Amid world wide food shortages Monsanto wants to reassert its position in the global food chain.
During a U.N. food summit in Rome last year, Monsanto announced ambitious goals to double yields on corn and soy by 2030. In a world with only so many food acres, the trend is being able to increase the yield of crops per acre. This is often accomplished by genetically modifying the seeds that Monsantos owns and patents.
Most of these seeds are created so that after planting, the resulting crops do not seed. This ensures that farmers have no more seeds to plant the following year, and are forced to buy again from Monsanto.
Now, the company is saying that they plan on doubling their profits by 2012, and as part of it’s marketing strategy, the company said it will also distribute seeds to African farmers “royalty-free.” Chief Executive Hugh Grant, said “Satisfying the demand curve is a great business opportunity.”
In other words, Monsanto plans to feed them for free the first year so they will have to come back for more.
Part of the problem though, is that Monsanto’s corn, isn’t meant to be eaten off the cob. Its most common use, as with soy, is to produce animal feed. So doubling yields is most likely to benefit affluent meat-eaters but is of little use to the malnourished.
Monsanto critics worry that the company will use its financial heft to pry open new markets in Africa and Asia for patented, transgenic crops.
“They are trying to exploit the food crisis as a means to win acceptance for their products,” says Bill Freese, a policy analyst at the Center for Food Safety, a Washington group that opposes GMOs. Pat Roy Mooney, executive director of Ottawa-based ETC Group, which monitors global agriculture policy, says the fear is that Monsanto “will use its muscle power to force governments—often fragile ones—to do what they want.”
As if having a monopoly on the worlds food supply isn’t enough, The New York Times reported: “Bioengineered crops seem to have a way of turning up where they are not wanted, through cross-pollination, intermingling of seed or other routes. StarLink corn, approved for animal feed but not for human consumption, ended up in taco shells and other groceries in 2000, prompting big recalls. Tiny amounts of corn engineered to produce a pharmaceutical got into 500,000 bushels of Nebraska soybeans. And engineered genes have apparently been detected in traditional varieties of corn growing in Mexico, the ancestral home of the crop and site of its greatest diversity, though the findings are disputed.”
Monsontos tendency toward “Frankenfood” or GMO foods is bad enough, but when they start to manipulate third world countries that have a serious problem with starvation, buy using that starvation as a business tool to leverage profits, that’s where we need to step in and say “enough is enough.”
Some will say that they are providing a service and that they should be paid for that service. That is how business works. I understand business. But I also understand that a company who is willing to endanger the health of the people who eat it’s food, force farmers to buy seeds from only them, sue farmers whose fields have become contaminated by their product, and leverage profits on the backs of the hungry, should be stopped.
What do you think?
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Source: Businessweek 
photo credit: grifray
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{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
I think that Monsanto needs to be stopped! Not only is there questions about the health of GMO foods but their product is depleting the soil and uses more water than organic farming methods. Not to mention the built-in toxic chemicals their products pass along! I agree “enough is enough!”
These companys are creating a killer society and they only think about the dollar.
Money comes first and if you get cancer from them, they have friends that will sell you the drugs to help you stay alive.
This story is based on two false assumptions.
1) Monsanto is planning to give commercial seed to African farmers. Not true. Monsanto is working with numerous third parties, NGOs and local groups, providing them with access to technologies and expertise to help them increase food production and nutrition. Our humanitarian efforts in Africa are not part of our plan to hit our 2012 targets.
2) Monsanto’s seeds produce sterile plants. Also not true.
Enough IS enough with these people.
From http://www.newfrontier.com/asheville/bad_seed.htm:
“Monsanto has spent over $30 billion in recent years buying numerous U.S. seed companies. As a result, two firms, Monsanto and Pioneer (recently purchased by DuPont), now control the U.S. seed business. Monsanto specializes in genetically modified seeds — seeds having particular properties that Monsanto has patented.”
And, from http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?aid=3912&context=va:
“Monsanto Whistleblower Says Genetically Engineered Crops May Cause Disease”
Ahhh some good, high-paid Monsanto PR spin. Have you seen the documentary about your shameful corporation? How do you sleep at night, seriously? Disadvantaging people in disadvantaged areas for profit. The Earth does what it does best NATURALLY. Go read “Silent Spring” again in case you forgot how messed up what you’re doing is. I realize you live in a nice house and drive a nice car but screwing with nature will not end nicely. STOP! The people know the truth about you…
And what’s worse – is that the basic premise of increased production (higher yields per acre) is UNTRUE. In India and other places, diseases have ravaged GMO crops and leaving non-GMO crops intact leaving farmers devastated and deep in debt to the seed company. I highly recommend watching this video. The World According to Monsanto http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6262083407501596844
People that spin for companies like this have no soul at all. How DO you sleep at night?
