Food & Farming · Saturday, 12 September 2026

01 Briefing what happened

Bayer wants one court to close 65,000 Roundup cancer claims, and the ones nobody has filed yet

Food & Farming 15 sources

Bayer goes before a Missouri judge on Monday asking for approval of a $7.25 billion deal that would settle about 65,000 cancer lawsuits over its weedkiller Roundup, and bar future ones. Its last settlement paid about $10 billion and left the future open.

$7.25bn

Bayer's offer to close the Roundup cancer cases

its 2020 deal paid about $10bn and still left future claims open [1]

65,000

claims now filed in US state and federal courts

each says Roundup caused non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer of the white blood cells [1]

12,883

people made ill by one summer's iceberg lettuce

570 went to hospital and two died, in the largest such US outbreak recorded [2]

48.2m tonnes

Europe's corn crop this year, cut again this week

France is heading for its smallest since the drought year of 1976 [6]

The lead story — what happened

Bayer, the German chemicals and medicines company that bought Monsanto in 2018, goes before a Missouri state judge on Monday. [1]
It is asking Judge Timothy Boyer in St Louis to approve a $7.25 billion settlement of US lawsuits over its weedkiller Roundup. [1]
About 65,000 people have sued, saying Roundup gave them non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer of the white blood cells. [1]
The deal would pay each person between $10,000 and $165,000, depending on how severe the cancer is and whether they used Roundup at home or at work. [1]
What makes it different from Bayer's roughly $10 billion settlement in 2020 is that it is written to cover future claims as well as current ones. [1]
The 2020 deal cleared many existing lawsuits and left Bayer open to anyone who sued afterwards, and people kept suing. [1]
Some plaintiffs' lawyers object, saying their clients are being pushed into a framework they did not choose and would rather go to trial. [1]
Other lawyers will tell the judge it is the surest way for sick clients to be paid. [1]
Bayer denies the claims and says decades of studies show glyphosate, Roundup's main ingredient, is safe. [1]
The World Health Organization's cancer agency called glyphosate a probable cause of cancer in 2015. [1]
The US Environmental Protection Agency found in 2017 that it was not likely to cause cancer at the exposures people actually get, and does not require a cancer warning on the label. [1]
Bayer won a US Supreme Court ruling on that label while the settlement was pending, which knocked out one of the main legal arguments against it. [1]

Who is involved

Bayer

the German chemicals and medicines company that bought Monsanto in 2018; it is asking the court to approve the deal
Judge Timothy Boyer

the Missouri state judge in St Louis who will decide whether to approve it; he is not expected to rule on Monday
The 65,000 claimants

people suing in US state and federal courts who say Roundup gave them non-Hodgkin lymphoma
The International Agency for Research on Cancer

the World Health Organization's cancer research body; it called glyphosate a probable cause of cancer in 2015
The US Environmental Protection Agency

the American regulator for pesticides; it found in 2017 that glyphosate was not likely to cause cancer at real-world exposures

How it unfolded

2015 the World Health Organization's cancer agency calls glyphosate a probable cause of cancer
2017 the US Environmental Protection Agency finds it not likely to cause cancer in real use
2018 Bayer buys Monsanto, and the lawsuits with it
2020 a roughly $10bn settlement clears many claims but leaves future ones open
February Bayer announces the $7.25bn deal covering current and future claims
Monday a Missouri judge hears objections in St Louis

Where this points

Judge Boyer is not expected to rule on Monday, and the thing to watch is whether he accepts that a settlement can bind people who have not yet sued. [1]

What is pushing on the whole day

The bar and the word are our reading of how hard each one is pushing today. The arrow is where it is heading. The evidence is in the stories below.

Drought on this year's crops High↑

France is heading for its smallest corn harvest since 1976, after five heatwaves and a drought that began in May. [6] Chad banned exports of six crops on Wednesday because dry spells wrecked its harvests. [3] A long dry spell caused widespread crop failure across Kenya's main grain-growing region. [5]

Companies paying to end lawsuits Building↑

Bayer is asking a Missouri judge to approve $7.25 billion to close about 65,000 Roundup cancer claims. [1] Chemours, DuPont and Corteva agreed to pay North Carolina $455 million over long-lasting industrial chemicals found in its water. [7]

Food stopped at borders Building↑

The United States will stop importing certain Canadian dairy products from 29 September. [5] Chad banned exports of millet, corn, rice, sorghum, wheat and cotton seed. [3] Texas banned moving any warm-blooded animal out of two counties after one horse was found with a flesh-eating parasite. [4]

The cost of shipping food High↑

The heavy fuel oil that powers cargo ships costs more than 70% more than it did before the Iran war began. [11] Middle East exports of that fuel fell 45% between March and August, against the same months last year. [11] Europe's corn imports were raised to 23.2 million tonnes this week, so more grain must cross an ocean to reach it. [6]

The rest of the day

18 more stories on this beat.

