Farmers’ suit against Syngenta awarded class action status

Hundreds of thousands of U.S. farmers have been granted class action status for their lawsuits against seed company Syngenta over sales of biotech corn seeds not approved for import by China. A judge in the U.S. District Court of Kansas certified a nationwide class and statewide classes in Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio and South Dakota. At least 440,000 farmers sued after grain shipments containing traces of Syngenta’s Agrisure Viptera corn were rejected by China, which had not approved the variety for import before it was launched. The plaintiffs in the case did not plant the Viptera corn, but claim they suffered $5 billion to $7 billion in losses of current and future revenue when China’s rejections – beginning in November 2013 – disrupted trade and negatively affected corn prices.