In late-September in the U.K., a special issue of The Ecologist magazine on Monsanto was pulled off the presses and destroyed by its printer. Although Monsanto claims they haven't threatened printers or magazine vendors, almost no one seems to believe them. In Brazil a judge at least temporarily blocked Monsanto's efforts to get approval for farmers to plant Roundup Ready Soybeans. Hours before a government agency met to approve Monsanto's request to plant gene-altered soybeans, a Brazilian federal judge granted an injunction blocking the application. For St. Louis-based Monsanto, the ruling is a setback that would be a real defeat if the company misses the Brazilian planting season in October and November.
Brazil is a potential market worth tens of millions in profits.
The company desperately needs the kind of capital and sales force which a pharmaceutical giant like AHP has in order to finance their recent multi-billion dollar acquisitions of seed and research companies and to market the numerous genetically engineered products in their pipeline. Without a massive influx of capital, an over-extended Monsanto is on the brink of disaster, engaged in a hard time of layoffs and restructuration which are not to giving any tangible results. In the wake of the AHP fiasco, Citibank has agreed to front Monsanto several billion dollars in cash, and the company announced plans to sell four billion dollars in new stocks, but financial analysts predict that Monsanto may now be close to terminal bankruptcy. We do not understand how it is possible that the Indian government gave Monsanto permission to introduce genetically engineered crops, at the same time as other governments around the world are moving in the opposite direction after seeing their destructive consequences. We denounce the ignorance, incompetence and irresponsibility of the Union government and the Government of Karnataka for allowing a corporate criminal like Monsanto to gamble with the future of Indian agriculture.