CropLife Retail Week: Bayer Glyphosate Letter, Bunge-Viterra Merger Update, and Introducing Ask the Audience
April 26, 2024 Eric Sfiligoj reviews the recent Bayer letter to the public, Canada’s concerns regarding a merger, and what soft drink “fuels” the industry.
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Eric Sfiligoj: Hello. Welcome to another edition of CropLife Retail Week. I’m Eric Sfiligoj, editor, CropLife here. Running solo this week. My, usual partner in crime, Lara Sowinski, got called away unexpectedly. So I will be your host today by myself. No weather talk or anything like that. But for you viewers, I wanted to let you know what’s going on in the news.
I do have a couple of items to share. And then the end of the segment, we’re going to try something a little different. So hopefully you’ll enjoy it. But first up, again, one thing we’ve talked about over and over on this program the last couple of years, of course, there’s all the lawsuits going on regarding crop protection products in the marketplace.
And of course, the poster child for that in many regards is glyphosate. roundup, owned by Bayer. And of course, there have been many, many lawsuits that have been for and against that product in court. and a lot of people have said that if Bayer really wants to try to make an impact on, future lawsuit potential, that they needed to kind of get a message out to the general public, and I’m happy to report that Bayer has done just that.
Recently they ran an open letter, as they called it, to, the general public in, this appeared in Politico, The Washington Post, the Saint Louis Dispatch, the Jefferson City News Tribune, and the Des Moines Register. And basically the letter pointed out that, you know, like life site and roundup go back. Many decades have been used by growers across the United States and around the world to increase yields, which, of course, helps feed the growing population.
We have. But as they pointed out that, all the facts, the scientific facts regarding glyphosate may not be well known. according to the letter reading right from the letter, it says, despite the clear science behind roundup safety and benefits, thousands of lawsuits persist in courts across the country. And the letter went on to point out that in a lot of these cases, when the facts are known to the juries that the, lawsuits have actually been dismissed, and when the facts are not made clear, that that’s when the damage awards have been given to the plaintiffs.
So, again, it’s a good, positive, forward thinking move by our friends at Bayer regarding their troubles with roundup. And hopefully we’ll see if there’s any, you know, any positive feedback from the general public now that they’re getting some more of the facts regarding this important herbicide for agriculture? So one other thing to report on, of course, we, a couple of, videos ago, we talked about the fact that, there was a big merger going on in the grain field that was Bunge acquiring Viterra.
And, you know, that went down last year, that, potential merger, but we just found out this week that our friends in Canada aren’t convinced it’s a good merger. That should happen. the Competition Bureau of Canada has expressed significant concerns that this merger will have a negative, anti-competitive impact on the grain and canola, canola oil markets.
So, again, we’ll have to follow this story as we go forward. Like I said, it just broke as we were recording this video. to see if our friends in Canada, will actually prove this merger going forward, as we move on. So, one other thing, of course, to talk about, anybody who’s following politics, of course.
No, we’re in, we’re in an election year, and there is a lot of, partisan politics going on in Washington, DC. And I know, and, last year in September at the, CPDA meeting, our friend Daren Coppock, the, president, CEO of the Agricultural Retailers Association, had this to say when he was speaking before that group regarding what’s going on in Washington and how bad it’s gotten recently.
But he also about this together. Well, yeah. Well, this is a great this is a great metaphor for what’s going on in Washington because you’ve got the red team and the blue team. We the crap out of each other until somebody pops off the hook, and then they reset and they started to grow all over again. And somebody reaches out to with something that it’s just like a 1.5, but it seems to me that in a lot of ways, we’ve forgotten, at least federal level, that we’re Americans first.
Aderholt is a Democrat. Second, there used to be a lot of states, member states, people in the capital that could find compromise and five caliber ground. And anymore, when they do that, they get primary and they don’t get back to Washington. It’s a it’s a risky business to try to cooperate. It’s frustrating. it’s it’s a really hard environment.
And working, but it is the environment that we have to. And so we have to be sensitive, those kinds of things, as we work on issues and whose tone you might step on by saying something or doing something, it’s it’s a lot of walking on eggshells. So that’s what Daren Coppock said, basically comparing the battle between Democrats and Republicans in Congress to, you know, rock and roll.
But basically people knocking blocks off of each other and really not cooperating very much. But I am here to report that there is some possibility for for cooperation. Hopefully fingers crossed. Of course, folks looking at the calendar will note. Of course it’s 2024 and last year in 2023 should have been a new farm bill. Year should have been a new farm bill that would have appeared in the fall.
