in fos- to genetically modified foods and drugs. Large Numbers: How Many Zeros? In this report, ETC Group uses the following number-naming system: One million = 1,000,000 = 1 million One billion = 1,000,000,000 = 1,000 million One trillion = 1,000,000,000,000 = 1,000,000 million $20 trillion is the same as $20,000 billion, which is the same as $20,000,000 million, or $20,000,000,000,000 3 Who Owns Nature? In this 100th issue of the ETC Communiqué we update Oligopoly, Inc. – our ongoing series tracking corporate concentration in the life industry. We also analyze the past three decades of agribusiness efforts to monopolize the 24% of living nature that has been commodified, and expose a new strategy to capture the remaining three-quarters that has, until now, remained beyond the market economy. Top 10 Corporations Global Market Share by Sector m aceu r t a i c h a p l s s eeds o c hemi r c g a a l 55% Market Share s d & bev o e r o 67% of Proprietary f a 89% Market Share g Market Share e o c e ry re b i otech r t g ai p r s l rocess o 26% Market Share m a l ph a 40% of groceries ni r 66% Market Share a m sold by top 100 a 63% Market Share Source: ETC Group 4 The Context The 100th issue of ETC Group’s Com- Amidst a world food crisis, collapsing sequester carbon, or blast sulfate parti- muniqué provides an update on corpo- ecosystems and climate chaos, new cles into the stratosphere to screen out rate concentration in the life sciences technologies are once again being sunlight and lower temperatures, etc.). industry. We have been monitoring cor- promoted by international institutions, Promoted in the name of fighting hun- porate power in commercial food, farm- governments and Big Business as the ger, increasing production and arresting ing, and health for three decades. Ten magic bullet for boosting food produc- climate change, technologies that rein- years ago, ETC Group monitored con- tion and saving the planet. The idea of force corporate power are deepening trol and ownership of biotech. Today, a technological fix for agricultural de- existing inequalities, accelerating envi- biotech is becoming “extreme genetic velopment is nothing new, but govern- ronmental degradation and introducing engineering.” Technology convergence ments are stepping aside and inviting new societal risks. is re-defining life sciences. We’ve corporations to cast themselves as the reached the point where it’s difficult to key players in the fight against hunger Things Fall Apart: For the millions talk about biotechnology without talking and poverty. Instead of challenging of people who spend 60-80 percent about nanotechnology and synthetic bi- or changing structures that generate of their income on food, the impacts ology. All of the biosciences are fueled poverty and exacerbate inequality, of spiralling food and fuel prices in by information technology or bioinfor- governments are working hand-in-hand 2006-2008 are “unprecedented in scale matics – the computer-based analysis with corporations to reinforce the very and brutality.”1 In 2006-2007, the num- of biological materials. As a result, we institutions and policies that are the ber of food-insecure people rose from root causes of today’s agro-industrial 849 million to 982 million. The U.S. food crisis. …We can’t understand Department of Agriculture’s July 2008 corporate power if we Concentration in the life industry has assessment predicts that the number of hungry people in 70 South countries will allowed a handful of powerful corpora- don’t understand the increase to 1.2 billion by 2017.2 In other tions to seize the research agenda, concept of convergence – dictate national and international trade words, rather than halving the number of hungry people by 2015 (the goal that agreements and agricultural policies, converging technologies governments have repeatedly pledged and engineer the acceptance of new and converging capital. to meet) their ranks are projected to technologies as the “science-based” increase by 50%. The food import bill solution to increase crop yields, feed of 82 poor countries (designated Low- the hungry and save the planet. The Income Food-Deficit Countries) is ex- Gene Giants tell us that if agriculture can’t understand corporate power if pected to reach US$169 billion in 2008, is threatened by climate extremes, we we don’t understand the concept of 40 per cent more than in 2007.3 (To need “climate-ready” genes (patented convergence – converging technologies put that in perspective, governments ones) to engineer crops to withstand and converging capital. Convergence meeting at the FAO Food Summit in drought, heat and saline soils. When is driving new and unprecedented cor- June 