Pharmaceutical and chemicals company Bayer has made an offer to buy US seed giant Monsanto for $62 billion US dollars. The German group confirmed on Monday it made an all-cash offer to acquire all of the issued and outstanding shares of common stock of Monsanto for $122 per share in a deal that would create the world’s biggest seller of seeds and farm chemicals. The offer, based on Bayer’s written proposal to Monsanto dated May 10, values the US company at 37 per cent more than its closing share price on 9 May. “Together we would draw on the collective expertise of both companies to build a leading agriculture player with exceptional innovation capabilities to the benefit of farmers, consumers, our employees and the communities in which we operate,” said Werner Baumann, CEO of Bayer AG. However, environmental and anti-GMO activists fear exactly the opposite, warning against increased corporate power over the world’s food supply. “A further concentration of corporate power in the agriculture/chemical sector would be bad news for farmers and consumers,” said Franziska Achterberg, Greenpeace’s EU food policy director. “It would accelerate the decrease in crop diversity while limiting consumer choice. Farmers would become even more dependent on just a handful of global players. They would find it harder to choose what they grow and how they grow it.” Monsanto confirmed it had received an unsolicited, non-binding proposal from Bayer AG for a potential acquisition. According the US company, the Board of Directors is reviewing the proposal and there won’t be further comments until this process will be completed. A Monsanto-Bayer merger would first have to pass regulators’ scrutiny. On Saturday, activists in more than 400 cities worldwide took to the streets in simultaneous demonstrations to protest against seed giant Monsanto and genetically modified crops. (ab)