| | 29/March/22
| | Roundup owner Bayer divests pest-control unit in $2.6 billion deal Bayer has agreed to sell its pest-control unit to private equity firm Cinven for $2.6 billion, as the German chemical and drug giant seeks to focus on its core agricultural portfolio and reduce debt. Environmental Science Professional, a US-based unit of the company, sells pesticides and rodent control to non-farming customers such as warehouses and golf courses. Bayer announced last year its intention to unload the unit, which is part of Bayer’s environmental science business that had around 1 billion euros, equivalent to $1.1 billion, in sales in 2021. The sale marks latest step by Bayer to lower debt as it continues to defend legal claims in the US linking its Roundup herbicide to cancer. Wall St Journal US: Judge wants EPA's dicamba plan The federal judge tasked with deciding dicamba’s legal future is demanding EPA be clearer about when and how the agency might address off-target dicamba injury with regulatory action for the next few growing seasons. The judge asked for more information from the EPA, after the agency's uncertain and sometimes contradictory comments on the future of dicamba use on GM dicamba-tolerant crops in the past year. DTN Progressive Farmer Donors must rethink Africa’s flagging Green Revolution, new evaluation shows A scathing analysis of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) finds that the programme is failing in its objective to increase food security on the continent, despite massive funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the US, UK, and German governments. On March 30, critics of AGRA will brief US congressional aides about why they think it is doing more harm than good. A new opinion piece by Timothy A. Wise argues that as fertilizer and food prices spike with rising energy prices from the Russia-Ukraine war, African farmers and governments need the kind of resilient, low-cost alternatives that techniques like agroecology offer. Wise says it's time for donors – and African governments – to stop throwing good money after bad and recognize that their 15-year effort to “catalyze a farming revolution in Africa” through Green Revolution seeds and fertilizers has fallen short. Mongabay Congress should pull the plug on USAID’S failing African Green Revolution African civil society and faith leaders are urging the US Congress to shift funding from the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) to more promising ecological programs when it votes to re-authorize the Global Food Security Act this year. The groups' message to Congress is that the Green Revolution programme has failed and it is time to change course. Anne Maina of the Biodiversity and Biosafety Association of Kenya, one of the groups presenting their case to Congress, writes: "USAID should reconsider its support for AGRA, and Congress should demand a more serious accounting for the programme’s failures. US taxpayers should not be impoverishing African farmers with programmes that are supposed to help them. They should not be making wealthy, male farmers richer. They should not be making African farmers more vulnerable to climate change by making them dependent on fossil-fuel based inputs that deplete rather than restore fragile soils." Foodtank DONATE TO GMWATCH __________________________________________________________ Website: http://www.gmwatch.org
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