Monsanto to Cut 3,600 Jobs as Public Protests Continue to Stymie Profits

While Monsanto seems to tower over the agriculture industry, both in terms of its political power and its potentially detrimental effects on the environment, low earnings are cutting into corporate profits and costing employees their jobs.
Monsanto had already announced a major wave of layoffs in October when the corporation reported a profit of $3.5 billion for the 2015 fiscal year, a decline of about 13.5 percent from the previous year. At the time, according to Irish Farmers Journal's Lorcan Allen, the corporation “said it expects to cut up to 2,600 jobs in the next 24 months with a target to make annual savings of $275-300m by the end of 2017."
Earnings continued to fall in the first quarter of the 2016 fiscal year, according to a Jan. 6 report from Reuters, forcing even deeper cuts:
“Monsanto Co. plans to slash another 1,000 jobs worldwide, bringing total planned cuts to 3,600 or about 16 percent of its global workforce, according to a filing Wednesday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The job cuts are part of a broader, previously announced plan to target $500 million in annual savings by the end of fiscal year 2018."
According to a report by Allen on Jan. 13, “Monsanto reported a first quarter operating loss of $253m (€233m), a significant deterioration compared to the $243m operating profit generated for the same period last year."
Monsanto has faced repeated protests against its business practices and the harm to human health and the environment posed by its products. The annual March Against Monsanto attracted tens of thousands of participants globally in May. Russia to Europe have taken action to ban genetically modified crops, especially Monsanto corn. Increasing awareness of the cancer-causing potential of glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup weedkiller, has also cut into profits.
Prior to the latest announcement of their falling earnings, Monsanto stock had reached a one-month high of $99.28, but fell to a low of $89.91 on Jan. 20 before recovering slightly to close at $91.87 at the close of trading last week.
Some analysts believe the stock price could drop even further. A Jan. 7 report from Jennifer Lynn, writing for financial news site Benzinga, quoted a note from investment research firm Bernstein, whose analysis suggested the stock should be trading at closer to $84.00 given the company's poor performance:
“Monsanto Company earnings update reinforces our bearish view of the stock, highlighting continued (and worsening) weakness in glyphosate and weak GM seed pricing."
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- Redwoods are the world's tallest trees.
- Now scientists have discovered they are even bigger than we thought.
- Using laser technology they map the 80-meter giants.
- Trees are a key plank in the fight against climate change.
They are among the largest trees in the world, descendants of forests where dinosaurs roamed.
Pixabay / Simi Luft
<p><span>Until recently, measuring these trees meant scaling their 80 meter high trunks with a tape measure. Now, a team of scientists from University College London and the University of Maryland uses advanced laser scanning, to create 3D maps and calculate the total mass.</span></p><p>The results are striking: suggesting the trees <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">may be as much as 30% larger than earlier measurements suggested.</a> Part of that could be due to the additional trunks the Redwoods can grow as they age, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a process known as reiteration</a>.</p>New 3D measurements of large redwood trees for biomass and structure. Nature / UCL
<p>Measuring the trees more accurately is important because carbon capture will probably play a key role in the battle against climate change. Forest <a href="https://www.wri.org/blog/2020/09/carbon-sequestration-natural-forest-regrowth" target="_blank">growth could absorb billions of tons</a> of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.</p><p>"The importance of big trees is widely-recognised in terms of carbon storage, demographics and impact on their surrounding ecosystems," the authors wrote<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank"> in the journal Nature</a>. "Unfortunately the importance of big trees is in direct proportion to the difficulty of measuring them."</p><p>Redwoods are so long lived because of their ability to <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cope with climate change, resist disease and even survive fire damage</a>, the scientists say. Almost a fifth of their volume may be bark, which helps protect them.</p>Carbon Capture Champions
<p><span>Earlier research by scientists at Humboldt University and the University of Washington found that </span><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378112716302584" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Redwood forests store almost 2,600 tonnes of carbon per hectare</a><span>, their bark alone containing more carbon than any other neighboring species.</span></p><p>While the importance of trees in fighting climate change is widely accepted, not all species enjoy the same protection as California's coastal Redwoods. In 2019 the world lost the equivalent of <a href="https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/deforestation-and-forest-degradation" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">30 soccer fields of forest cover every minute</a>, due to agricultural expansion, logging and fires, according to The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF).</p>Pixabay
<p>Although <a href="https://c402277.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/publications/1420/files/original/Deforestation_fronts_-_drivers_and_responses_in_a_changing_world_-_full_report_%281%29.pdf?1610810475" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the rate of loss is reported to have slowed in recent years</a>, reforesting the world to help stem climate change is a massive task.</p><p><span>That's why the World Economic Forum launched the Trillion Trees Challenge (</span><a href="https://www.1t.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1t.org</a><span>) and is engaging organizations and individuals across the globe through its </span><a href="https://uplink.weforum.org/uplink/s/uplink-issue/a002o00000vOf09AAC/trillion-trees" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Uplink innovation crowdsourcing platform</a><span> to support the project.</span></p><p>That's backed up by research led by ETH Zurich/Crowther Lab showing there's potential to restore tree coverage across 2.2 billion acres of degraded land.</p><p>"Forests are critical to the health of the planet," according to <a href="https://www.1t.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1t.org</a>. "They sequester carbon, regulate global temperatures and freshwater flows, recharge groundwater, anchor fertile soil and act as flood barriers."</p><p><em data-redactor-tag="em" data-verified="redactor">Reposted with permission from the </em><span><em data-redactor-tag="em" data-verified="redactor"><a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/03/redwoods-store-more-co2-and-are-more-enormous-than-we-thought/" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>.</em></span></p>EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
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