U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Seeks Answers for Eyewatering Prices of Seed and Fertilizer

Last week the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing and received testimony to understand the causes of high input costs for critical crop inputs, particularly seed and fertilizer. One of the overarching messages from the witnesses’ testimony was the farm-level effects of extreme consolidation among fertilizer distribution and seed genetics suppliers in corn, soybeans, and cotton. With just a few dominant firms controlling the majority of these markets, witnesses explained how they can exert tremendous financial pressure on farmers, even in down commodity markets, with little or zero repercussion.

Witnesses for the seed sector explained how independent licensees face significant pressure to commit to a particular genetics supplier through rebate incentive programs that penalize use of competing technologies and effectively set profit margins. Another issue addressed was the conspicuous absence of generic crop traits despite patent expirations covering those traits. An example that was mentioned was Monsanto’s (Bayer’s) NK603 trait (Roundup Ready corn) for which royalties are still being charged, even though the last patents covering the trait expired in 2022.

There was also some discussion of Senator Grassley’s proposed Fertilizer Research Act which would require reporting by the fertilizer industry to provide transparency into pricing.

You can watch a recording of the hearing on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s web site here.​

USDA’s Bioengineered Labeling Rule Shot Down

The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently overturned portions of the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service’s (AMS) National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard rule regarding food labeling for genetically engineered ingredients. The court addressed three main issues:

• AMS should not have excluded highly refined foods from the rule’s coverage simply because genetically engineered materials were undetectable in the food. The law requires labeling if GM material is present, not whether it is detectable.
• The option of using a QR code or text messaging on labels for communicating GM materials was not only improper, but the lower court should have vacated that part of the rule, thereby eliminating those options until AMS fixes them to provide sufficient access by consumers.
• The court approved AMS’s use of the term “bioengineered” (rather than GMO or genetically engineered) for the labeling requirement.

You can read the opinion here.

Federal Judges’ Use of A.I. for Error-Laden Orders Called Out

Two federal judges were recently called on the carpet by the Senate Judiciary Committee for issuing A.I.-generated rulings full of errors, including cites to non-existent information and fake quotes. While there have been several news reports of attorneys and litigating parties being sanctioned by courts for submitting flawed A.I.-generated filings, this appears to be one of the first times that a court has been found to have committed the same infraction. The judges were from the Southern District of Mississippi and the District of New Jersey.

Fedscoop reported on the incidents here and the Committee’s press release is here.​