While the alleged corporate abuses undertaken by corporations such as Betchel and Halliburton have been widely argued, I am hearing more and more about Monsanto. The stories have elevated Monsanto to a level of evil only known to a James Bond villain. Do they really spray crops in Canada with Roundup, and sue the farmers for plants that survive the assault since they obviously must be using their modified seeds? Are they forcing the Iraqi farmer to buy their seeds or starve? What is really going on with this organization? Are they as evil as the stories claim or are they blown out of proportion?
thanks in advance,
nimbus
This issue belongs in Great Debates.
When discussing, beware of the agenda and knowledge of those making points.
It is impossible to feed the masses without chemicals and some engineering of food/land, etc. So, be carfeul if someone comes to the table ready to condemn western civilization for chems and bio engineering and the enviroment.
Noting room for improvement in how chems and such are handled doesn’t mean the entire intent or process is flawed, and it could be useful to discuss the good and bad here.
In the case of a giant like Monsanto, it would not be surprising if they used their massive leverage in the food/crop world for a number of things.
And while big corps (like people) have been known to do things wrong, it doesn’t condemn the whole lot.
So, have fun.
Monsanto Wins Right to Genetic Pollution Farmers, whose crops have been contaminated with pollen from Monsanto’s patented herbicide-resistant canola. Schmeiser claims that the pollen arrived on the wind, yet he has been ordered to pay royalties.
Iraq law Requires Seed Licenses Iraqi law now makes saving seed from season to season illegal when using Monsanto engineered seed. Farmers now have to pay royalties on saved seed, which I assume is already illegal in most developed countries that allow or recognize genetically modified foods.
Fixed the second link, sorry.
While looking at Monsanto and seed, also have a look at Monsanto and water. What it comes down to is that Monsanto makes its money through developing or controlling some of the vital resources necessary for survival. This works well for those who are already well off, but often is the shits for poor people.
Schmeiser claimed that one cannot patent the whole plant just the part modified. The Court did not agree and so ruled against Schmeiser but do also rule that Monsanto can only recover that profit difference that can be shown Schmeiser made having grown the patented crop minus the profit he would have made growing a nonpatented crop.
Let’s not forget their role in Bovine Growth Hormone (a classic useless product in the West; we pay farmers not to produce more milk and these guys come up with a drug to painfully cause cows to produce more) and the suppression of reportage about it in America. I’ve seen Akre and Wilson speak here and I suggest anyone interested in the issue go see them if they come to your area as well.
I dislike Monsanto as much as the next guy, but they certainly don’t go around indiscriminately spraying glyphosphate on crops to see if they’re resistant so that they can sue farmers for patent infringement. That would involve any number of criminal offences, starting with trespassing and destruction of property. The Schmeiser case is kind of a joke. While most folks up here were rooting for him in court, we also knew he didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell. See, what happened was that there was a windstorm one fall, and windrows of cut but unharvested canola from a neighbour’s field blew onto his. The neighbour had seeded Monsanto’s GMO glyphosphate-resistant canola, and Percy knew it. The next year, he seeded regular canola on that field, knowing that the blown windrows would have strewn many seeds about, and that they’d germinate and grow that year. Then he took the seed from the corner of that field where the volunteer GMO canloa was thickest and kept it seperate, seeded it the next year, and sprayed the resulting crop with Roundup, and voila, he had nearly pure Monsanto RoundUp Ready[sup]TM[/sup] canola. So they sued him. He knew what he was doing all along, and his pleas that he was an entirely passive observer of the contamination of his canola crop with GMO seed are entirely bullshit. I know of no cases where Monsanto’s gone after anyone whose crops were contaminated but didn’t do anything to attempt to concentrate the frequency of the GMO strain - they likely couldn’t, since due to the grain handling infrastructure’s characteristics, some cross-contamination between varieties of the same grains is inevitable, and there is almost certainly a small amount of GMO canola in every sample of non-GMO canola these days. I highly doubt the courts would side with Monsanto where there is truly incidental contamination.
None of the above should be taken as an endorsement of Monsanto’s business practices, however.
Thank you so much, Gorsnak. None of the articles that I have seen included this illuminating information. I guess it was just easier to paint Monsanto as totally evil and the farmer as Mister Poor Poor Me Innocent Guy.
The court decision can be found here, if you’re interested.