But that didn’t happen. So now I’m happy to report that seven months later, Glenn Thompson, who is the House Agricultural chairman, is saying that he is hopeful that in his committee that they will be able to have the framework for a new farm bill in time for Memorial Day. So about a month from when we’re recording this video, he is hopeful that the bill will be bipartisan and the exact details are not yet known.
However, he says that, you know, he expects that there’ll be some support on both sides of the aisle for a new farm bill. However, just to prove that partisan politics may still yet throw a monkey wrench into this, he does note that recent efforts by a few, lawmakers to perhaps oust the current speaker of the House, Mike Johnson could derail this.
He, basically said that, you know, all things are on track for Memorial Day, but if, the house is looking for a new speaker, all other things will take that will take precedent over all other legislation. And if it takes a long amount of time, then we may not make this deadline by Memorial Day. So again, something else will have to be found as we move forward.
So again, as I said, I’m working, solo today. And normally at this point we would have our fun with numbers segment where I would ask a question of my, compadre Laura, and she would, endeavor to get the correct answer. But instead, since she’s not here, I thought we would invite you, our audience, to take part.
So I’m calling this segment, Ask the Audience. So what we’re going to do in this comes about, I don’t know if folks who’ve known me know that I’ve been covering, trade, trade magazines, trade markets for about 40 years. And of course, I got my start in the beverage market. So for anybody who has, ever visited my office or seen my office, if they were lucky enough to, they’ll note that there are lots of bottles, cans of soft drinks, beers, bottled waters, assorted souvenir bottles present in my office.
And recently I was hosting a new employee here at our company. And, she was in my office, and she was asking questions about all the beverages I had around. And I was explaining to her that that was my background. And one of the things she asked is that, well, hey, you know, you’ve been covering, the ag retail market now for about 25 years.
What beverage, what soft drink fuels ag retail? So I gave that a little bit of thought. And before I dive into my observations on that, I like I said, it’s been about 30 years since I covered the beverage market. So I did a little search on national numbers, and I found out this there are for the brands of soft drink, that are the most popular.
Number one, of course, is Coca Cola. Now, that includes Coca Cola, classic Diet Coke, Coke Zero, all the flavored cherry vanilla Cokes. according to statistics in 2023, that represented 30% market share of all soft drinks sales. So basically, 1 in 3 soft drinks sold in America last year had the Coca-Cola name on it. distant second was Pepsi brand.
That was it. About 15%. That includes Pepsi Cola, Diet Pepsi, Pepsi Zero, Cherry Pepsi, etc.. number four on the list was Dr. Pepper. Dr. Pepper, Diet Dr. Pepper, and all the flavor Dr. Peppers that go out there at about 7%. Now, of course you’re saying, Eric, why are you giving me brands one, two and four?
Where’s number three? Well, the reason I left number three off is, in my opinion, that is actually the soft drink of choice for most ag retailers and custom applicators based on my observations. And that would be, of course, Mountain Dew. Mountain dew is a Pepsi product. It’s been around for several decades and has many spin offs. Diet Mountain Dew, Mountain Dew zero.
There is flavor line with things like Code Red and Livewire, which is an orange flavored, Mountain Dew. And I know many of the events I’ve attended over the years. If they have beverages on site at the field days, there’s usually bottled water, and then there is usually Diet Coke and Mountain Dew. Many different Mountain Dew cans are consumed at those events.
And as proof of this, I offer this picture. I took this picture of a Pepsi vending machine at the Kentucky Exposition Center when I was at the National Farm Machinery Show this February. As you can see, this entire vending machine has nothing but Mountain Dew products in it. Every product, every row, top to bottom, and, suffice to say, I know during that event, that machine was getting emptied out very frequently by the 300,000 or so folks who were attending that event.
So in my estimation, it’s Mountain Dew that fuels this marketplace. But I wanted to, of course, ask the audience, what do you folks think? So I’m going to ask, if you’re looking at this video on our newsletter, there will be a, a way you can take a poll at the bottom of it after you watch the video, your choices are going to be Coca Cola, which would includes all the Coca Cola products, Pepsi Cola, Dr. Pepper, and of course, Mountain Dew.
So make your selection. And if you are watching this video on YouTube, we’ll put a link here in the video. So you can click on it. So you can take the poll tool. I’m going to be very curious to hear what you, our audience thinks is the soft drink of choice for retail and custom application. So hey, I hope you enjoyed this week’s video.
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