Each with its own sources. None of these is a link to the story above.

02
Largest lettuce outbreak declared over

US health authorities declared the country's largest recorded cyclosporiasis outbreak over on Friday. [2] Cyclospora is a parasite that gets into food and causes long bouts of illness, and this one arrived on iceberg lettuce grown in central Mexico for Taylor Farms, one of North America's biggest salad suppliers. [2] The final count is 12,883 people ill across 21 states, 570 of them in hospital, and two dead. [2] Taylor Farms recalled the lettuce on 17 July; at the peak, before the recall, more than 1,000 infections were reported in a single day. [2]

Why it matters — The outbreak is closed but the cause is not. The Food and Drug Administration has finished inspecting the Mexican farms and the processing plant and is still waiting on the sample results. [2]
03
Chad bans exports of six crops

Chad's commerce minister, Mathieu Guibolo Fanga, signed a decree on Wednesday banning exports of millet, corn, rice, sorghum, wheat and cotton seed. [3] A second decree lifted import duties on those grains, on animal feed and on farm equipment. [3] Chad is a landlocked country in central Africa, and repeated dry spells from July to mid-August damaged harvests across it. [3] The World Food Programme said more than 3 million people there would go short of food between June and August. [3]

Why it matters — The agriculture minister, Keda Ballah, said planting off-season crops on irrigated land is the only way to prevent famine in some regions. Herders in the west are already crossing into the Central African Republic to keep their animals alive. [3]
04
First US horse found with screwworm

A working ranch horse in Presidio County, in southern Texas near the Mexican border, was confirmed on Wednesday with New World screwworm. [4] It is the first US horse case. Screwworm is a fly whose maggots burrow into the living flesh of warm-blooded animals, and the United States wiped it out in the 1960s. [4] Texas responded by banning the movement of warm-blooded animals out of Presidio and Jeff Davis counties. [4] Experts put the cost of a widespread outbreak at up to $1.8 billion. [4]

Why it matters — Every rancher in those two counties now carries a movement ban because of one horse, and nobody has said where that horse picked up the parasite. [4]
05
France's corn crop smallest since 1976

The US Department of Agriculture's staff in Europe cut their estimate of this year's European Union corn harvest to 48.2 million tonnes. [6] France, the bloc's biggest grower, is heading for its smallest corn crop since the drought year of 1976. [6] Five heatwaves and a drought that started in May scorched the fields, and even irrigated ground suffered because local authorities restricted watering to protect drinking supplies. [6] French yields are now forecast 30% below the five-year average. [6]

Why it matters — French dairy farmers, short of hay after the same drought, have started cutting corn grown for grain and feeding it to cattle, which takes that grain out of the harvest and out of their income. [6]
06
America's corn crop cut again

The US Department of Agriculture cut its forecast for this year's American corn crop by 213 million bushels, in the monthly world supply and demand report published on 11 September. [5] The crop is now put at 15.8 billion bushels, with the average yield down 2.2 bushels to 178.5 bushels an acre. [5] The price American growers are expected to get was raised 30 cents to $4.80 a bushel. [5] Exports were left unchanged at 3.3 billion bushels, so the whole of the cut comes out of stocks and animal feed. [5]

Why it matters — Feed and residual use was cut 150 million bushels to 6.0 billion in the same report. [5] The animals that eat American corn are absorbing the whole of the reduction, because the export forecast did not move.
07
India's rice crop falls for the first time in a decade

India's rice production will be lower this year than last, the first year-on-year fall in ten years, the US Department of Agriculture said. [5] The cause is a below-normal monsoon whose rain also fell unevenly across the country. [5] India is the world's largest rice exporter, so what it harvests sets much of the price that poorer importing countries pay. [5] World rice supplies were still raised 1.2 million tonnes to 736.6 million, because India began the year holding far more grain than expected. [5] World rice trade was trimmed to 62.6 million tonnes. [5]

Why it matters — India stored a lot of grain in better years. That stock is covering this year's smaller harvest, so importing countries have not yet had to pay more. [5]
08
Kenya's grain basket fails

