Dow Jones reports:
Syngenta AG sued several grain-trading firms over losses some U.S. farmers say they sustained after China rejected shipments of genetically modified corn, escalating a legal battle over the way biotech seeds are introduced to farm fields.
The lawsuit, filed late Thursday in U.S. District Court in Kansas, stems from a legal dispute that arose last year when grain companies and farmers sued Syngenta, arguing the company should compensate them for lost sales and depressed corn prices that they claim arose from the rejected shipments.
The Swiss seed and pesticide giant, which is contesting those allegations, argued in the new lawsuit that big grain merchants, including Cargill Inc. and Archer Daniels Midland Co., should be on the hook for losses that crop producers say they are due in the matter.
“We don't think there is any liability here, but to the extent there is, at a minimum, the lion's share of the duty falls on the grain trade,” said Michael Jones, a lawyer for Kirkland & Ellis LLP representing Syngenta in the matter.
A Cargill spokesman said that “Syngenta's commercialization practices and conduct are responsible for the industry's damages.” A spokeswoman for ADM declined to comment, citing pending litigation.
Syngenta in 2011 began selling a new variety of biotech corn seeds–called Viptera and engineered to resist pests–to farmers in the U.S., Argentina and Brazil after those governments granted approval for its cultivation. In late 2013, Chinese officials began turning away shipments of U.S. corn bound for Chinese ports after detecting the Syngenta strain, which the country had yet to approve for import.
Last year, Cargill sued Syngenta over the corn, alleging that Syngenta's decision to market the seeds without first securing Chinese import approval cost the Minnesota-based agribusiness $90 million when Beijing began rejecting corn shipments.
Other grain shippers, including ADM, also sued Syngenta. The grain firms' cases touched off a wave of lawsuits filed by farmers across the country, who argued that they too lost money because China's rejections of U.S. corn shipments depressed the overall price of corn by closing off a key market.
CLICK HERE to read the full article
Source: AgriMarketing