2008 pledged just $12.3 billion to hunger is viewed through the nar- porate alliances across all industry sec- help countries in the South – and most row lens of science and technology, tors and setting the stage for a dramatic of that has vaporized with the colossal genetically engineered foods are the transformation of the global economy corporate bailouts.) corporate quick-fix. When Peak Oil is into what some call the “sugar econo- approached as a technical challenge, my” or “carbohydrate economy.” Bio- According to Planet Retail, global food industrial agrofuels are the obvious logical manufacturing platforms fueled spending reached $7.0 trillion in 2007 answer. When technology is promoted by plant-derived sugars will provide the and shot up 14% to $8.0 trillion in as a painless solution to tackle global incentive for industry to capture and 2008. Global expenditures of food are warming, radical geo-engineering commodify the earth’s remaining plant expected to reach $8.5 trillion in 2009 schemes become a rational idea (e.g., biomass on a colossal scale. – a projected increase of 21% between let’s brew vast phytoplankton farms on 2007-2009.4 the ocean’s surface to [supposedly] 5 The food emergency didn’t emerge ▶ The very institutions and policies a corporate food chain broken to bits. overnight, and it didn’t begin with responsible for creating the disaster are Recent examples include: record-high prices. For decades, U.S. first in line to benefit from the crisis. and European policies have favoured ▶ Governments are working hand- Unhealthy and hazardous corporate agribusiness by keeping commodity prices low, dismantling trade in-hand with industry to ignore the root food products and related causes of the disaster and sidestep barriers and marginalizing millions environmental disasters structural reforms. of small-scale farmers who couldn’t compete with a deluge of subsidized are constant reminders Yet, the political reaction to the financial food imports. Trends in world food trade of a corporate food chain crisis is to call for a return to regulation, shifted radically over the past 40 years. while the political response to the food broken to bits. According to FAO’s 2004 report on crisis is to press for further deregula- commodity markets, in the early 1960s tion. When the food crisis is defined as developing countries had an overall ag- food scarcity and hungry people, the ▶ Food (un)safety scandals: ricultural trade surplus approaching US market-based prescription is to further In September/October 2008 infant $7 billion per year.5 By the end of the liberalize markets and boost agricultural milk powder laced with an industrial 1980s, the surplus had disappeared. production with heavy doses of new chemical, melamine, sickened 53,000 Countries in the South reversed course technology. The real disaster is the cor- Chinese infants and killed four. The in the almost two decades since then to porate controlled agro-industrial food scandal involved every major Chinese become net importers of food. In coun- system. This system has entrenched dairy company and spread to global tries categorized as “least developed,” corporate power while undermining the brands of food products (chocolates, imports of agricultural commodities ability of small-scale producers to pro- cheese, biscuits, etc.) around the grew to more than twice the level of duce food for their own communities. world – resulting in massive recalls exports. The current tragedy stems No matter how much new technology is involving billions of dollars. After being from decades of depressed commodity employed in the name of boosting food discovered in animal feed, the scandal prices, trade liberalization, withering production, the agro-industrial food has grown to include unknown quanti- investments in national agricultural pro- system is incapable of feeding hungry ties of melamine-tainted eggs and meat grams, and the ever-increasing domi- people. And that’s because hunger and products. nation of the corporate agro-industrial poverty are the consequences of ineq- food system. uitable systems – not food scarcity or By October 2008 contaminated cold inadequate technologies. In the second half of 2008, global finan- cuts in Canada had killed 20 and sick- cial markets are imploding and headline ened hundreds more, exposing the fact news is shifting from food crisis to The real disaster is the that virtually all of Canada’s cold cuts financial crisis. There are striking simi- come from a single processing plant corporate-controlled larities between the market meltdown owned by a single company, regardless agro-industrial food and the food crisis: of brand name or destination. system. ▶ Both the financial system and In February 2008 a record 143 mil- the food system have suffered from de- lion pounds of hazardous hamburger Broken to Bits: Deregulation of the cades of deregulation. The difference is were recalled in the U.S. According to corporate-controlled food system has that bankrupt banks are getting plenty the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, resulted in a cornucopia of calamities: of attention from politicians; lengthening every year in the U.S. 76 million people It is making us sicker, fatter and more lineups at food banks are not. get sick, 325,000 are hospitalized and vulnerable. Unhealthy and hazardous 5,000 die from foodborne hazards. The food products and related environmen- economic costs of serious illness and tal disasters are constant reminders of 6 death from the five most common food- Value of Global Mergers & Acquisitions (US$ trillions) borne pathogens reached almost $7 billion in 2000.7 5 4.5 ▶ Plastic Peril: In October 2008 Can- 4 ada confirmed that bisphenol A (BPA) 3.5 – a chemical used to make plastic baby 3 bottles and water bottles (and found in 2.5 the lining of nearly every soft drink can 2 and canned food product) – is a toxic 1.5 substance, particularly dangerous for 1 infants. In the U.S. alone, more than 6 million pounds of products containing 0.5 BPA are produced per annum. 0 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 ▶ Obesity Burden: The global Year obesity epidemic is one of the world’s greatest public health challenges. A new study reveals that almost one-third Corporate Excess, Disparity and Inequality of the world’s adult population is over- According to labor economist Tom Pizzigati, the combined net worth of today’s weight or obese.8 In 2005, an estimated 1,125 billionaires ($4.4 trillion) is likely to exceed the combined wealth of half 23% of the world’s adult population of the world’s adult population.16 Put in another way, the combined worth of the was overweight (937 million), and world’s wealthiest 1,125 individuals exceeds Germany’s 2007 gross national nearly 10% were obese (396 million).9 income. Of the 396 million obese people, 53% lived in developing countries. If trends According to the Institute for Policy Studies, CEOs of the top 500 U.S.-based continue, there will be 1.2 billion obese corporations averaged $10.5 million in pay in 2007, 344 times the pay of typi- people by 2030 and 62-68% of them cal American workers. The top 50 hedge and private equity fund managers will live in the global South.10 In the averaged $588 million each in 2007, more than 19,000 times the amount U.S. alone, the economic cost of obe- earned by the typical U.S. worker.17 Even as government coffers are bailing out sity was about $117 billion per annum investment banks, corporate CEOs continue to cash prodigious paychecks. in 2000.11 The CEO of now-bankrupt Lehman Brothers, took home $17,000 per hour in 2007 – about $45 million – for driving his company into the ground.18 ▶ Dead Zones: Chemical fertilizer In August 2008 ExxonMobil, the world’s second largest corporation, was gush- pollution is the primary cause of 400 ing record-breaking profits at the rate of $90,000 per minute.19 Referring to coastal “dead zones” that now cover the CEO of Exxon and other oil industry giants, NASA climatologist Dr. James an area of 245,000 km2 (the size of the Hansen told a U.S. Congressional committee that these executives “should be U.K. or Ghana). Oxygen-depleted ma- tried for high crimes against humanity and nature” for engineering doubt about rine waters have increased by one-third global warming and obstructing corrective measures.20 since 1995. In 2007, Wal-Mart’s revenues were higher than gross national income in ▶ Engineering Taste: The corporate Greece or Denmark. BP’s 2007 revenues exceeded South Africa’s gross na- food system has redefined the notion of tional income; Toyota’s 2007 earnings topped Venezuela’s. fresh food by overcoming barriers that In 2004, America’s wealthiest 1% of the population held 35% of the nation’s were once imposed by nature (or by total wealth – over $2.5 trillion more in net worth than the entire bottom 90%.21 regulators). Dutch author Jan Douwe van der Ploeg describes how the ten- A 2008 OECD report reveals that the U.S. has the highest inequality and pov- derness and taste of industrial chicken, erty rates in 20 OECD countries after Mexico, Turkey and Portugal.22 for example, is not necessarily related 7 to breed, feed or treatment, but may be Power to the people... or, power to the bottom? the result of “the injection of water, ad- ditional proteins, softeners and flavours In the globalized marketplace, to be on top, you