A prolonged dry spell caused widespread crop failure across Kenya's main grain-growing region, the US Department of Agriculture said, cutting the country's corn harvest. [5] Corn is the staple food there, eaten daily as a maize-meal porridge. India and Russia also grew less corn than expected. [5] World production of coarse grains, meaning the feed grains led by corn and barley, was cut 5.1 million tonnes to 1.588 billion. [5] Australia offset part of that with a record barley crop of 17.1 million tonnes, raised three million in a single month on good rain. [5]

Why it matters — The same report cut world coarse-grain production by 5.1 million tonnes, and Europe's corn imports were raised to 23.2 million. [5][6] Buyers short of grain are bidding for the same shrinking crop.
09
Three chemical firms pay $455m over forever chemicals

Chemours, DuPont and Corteva agreed to pay North Carolina $455 million to settle claims over PFAS, a family of industrial chemicals that barely break down in water or soil. [7] Corteva is one of the world's biggest seed and farm-chemical companies. [7] The money is paid over 15 years, with Chemours carrying half; it expects to pay about $50 million in the next 12 months. [7] The deal covers governments left out of a national water settlement approved in 2024. [7]

Why it matters — The 2024 settlement was meant to have dealt with American drinking-water claims. This is a second bill, from the governments that deal did not reach. [7]
10
Nebraska's governor is a hog producer

Jim Pillen, the governor of Nebraska, built one of the largest pork businesses in the United States before taking office three years ago. [8] The New York Times and the Flatwater Free Press found that Pillen Family Farms has taken on undocumented workers as it grew to about 1,200 employees across four states and Canada. [8] Pillen has backed the Trump administration's immigration crackdown and directed the Nebraska State Patrol to work with immigration officers. [8] He is seeking re-election this autumn. [8]

Why it matters — Many farms in Nebraska and other states rely on migrant workers because they cannot hire enough people locally, so the crackdown and the hog barns are pulling in opposite directions. [8]
11
Egg-sexing machines reach 40% of Europe

Machines that tell whether an egg holds a male or a female chick before it hatches now cover 40% of the European Union's laying flock, up from nothing five years ago. [9] Hatcheries without them incubate eggs for 21 days, employ trained sexers, and then kill half the chicks, because males of laying breeds cannot lay eggs. [9] Germany and France have banned that killing and Italy plans to end it by 2027. [9] Switzerland requires nothing and is already past 85%. [9]

Why it matters — In the United States, producers managing just over 4% of the laying flock are switching to it as their flocks retire. [9] United Egg Producers, which accounts for 90% of American egg production, says it is committed to the technology once it is economically and operationally feasible. [9]
12
The US shuts out some Canadian dairy

The United States will stop importing certain Canadian dairy products from 29 September, under an exclusion announced on 8 September. [5] Duties on some Canadian dairy, announced in July, had already taken effect on 21 August. [5] The US Department of Agriculture's September forecasts assume both stay in place, and it raised the price it expects American farmers to get for milk to $19.90 per hundredweight. [5] Canada's own counter-tariffs of up to 50%, on $27.6 billion of American goods, started on 8 September and hit US dairy, sweeteners and farm equipment. [10]

Why it matters — Milk is now taxed or blocked in both directions across the same border. [5][10] Dairy farmers on each side have lost their nearest foreign customer.
13
Ship fuel up 70% since the war

The heavy fuel oil that powers cargo ships costs more than 70% more than it did before the Iran war, and supply is expected to be very tight this quarter. [11] Refineries damaged by strikes in Russia and the Middle East are putting the crude they can still process into diesel instead. [11] Middle East exports of ship fuel fell 45% between March and August, against the same months a year earlier. [11] Brent crude, the main world oil price, went back above $100 a barrel on 9 September. [12]

Why it matters — Grain crosses oceans in bulk carriers that burn exactly this fuel. A tight quarter for it arrives in importing countries as a higher landed price for wheat, corn and rice.
14
US egg prices a sixth of last year's

Wholesale eggs in the United States averaged 67.0 cents a dozen in the second quarter of 2026. [5] The average for the whole of 2025, when bird flu was killing laying hens in large numbers, was 373.7 cents. [5] The US Department of Agriculture raised its egg production forecast again this month, because the laying flock is growing. [5] It also cut its egg price forecast for the rest of 2026 and left 2027 unchanged. [5]

Why it matters — The flock that bird flu cut down has been rebuilt, and that is what brought the shelf price down. [5]
15
A mealy bug in Louisiana's cane

