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Who Owns Nature? Corporate Power and the Final Frontier in the Commodification of Life

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Who Owns Nature? Corporate Power and the Final Frontier in the Commodification of Life 112008 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, ernments that biotech’s gene revolution livestock, fisheries, etc.) that has have to be socially useful could end hunger without harming the been integrated into the world market or technically superior in environment. Biotechnology was pre- economy. order to be profitable. sented as too risky for small companies and too expensive for public research- Today, humanity has a problem; sci- ers. In order to bring this technology to ence has a fascination; and industry the world, public breeders would have has an opportunity. Our problem is And, as it was with biotechnology, the to stop competing with private breed- hunger and injustice in a world of cli- new technologies don’t need to be ers, regulators would have to look the mate chaos. Science’s fascination is socially useful or technically superior other way when pesticide companies with convergence at the nano-scale (i.e., they don’t have to work) in order bought seed companies which, in turn, – including the potential to design new to be profitable. All they have to do is bought other seed companies. Govern- life forms from the bottom-up. Industry’s chase away the competition and coerce ments would have to protect industry’s opportunity lies in the three-quarters of governments into surrendering control. investments by offering patents first on the world’s biomass that (although used Once the market is monopolized, how plants and then on genes. Consumer and useful) remains outside the global the technology performs is irrelevant. safety regulations, hard-won over the market economy. With the aid of new course of a century, would have to yield technologies, industry believes that any to genetically modified foods and drugs. chemical made from the carbon in fos- 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 ACEUT RM IC A A H L S P ED HEM SE S OC ICA R L G S 55% Market Share A BEV D & ER O A 67% of Proprietary O G 89% Market Share F E Market Share ERY RE IOTECH OC TA B R I P L R S G O R CESSO 26% Market Share L PH A AR 40% of groceries IM M 66% Market Share N A 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, porate power in commercial food, farm- governments and Big Business as the Promoted in the name of fighting hun- ing, and health for three decades. Ten magic bullet for boosting food produc- ger, increasing production and arresting years ago, ETC Group monitored con- tion and saving the planet. The idea of climate change, technologies that rein- trol and ownership of biotech. Today, a technological fix for agricultural de- force corporate power are deepening biotech is becoming “extreme genetic velopment is nothing new, but govern- existing inequalities, accelerating envi- engineering.” Technology convergence ments are stepping aside and inviting ronmental degradation and introducing is re-defining life sciences. We’ve corporations to cast themselves as the new societal risks. 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 allowed a handful of powerful corpora- hungry people in 70 South countries will 2 don’t understand the tions to seize the research agenda, increase to 1.2 billion by 2017.
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