need to control the bottom. into any breed of chicken.”12 Dark The greatest power resides at the most fundamental level. From the perspec- chicken meat, adds van der Ploeg, “is tive of agribusiness over the past three decades, power has moved from the milled, mixed with water into a meat seed to the gene to the atom. Tomorrow, power may flow to those who control ooze, centrifuged and cooked, after genomic databases. We used to say that if you controlled the seed, you con- which a whitish chicken filet…is ob- trolled the first link in the food chain. Then, gene patents in the 1990s under- tained.”13 He estimates that 80 percent mined the plant variety patents of the 1970s. Now, nanobiotechnology patents of food industry R&D is oriented to- threaten to usurp control to the atomic level. Power follows gravity, it seems. wards the manufacturing of these kinds of “boundary shifts.” But, not really. Sow a bag of atoms and the chances of a bumper crop are dis- mal. Throw a mess of genes into a pot and dinner will be delayed. Plant seed Consolidation Trends: and feed the family. Over the last three decades we have learned that genes play only a bit part in creation and atoms are a long way from the bottom of According to industry analysts, in 2007 the physical universe. But, seeds (mixed in soil, water and sunlight) are, in the aggregate value of global food truth, the first link in the food chain. Seed is the fundamental source of political industry mergers and acquisitions power that governments must not forget and farmers need to protect. (including food processors, distribu- tors and retailers) was roughly $200 billion, compared to half that amount in 2005.14 The mergers in this sector controlled and socially just food sys- edge and innovation that rivals all the mirror the global trend in mergers and tems (“Food Sovereignty,” as defined patent offices in the world. While the acquisitions. by Via Campesina, what others have global struggle for land, food and jus- called a global repeasantization move- tice is playing out on a lopsided playing In 2003, the worldwide value of merg- ment).24 Peasant farmers, civil society field, it’s also true that our view of cor- ers and acquisitions totaled a record- and social movements are actively porate power is often a distorted one. A breaking $1.38 trillion. By 2005 it bal- creating alternative food and health lot depends on perspective: looned to $2.7 trillion – and then spiked systems built on resilience, sustainabil- 27% to reach $4.48 trillion in 2007. Although Wal-Mart is the largest buyer ity and sovereignty. and seller of food on the planet, it ac- “Our world is In the global struggle for Food Sov- counts for only 3.5% of the $5.1 trillion ereignty, the playing field isn’t level, dollars spent on retail food worldwide in not for sale.” 23 but the scope and scale of resistance 2007. An estimated 85% of the world’s is massive, extending from the local food is still produced relatively close to the international level. For all their to where it is consumed25 – much of power and might, corporations do not it outside the formal market system. The Global Food Fight have a monopoly on innovation and Of the world’s 450 million farms, 85% The statistics and analysis in this report knowledge. Even after decades of mar- are smallholder farms of less than 2 provide a snapshot of technology con- ginalization by corporate food systems, hectares.26 vergence and corporate concentration the vast majority of the world’s food is in the industrial life sciences. It is diffi- produced in local food economies by While the proprietary seed market ac- cult to exaggerate the power and reach peasant farmers, fisherfolk, pastoralists counts for over 80% of the commercial of corporate actors in the global food and indigenous peoples. They are the seed supply, approximately three- and health arena. At the same time, backbone of the world’s food system. quarters of the world’s farmers routinely there is vast and growing resistance to Peasant farmers conduct more scien- save seeds from their harvest and grow the dislocation and devastation caused tific research and breed far more plant locally-bred varieties. At least 1.4 bil- by the agro-industrial food system. Mil- varieties than corporations. Collectively, lion people depend upon farmer-saved lions of people are struggling for locally they constitute a repository of knowl- seed. In 2007, institutional breeders 8

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Corporate Farm Inputs: Seeds, Agrochemicals, Fertilizers. 11. Seed Industry. 11. World's Top 10 Seed Companies. 11. Chart: Global Commercial Seed Market.
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