The US Department of Agriculture cut its forecast for Louisiana's cane sugar production by 13,852 short tons this month. [5] The cause is a mealy bug, a small sap-sucking insect that weakens the cane. [5] The industry told the department it cannot say how much the pest will take until the harvest is well under way. [5] Louisiana and Florida between them grow almost all the cane sugar made in the United States, and American sugar supply for next year was cut by 168,282 tons in all. [5]

Why it matters — Louisiana's growers will not know the size of the loss until they are cutting the cane, and the national supply figure is being forecast without it. [5]
16
America's cotton crop shrinks 3%

The US Department of Agriculture cut its forecast for the American cotton crop by 3%, to 13.2 million bales, with the national yield down to 776 pounds an acre. [5] Yields fell in the Delta and the Southwest and rose slightly in the Southeast and West. [5] The amount of cotton American mills will use was cut to 1.50 million bales, because the country's textile industry keeps contracting. [5] The price growers are expected to get rose to 78 cents a pound from 75 cents. [5]

Why it matters — Cotton is a farm crop before it is a fabric, and it competes for the same land, water and machinery as the corn and soybeans grown beside it. Chad's export ban this week covered cotton seed too. [3]
17
The UN takes over the farm research count

The FAO, the UN's food agency, has taken over the Agricultural Science and Technology Indicators, the only set of internationally comparable figures on what countries spend on farm research and how many researchers they employ. [13] The programme was run for more than two decades by the International Food Policy Research Institute. [13] It is now published on FAOSTAT, the FAO's own statistics service, country by country. [13] Maximo Torero, the FAO's chief economist, said the figures show where research gaps remain and where money needs to go. [13]

Why it matters — In many countries the data on farm research spending is scattered and incomplete, which makes it impossible to say whether a national research system is growing or shrinking. [13]
18
Compost beat both systems in an Indian trial

A field trial in semi-arid India compared conventional farming, natural farming and five rates of compost on a pigeonpea and wheat rotation. [14] Pigeonpea is a drought-tolerant pulse and a staple source of protein across South Asia. Compost at 12 tonnes a hectare grew the biggest root systems: root length density was 23.3% above natural farming and 8.0% above conventional at flowering. [14] Root growth and nutrient uptake peaked 90 days after sowing and fell away while the pods filled. [14]

Why it matters — More compost was not better. At 24 tonnes a hectare, the heaviest rate, the plants took up less phosphorus and potassium than they did at 12. [14]
19
Pay for the practice, not the label

David Montgomery, a geologist who has written three books about soil, argued in Civil Eats that American farm policy should reward farming practices rather than a word on a certificate. [15] He defines regenerative farming as three things done together: not disturbing the soil, keeping it covered with cover crops, and rotating a variety of crops. [15] He separates it from organic farming, which often ploughs, and from no-till farming, which leans on weedkiller. [15]

Why it matters — It is an opinion piece and not a finding, and it lands while that department is deciding what its new regenerative programme will actually pay for. [15]

02 Lesson why it matters

Why a company pays extra to stop new claims arriving

Bayer already paid about $10 billion in 2020, and that deal only covered people who had already sued, so the claims kept coming.

The twist

Bayer paid about $10 billion in 2020 and was no safer afterwards, because that deal only covered the people who had already sued.

How it works

People sue over a product that is still on sale
Nobody can say how many more will sue later
So the company's total bill has no number in it
It offers one large payment to shut the door
A judge decides whether people who have not sued yet are bound by it

The same force, elsewhere today

Where this chain is also running, in today's other stories.

The $455m forever-chemicals deal in North Carolina

the same step, one settlement later: a national water settlement approved in 2024 was meant to close it, and the governments that deal left out are being paid separately now
Texas banning animal movement over one horse

a cost the state can name, a movement ban on two counties, taken instead of an outbreak it cannot size, put at up to $1.8 billion
Chad's export ban

Chad's government stopped six crops leaving the country before anyone had counted the harvest, taking a loss it can measure over a famine it cannot

Where you've seen this

Insurance

you pay a fixed premium every year rather than carry a loss you cannot put a number on

Fixed-rate mortgages

they usually cost more than the variable kind, and people take them to know the payment

Building work

a builder charges more for a fixed price than for time and materials, because the unknown becomes theirs

The catch

The door only shuts if the judge agrees the deal can bind people who have not sued yet, and that is exactly what the objecting lawyers are fighting.

