Syngenta

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Syngenta
Type Public (SWX: SYNN)
Founded 2000
Headquarters Basel, Switzerland
Key people Martin Taylor (Chairman)
Michael Mack (CEO)
Industry Agribusiness
Products Seeds, pesticides
Revenue US $8.046 billion (2006)[1]
Profit US $875 million (2006)[1]
Employees 21,000
Website www.syngenta.com

Syngenta AG is a large global agribusiness which markets seeds and crop protection products (pesticides). Syngenta is involved in biotechnology and genomic research. The company is a leader in crop protection, and ranks third in total sales in the commercial agricultural seeds market. Sales in 2007 were approximately US$ 9.2 billion. Syngenta employs over 21,000 people in over 90 countries. Syngenta is listed on the Swiss stock exchange (SWX: SYNN) and in New York NYSE: SYT.

Contents

[edit] Products

Syngenta has eight primary product lines. The company develops, markets and sells these worldwide:

Pesticides:

Seeds:

  • Field Crops
  • Vegetables
  • Flowers

In 2003, more than half of Syngenta sales came from selective herbicides and fungicides.

Key Syngenta brands include Aatrex (atrazine), Actara, Amistar (azoxystrobin), Callisto, Cruiser, DualGold, Golden Harvest, Garst, Northrup-King (NK), Rogers, S&G, and Gramoxone (paraquat).

Syngenta finances the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture. This non-profit organization supports sustainable food security projects in a number of countries.

Some of Syngenta's main competitors are: Monsanto, BASF, Dow AgroSciences, Bayer and DuPont.

[edit] Sustainable Agriculture

The UN Commission on Sustainable Development states, "Major adjustments are needed in agricultural, environmental and macroeconomic policy, at both national and international levels, in developed as well as developing countries, to create the conditions for sustainable agriculture.and rural development (SARD)." [2]

Syngenta commited to comply with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s Code of Conduct on the Distribution and Use of Pesticides, which addresses the standards of conduct with regard to pesticide management[3].

[edit] Biofuels

Biofuels have become the hot topic on how we get away from oil dependency. Corn as ethanol has been the major alternate fuel source in the United States. Other countries like Brazil use sugarcane. Like many ag-companies, Syngenta also works in the bio-fuel space.

In 2007, Queensland University in Australia contracted with Syngenta to research different inputs for biofuels as a renewable energy source.[4]

[edit] Board of directors

Syngenta is led by Chairman Martin Taylor. The other Directors are Peggy Bruzelius, Peter Doyle, Rupert Gasser, Pierre Landolt, Pedro Reiser, Peter Thompson, Jacques Vincent, Rolf Watter, and Felix Weber.

Changes in 2007/2008 Michael Pragnell, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Member of the Board, retired from Syngenta. On January 1, 2008 Michael Mack, became the new Chief Executive Officer. He was also elected as a new member of the Syngenta Board of Directors in 2008[5]

[edit] History

Based in Basel, Switzerland, Syngenta was formed in 2000 by the merger of Novartis Agribusiness and Zeneca Agrochemicals. Its roots are considerably older.

In 1758 the city’s Johann Rudolf Geigy-Gemuseus began trading in “Materials, Chemicals, Dyes and Drugs of all kinds”. In 1876, Sandoz Laboratories began business in Basel, followed in 1884 by Ciba. These three companies ultimately became Novartis in 1995. Ciba-Geigy, formed in 1971, had concentrated mainly on crop protection in its agro division, Sandoz more on seeds.

Zeneca Agrochemicals was part of AstraZeneca, and formerly of Imperial Chemical Industries. ICI was formed in the UK in 1926. Two years later, work began at the Agricultural Research Station at Jealott’s Hill near Bracknell.

In 2004, Syngenta Seeds purchased the North American corn and soybean business of Advanta, as well as Garst and Golden Harvest.

In 2005, Syngenta opposed a Swiss ban on genetically modified organisms.[6]

In 2007, Syngenta's Canadian division was named one of Canada's Top 100 Employers, as published in Maclean's magazine, one of only a handful of agribusiness firms to receive this honour.[7]

In 21 October, 2007, a Brazilian peasant organization, the Landless Workers' Movement, led a group of landless farmers on an occupation of one of the company's seed research farms, in protest against genetically-modified vegetables and in hopes of obtaining land for landless families to cultivate. After the occupation had begun, a group of gunmen arrived in a minibus and attacked the protesters. A security guard was killed, various protesters were wounded, and Valmir Mota de Oliveira, known as Keno, was found dead, "killed execution-style by two shots to the chest" according to some reports "at the centre of a bitter dispute"[8].