You know, you can believe in hell or not. My take, there’s a special place reserved in hell for those who would damage the Earth and it’s people and take advantage of those less fortunate.
Yes, the green revolution helped feed more people, and we can still make progress with R&D, but there are limits. I don’t think a monopoly in something so important is a good idea, and I’ve seen way too many troubling things about Monsanto than to buy their lawyer-edited party lines.
We need a proper third party, scientific advisory panel, un-buyable arms length arbitrator, with some actual muscle in making recommendations to properly review these complicated issues.
The other thing is economics in general which strives for growth at all costs – like plans to double profits. 10% growth is the normal standard, but even this can be high, especially once you’ve saturated a market. These kind of growth rates, necessary to placate most investors, often lead to drops in quality, cutting important corners (where cornerstones should be), and corruption. You can only grow so much, and true R&D is unlikely to make up the slack. Companies can, and do exist, like the company Patagonia, which have more reasonable and sustainable growth rates and economic best practices which support an ecological bottom line.
“Our humanitarian efforts in Africa”…HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Ow, my sides!
Monsanto: you’re trying to monopolize food, and create a closed loop that creates fiefs for your greedy corporation instead of human beings free to grow their own food, saving the seeds as has been done for time immemorial. This is just plain immoral and unconscionable.
Monsanto’s company motto: “If our lips are moving, we’re telling lies.™”
I did a lot of research when writing a college essay re: GE foods. My research confirms the info in this post – NOT the spin from Monsanto.
Monsanto is nothing if not evil, and I’m surprised that no one here has mentioned the fact that these things have been going on in the US for years: “endanger the health of the people who eat it’s food, force farmers to buy seeds from only them, sue farmers whose fields have become contaminated by their product, and leverage profits on the backs of the hungry”. Monsanto & the USDA are NOT pro-health, pro-environment, pro-humanity. They are pro-profit.
GE crops/foods, toxins (especially bio-accumulative toxins!), seed that requires Monsanto chemicals to be productive…They’ve gotten away with it here; there is very little outcry. (Go organic folks!)
Europe, for the most part, rejects anything GE. Yet there is an attitude that the hungry should be thankful for anything they are given, even if it is something that will only further endanger them and their futures. Evil!
The concept of the Corporation was devised so that a company could function financially as an individual without being an actual living person. Monsanto can’t go to hell. In a side note, hell is a construct of the human mind.
Once the people behind Monsanto reach the limits of what can be done with regard to unnaturally productive agriculture, they will have some hard times (relatively speaking). There is a huge disaster fast approaching in the form of a phosphorus shortage. GMO can’t overcome that.
Call me crazy, but isn’t this the same type of crack dealer behavior we were told to avoid during the “Just Say No” campaign from the Reagan years?
You get a few freebies to introduce you to the product. You love it so much you start paying for it. Before you know it, you can’t live without it.
Chris at Monsanto,
I don’t believe one word of it.
Myself and others were sickened by Quick-Dry Min-wax ethylene glycol die-ethyl ether two months after application. The same group sickened walking in a field a week after minimal Round-up application. Each time I politely called your question or info number looking for helpful information and was referred to a scientist. Your scientist was a real wise-guy, new nothing about science or health. All he had to say was hyperbaric oxygen therapy for the Parkinson’s symptoms. This convinces me that you are all out for yourselves. The funny thing … I became friends with some world class scientists, doctors of epidemiology, toxicology, physics, and electromagnetic science.
A long history of poisons PCB’s, Agent Orange, Saccarin, DDT, BGH, Styrene everywhere. Neighbors sickened by PCB road spray. Cancer Deaths along the PCB sediment filled 32 mile stretch of the Hudson River. Husbands and loved ones a mess by Agent Orange and DDT. You certainly appear to be fooling everybody.
Food? The corn issue is a disaster, if you wish to call it corn.
Wonder if John Francis Queeny meant to sell his soul.
no monsanto mouthpiece can explain away what they did in argentina, or resolution 81 in iraq…..
Do not be silent. People will call you crazy, but never be silent. That is what they want.
Good post!!
Would I say my cake is NO GOOD if I am the one baking cakes and selling them?
I doubt Monsanto’s explaination. If anyone needs to “explain”, it has to come from a source that is NOT paid by third-parties to do unbias and sound research.
WHO, EFSA and FAO have been endorsing GMO even without any completed human studies = no proof GMed foods are safe. I have lost trust in these organizations. EFSA even went as far as to discredit Dr. Morando Soffritti’s (Nobel Prize-Winner) study on genetically-modified sugar, aspartame.
Already there are studies that show cotton plants failed due to genetically modified seed, pigs sterile due to ingestion of GMed corn.
Monsanto are toying with the very building blocks of nature and there are huge risks in doing so.. they could screw the ecological chain on Mother Earth for eons..
Dave Evans
partydavo.com