ETC Group today releases a 48-page report, “Who Owns Nature?” on
corporate concentration in commercial food, farming, health and the
strategic push to commodify the planets remaining natural resources.

New report warns of corporate concentration, commodification of
nature; highlights global resistance grounded in “Food Sovereignty”

In a world where market research is becoming increasingly
proprietary and pricey, ETC Groups report names names, discloses
market share and provides top 10 industry rankings up and down the
corporate food chain. Not all the corporations identified in ETC
Groups new report are household names, but collectively they control a
staggering share of the commercial products found on industrial farms,
in our refrigerators and medicine cabinets.

An international advocacy organization based in Canada, ETC Group
has been monitoring corporate power in the industrial life sciences for
the past 30 years. The report reveals that:

From thousands of seed companies and public breeding institutions
three decades ago, 10 companies now control more than two-thirds of
global proprietary seed sales From dozens of pesticide companies three
decades ago, 10 now control almost 90% of agrochemical sales worldwide
From almost 1,000 biotech start-ups 15 years ago, 10 companies now
account for three-quarters of industry revenues The top 10
pharmaceutical companies control 55% of the global drug market

With collapsing systems – eco, climate, food and financial – as the
backdrop, Who Owns Nature? warns that, with engineering of living
organisms at the nano-scale (a.k.a. synthetic biology), industry is
setting the stage for a corporate grab that extends to all of nature.

“About one-quarter of the worlds biomass has already been
commodified,” explains ETC Groups Pat Mooney. “With extreme genetic
engineering, we’re seeing new corporate strategies to capture and
commodify the three-quarters of the worlds biomass that has, until
now, remained beyond the market economy.”

Advocates of synthetic biology – the creation of designer organisms
built from synthetic DNA – are promising a post-petroleum future where
fuels, chemicals, drugs and other high-value products depend on
biological manufacturing platforms fuelled by plant sugars. In the 21st
century “sugar economy,” industrial production will be based on
biological feedstocks (agricultural crops, grasses, forest residues,
plant oils, algae, etc.) whose sugars are extracted, fermented and
converted into high-value products. Synthetic microbes will become
“living chemical factories” that require massive quantities of plant
biomass. ETC Group warns that corporations are poised to appropriate
and further commodify biological products and processes in every part
of the globe – as well as destroy biodiversity, deplete soil and water
and displace marginalized farmers.

ETC Groups report highlights similarities between the current
financial and food crises. “Corporate-controlled food systems,
suffering from decades of deregulation, have resulted in a cornucopia
of calamities making us sicker, fatter and more vulnerable,” says ETCs
Research Director Hope Shand. Ongoing food contamination scandals, the
global obesity burden and ocean “dead zones” caused by fertilizer
pollution are among the food chain disasters cited in Who Owns Nature?
“Unhealthy and hazardous food products are constant reminders of a
corporate food chain broken to bits,” adds Shand.

Governments are working hand-in-hand with corporations to deny the
root causes of the crises and sidestep structural reforms. “Despite the
implications for democracy and human rights, no international body
exists to monitor global corporate activity and no UN body has the
capacity to monitor and evaluate emerging technologies,” says ETC
Groups Kathy Jo Wetter. “The ongoing food emergency and imploding
global economy testify to the need for monitoring and oversight of
corporations, as well as social control of powerful new technologies.”

Who Owns Nature? reports on daunting trends in corporate
concentration and technology convergence, but it also points to a very
different reality and a powerful contrast to the corporate-controlled
life sciences. Although a single company – Monsanto – accounts for
almost one-quarter of proprietary seed sales, about three-quarters of
the worlds farmers routinely save seed from their harvest and grow
locally-bred varieties. Wal-Mart may be the worlds largest buyer and
seller of retail food, but 85% of global food is consumed close to
where it is grown – much of it outside the formal market system.

“There is vast and growing resistance to the dislocation and
devastation caused by the agro-industrial food system,” points out
Silvia Ribeiro of ETC Group. “In the global struggle for Food
Sovereignty, the playing field isn’t level, but the scope of resistance
is massive – peasant farmers, fisher people, pastoralists and allied
civil society and social movements are fighting for locally controlled
and socially just food and health systems.”

To download the full report: www.etcgroup.org
For more information, contact: Pat Mooney, ETC Group [email protected], mobile: +1 613 261-0688

Hope Shand, ETC Group [email protected], +1 919 960-5223

Kathy Jo Wetter, ETC Group [email protected], +1 919 960-5223

Silvia Ribeiro, ETC Group [email protected], +52 55556326 64

ETC Group is an international civil society
organization based in Ottawa, Canada. We conduct research, education
and advocacy on issues related to the social and economic impacts of
new technologies on marginalized peoples – especially in the global
South. We look at issues from a human rights perspective but also
address global governance and corporate concentration. All ETC Group
publications are available free of charge on our website: www.etcgroup.org