Antonio Roman-Alcalá, currently the sustainable food campaigner for Friends of the Earth US, shares why agrichemical and seed mega-mergers are harmful to the food system.

The agricultural seed and pesticide market is already extremely concentrated. Three impending mergers between six of these corporate giants (Bayer/Monsanto, Dow/DuPont, and ChemChina/Syngenta) will further consolidate market and political power, leading to even greater corporate control of our farms and plates.

The companies involved are confident that the mergers will be approved, and President Trump’s pre-inauguration meeting with CEOs from Bayer and Monsanto indicates that politics might trump antitrust legal procedure and precedent. Still, there is widespread opposition to the merger from farmers, consumers, workers, environmentalists, and regulators, as evidenced by the 320 organizations and farmers who recently sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice asking them to block the mergers. The mergers are far from a done deal.