And the whole of it

The sick man wants his own day in court, his lawyer wants him paid this year, and Bayer wants a number it can put in its accounts. All three are sensible, and the judge has to weigh them for people who have not fallen ill yet.

03 Truth what's really going on

What is really going on

Bayer is not paying $7.25 billion for the 65,000 Roundup lawsuits already filed. It is paying to stop new people suing later, which its roughly $10 billion deal in 2020 did not do. [1]

Why it works on us — A very large number reads as a company being punished, and the size of it hides what is actually being bought: a rule that people who fall ill later cannot bring their own case.

Who gains

Bayer's shareholders — If the judge approves the deal, the company can put a final figure on Roundup. The litigation has weighed on its share price since it bought Monsanto in 2018. [1]
Roundup claimants who are already seriously ill — The deal pays between $10,000 and $165,000 without a trial, at a point when winning in court got harder after Bayer's US Supreme Court win on the warning label. [1]
American dairy farmers — The United States will block some Canadian dairy from 29 September, and the US Department of Agriculture raised the price it expects US farmers to get for milk to $19.90 per hundredweight. [5]
Grain exporters in Australia, Canada and Ukraine — Europe's corn crop was cut to 48.2 million tonnes and its imports raised to 23.2 million. Australia set a record barley crop and Canada's wheat forecast rose to 36 million tonnes. [5][6]
The makers of egg-sexing machines — Germany and France have banned male chick culling and Italy plans to stop it by 2027, which gives the machines a legal deadline to sell against. [9]

Who pays

People who develop lymphoma from Roundup in future — If the settlement is approved, they are inside a payment scale agreed before they fell ill rather than able to bring their own case. [1]
Farmers in Chad — The export ban closes their outside buyers for millet, corn, rice, sorghum, wheat and cotton seed, in the year their harvest already failed. [3]
Ranchers in Presidio and Jeff Davis counties, Texas — They cannot move any warm-blooded animal out of the two counties after a single horse was confirmed with screwworm. [4]
French dairy farmers — Short of hay after the drought, they are cutting corn grown for grain and feeding it to cattle, which takes that grain out of their own income. [6]
North Carolina's water systems — The $455 million from Chemours, DuPont and Corteva is spread over 15 years, and Chemours expects to pay about $50 million of it in the next 12 months. [7]

What nobody knows yet

Open questions from across today’s stories — ours included.

01

Whether the judge will approve the settlement at all.

Judge Timothy Boyer is not expected to rule at Monday's hearing in St Louis, and no date has been given for one. [1]
02

Whether glyphosate causes cancer.

The World Health Organization's cancer agency called it a probable cause in 2015. The US Environmental Protection Agency found in 2017 that it was not likely to at real-world exposures, and its updated assessment is due late in 2026. [1]
03

How the parasite got into the lettuce.

The US Food and Drug Administration has finished its inspections of the Mexican farms and the processing plant, and the sample analysis is still pending. [2]
04

Where the Texas horse caught screwworm.

Neither the US Department of Agriculture nor the Texas authorities have said anything about the origin of the case. [4]
05

How bad Chad's harvest actually is.

The export ban and the duty exemptions were signed before any harvest figure was published. The FAO, the UN's food agency, reported the dry spells, not the size of the shortfall. [3]
06

How much cane sugar Louisiana will lose to the mealy bug.

The industry told the US Department of Agriculture it cannot forecast the pest's effect until the harvest is well under way. [5]
07

How many undocumented workers Pillen Family Farms has employed.

The New York Times and the Flatwater Free Press say the scale is not clear. The company has about 1,200 employees across four states and Canada. [8]
08

Whether the US block on some Canadian dairy will still be in force in a year.

The US Department of Agriculture's September forecasts simply assume it and the August duties hold for the whole period, which is an assumption and not a fact. [5]

04 Hope carry this

The largest cyclosporiasis outbreak ever recorded in the United States has been declared over. At its peak more than 1,000 people a day were falling ill from one supplier's lettuce; by August it was fewer than two a day.

Also true today

Wholesale eggs in the United States cost 67.0 cents a dozen in the second quarter of this year. The average for the whole of 2025, when bird flu was killing laying hens, was 373.7 cents.
Machines that tell a male egg from a female one before it hatches now cover 40% of the European Union's laying flock, five years after covering none of it. In Switzerland, which has no law requiring them, they cover more than 85%.
Australia's barley harvest is heading for a record 17.1 million tonnes, raised by three million tonnes in a single month after good rain.