Stewart Bailey, Business Report via Checkbiotech.org

Syngenta, which competes with Monsanto in the market for genetically modified (GM) seeds, has resumed selling to South African farmers after a voluntary halt of a month.

Syngenta stopped selling mealie seeds to farmers on August 23 after Biowatch, an organisation opposed to gene-altered crops, appealed a government decision to allow Syngenta to sell seeds.

But a board of legal and agricultural experts convened by the high court dismissed Biowatch's appeal on Monday, said Ken Flower, the managing director of Syngenta's South African unit.

"We are now selling and distributing seeds as per our permit," Flower said.

The Basel-based company, to comply with the appeal board ruling, would release a statement detailing "additional monitoring and research" of crops.

Farmers in South Africa, usually one of the world's top five mealie exporters, will begin planting next month for the 2005 harvest.

Cormac Cullinan, a lawyer acting for Biowatch, said the decision was disturbing and declined to comment further until he had seen the reasons for it.

Syngenta sells GM seed for yellow mealies, which account for 39 percent of the 8.7 million tons the SA Crop Estimate Committee has forecast commercial farmers would reap this year.

The committee expects yellow mealie plantings to rise this season by 14 percent to 1.04 million hectares.

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