November 16, 2006

Monsanto remains a leader in GM market

Monsanto continues to be a global leader in GM crops despite a growing market for the same.

Last year marked the first decade of the commercialisation of GM crops and the planting of the billionth GM acre. The market has been growing at 10 per cent a year owing to increasing interest among farmers to protect crops from insect damage and disease.

The GM market, predominenatly made up of soyabean, cotton, canola (oilseed rape) and corn seeds, would this year be worth US$6.15 billion, according to Cropnosis, the Edinburgh-based consultancy.

The GM plantation, last year stretched to about 222 metres acres around the world, with the US and Argentina leading the way with 123 metres and 42 metres acres respectively, according to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotechnology Applications.

Of this, the US agribusiness with its GM corn, cotton, soyabean and canola seeds accounts for more than 90 per cent of global biotech acreage. Monsanto remains the leader, according to Kin Cheung, analyst at Cropnosis.

This year the company allocated more than US$700 million to biotech and seed research and pledged a tenth of its sales revenue to research and development. The seed and genomics business earned the company sales worth US$4 billion this year, or more than half of Monsanto's total revenue.

Though, DuPont and Syngenta, through their cross-licensing deal have been lately trying to break the Monsanto dominance, Cheung feels that unlikely. He however, cites another company called Cibus, a San Diego-based biotech company, to challenge Monsanto. The company has developed a technology that could deliver the benefits of GM without inserting foreign genes into a crop.

Stephen Evans-Freke, the company's chairman, expects the technology to gain popularity in Europe, where the introduction of GM crops has faced strong opposition.