Protesters and sympathizers (including Sarah Wilson, of the Christian Aid) claimed that the gunmen were under orders of Syngenta to kill the occupiers, but the company says that the guards of the security company they contracted were not allowed to carry guns. The MST claimed further that NF Security was a front company controlled by rural producer organizations linked to the agribusiness. Amnesty International expressed concern, and said that threats and intimidation by gunmen hired by landowners and agricultural companies are a common occurrence in Paraná.[8]

The police investigation completed in February 2008 implicated MST members and employees of NF Security but not Syngenta.[9]

Syngenta condemned the violence and severed the contract with the security firm. [10]

[edit] Legal Issues

As with most corporations, Syngenta and its predecessor companies have been involved in numerous legal actions over the years. Syngenta uses the court system to defend its intellectual property and right to free trade. Syngenta declares a policy of not exercising its patents in seeds and biotechnology in the least-developed of developing countries.

In 2001, the US Patent and Trademark Office ruled in favor of Syngenta when the company filed suit against Bayer to protect its patent on a class of neonicotinoid insecticides. In 2002, Syngenta filed suit against Monsanto and a number of other companies claiming infringement of its US biotechnology patents covering transgenic corn and cotton.

In 2004, the company again filed suit against Monsanto, claiming antitrust violations related to the US biotech corn seed market.

The Syngenta legal record also includes citations by regulators, NGOs, and individuals for health issues related to its products.

Following a series of fatalities due to accidental consumption in the 1960s, the company’s herbicide, Gramoxone (Paraquat), gained notoriety in the 1970s and 80s due to a rash of suicides using the product, similar to the use of Monsantos herbicide Roundup/glyphosate for suicidal purposes. Although the World Health Organization (WHO) classifies it as only moderately hazardous, in the United States it is labeled a restricted use pesticide and it is banned in several countries. The U.S. Center for Disease Control describes the herbicide as "dangerously poisionous" to humans if ingested, inhaled, or absorbed into the body. Syngenta has added a blue dye, a foul odor, and a powerful vomit-inducer to Gramoxone to help prevent mistakes and misuse.

The company has also faced questions on its Galecron insecticide’s possible relationship to bladder cancer and other illnesses. Production of Galecron stopped between 1976 and 1978 for new safety assessments, and then halted permanently in 1988 after more research showed potential risk. In a 1995 class action in the US, Ciba-Geigy agreed to cover costs for employee health monitoring and treatment.

Atrazine has been banned in several Wisconsin counties in the United States and in the European Union. Syngenta has been linked to attempts to block the publications of UC Berkeley Professor Tyrone Hayes, although Syngenta has denied those claims. Tyrone Hayes researches the herbicide Atrazine, which he has found to cause hermaphroditism in frogs.[11] However, EPA and its independent Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) examined all available studies on this topic - including Hayes' work - and concluded there is "currently insufficient data" to determine if atrazine may affect amphibian development. Hayes, formerly part of the panel, resigned in 2000 to continue studies independently.

Syngenta statement on Atrazine

"With a safety dossier meeting the most stringent regulatory requirements, atrazine is among the best and most extensively researched crop protection products in the world. It has been the subject of hundreds of studies, 200 of them carried out over the last ten years. Syngenta is convinced of the safety of atrazine, which has been used safely and successfully by farmers for more than 45 years.

Atrazine is a selective herbicide used effectively in corn, grain sorghum, sugar cane and a range of other crops." [12]

[edit] Farmers Support Team

Syngenta sponsors several agricultural programs in developing nations. SFI created its flagship program, the Farmer Support Team (FST). The FST is a nationwide program in the Philippine archipelago. It works with farmers in all the major rice, fruit, and vegetable production provinces of the country. It began by helping Filipino farmers gain greater understanding and achieve higher productivity through trainings in Integrated Pest Management (IPM), Integrated Crop Management (ICM) and Total Crop Management (TCM).

[edit] Syngenta Foundation

The objectives and goals of the Syngenta Foundation are "to work with rural communities in the semiarid regions of the world and improve their livelihoods." [13]

The Syngenta Foundation addressed the World Food Day Symposium in 2005 as an output of the Millenium Ecosystem Report. [14]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Annual Report 2006. Syngenta AG. Retrieved on 2007-11-06.
  2. ^ http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/sdissues/agriculture/agri.htm[1]
  3. ^ http://www.fao.org/ag/AGP/AGPP/Pesticid/Code/PM_Code.htm[2]
  4. ^ CleanTech, Syngenta Queensland University in Biofuels[3]
  5. ^ Syngenta, Board of Directors[4]
  6. ^ Swiss Adopt Five-Year GMO Farming Ban
  7. ^ Reasons for Selection 2007 Canada's Top 100 Employers.
  8. ^ a b Doyle, Leonard (November 5, 2007). "Brazilian land activist killed in dispute over experimental GM farm". The Independent. 
  9. ^ Scarance, Guilherme (February 23, 2008). "Aliados nos EUA atacam "criminalização" do MST". O Estado de São Paulo. 
  10. ^ Syngenta, Statement on Incident at Cascavel[5]
  11. ^ Blumenstyk, Goldie (October 31, 2003). "The Price of Research". The Chronicle of Higher Education. 
  12. ^ Syngenta, Statement on Atrazine[6]
  13. ^ Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture, About the Syngenta Foundation[7]
  14. ^ http://www.veoh.com/channels/syngenta-foundation[8]

[edit] External links

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