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A comment on Chipotle Says Adios to GMOs, as Food Industry Strips Away Ingredients. Parent comment

Re:Chipotle Says Adios to GMOs, as Food Industry Strips Away... by dragonwriter on Tuesday April 28, 2015 @07:32PM (#9455728)
Monsanto isn't the whole GM crop industry, or even the biggest corporation by market cap in the industry, so, while the general question of plausibility may be valid, pretending the comparison of Monsanto's market cap to the combination of the market caps of major players in the fossil fuels industry is so irrelevant as to undermine, rather than reinforce, the legitimate point.
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Re:Chipotle Says Adios to GMOs, as Food Industry Strips Away... by frostmatthew on Tuesday April 28, 2015 @09:22PM (#9456059)
> Monsanto isn't the whole GM crop industry

Of course it isn't the whole industry, but it does get most of the attention, e.g. this NPR article[1] mentions Monsanto 17 times and uses it as one of only three tags(seed saving and gmos are the other two) - despite the piece being about GM seeds, not specifically Monsanto.

> or even the biggest corporation by market cap in the industry

The "Big Six" are BASF, Bayer, Dupont, Dow Chemical Company, Monsanto, and Syngenta[2][3].

"The top 10 seed companies account for $14,785 million – or two-thirds (67%) of the global proprietary seed market.The world's largest seed company, Monsanto, accounts for almost one-quarter (23%) of the global proprietary seed market."[4]

Sure DuPont and Dow have bigger market caps than Monsanto (or more importantly, more revenue) but they're also larger and more diverse business with seeds making a much smaller portion of their total revenue than Monsanto. But even forgetting that the original point (that the oil industry has far more money than the GM industry) still stands - Dow's market cap is $60B, DuPont's is $68B, Monsanto's is $55B...market caps like that wouldn't even break the top ten for oil companies[5].

[1] http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/10/18/163034053/top-fi...

[2] http://www.biofortified.org/resources/genetic-engineering-co...

[3] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/%22Big_6%22_Pesticide_a...

[4] http://www.gmwatch.org/gm-firms/10558-the-worlds-top-ten-see...

[5] http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/010715...

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