Colombian cotton growers want to sue U.S. agricultural company Monsanto for selling them a bad genetically engineered seed that caused damage to crops.
According to the cotton growers, the seed caused damage to 13 percent of the cotton crops in the north of Colombia, resulting in a 7 million dollar loss, economic magazine Portfolio reported Wednesday.
Conalgodón, the Colombian federation of the cotton growers, declared that Monsanto gave the seed, stating that it was strong enough to resist plagues and the effects of the glyphosate herbicide. At the same time, Monsanto did not give an appropriate information about the variety that would be planted for the first time in the region.
The seed, known as DP 164, was three times more expensive than the traditional one, but did not resist the plagues as promised.
Monsanto offeed to compensate the growers with 640 thousand dollars, but put conditions on the compensation the growers find hard to accept. Morever, this is not the first time Monsanto has a similar problem in Colombia. In 2008 same situation was in the Tolima department with Monsanto seeds.
- 06/15/2009 09:17 - Crisis and expensive peso 'dramatic' for flower industry
- 06/11/2009 11:33 - Peso up, Dollar down, Dollar up, Euro down
- 06/10/2009 10:59 - Bogota's Corferias goes international
- 06/09/2009 14:26 - World Bank to loan Colombia US$650 million
- 06/08/2009 22:48 - Government asks Congress to put labor reforms on hold
- 06/08/2009 20:23 - New corporation to lend money to Colombia's poor
