A Change of Bastards

It’s a relief, almost, to take a break from wrestling with seriously bad bastards—that would be the National Rifle Association, and do they know, I wonder, that I’m after them?—to deal with another seriously bad bastard.

That would be a little company called Monsanto—which, by the way, my computer seems to know, it corrected me when I spelled it with an “a”--founded in 1901 and located in Creve Coeur, Missouri.

And you probably know that it’s an “agribusiness” and producing genetically modified seeds—indeed, it was one of the first companies to produce and market a genetically modified seed, a soybean that was created in 1983 and tested in the field in the late 80’s.

What you may not know—I didn’t—was that Monsanto started out as a chemical company, and it produced everything from plastics to DDT, Agent Orange, and PCBs.

At about the time that they discovered how to play with genes, they got rid of most of that part of the business. They are still making, however, an herbicide that they tout as “as safe as table salt.” (Or at least they did, until the New York Attorney General got after them. They settled out of court, agreed to drop the slogan in New York, and paid $250,000—small change for them—and denied wrongdoing.)

Roundup is by far the most commonly used herbicide, and its toxicity was for years thought to be low. Is it? As always, it depended on whom you asked—when I was gardening in a public park, I would avoid the garden for days or until a good rain after the city had used the stuff. Oh, and I was growing flowers, not food.

And there is evidence that the studies—funded by guess who!—may have been either poorly done or frankly fraudulent. But two things are known: the stuff is all over the place and farmers who refuse to use the herbicide are at a great disadvantage.

Now then, having created an herbicide of questionable toxicity, Monsanto cooked up a great scheme—create a seed that is resistant to Roundup! This way, the farmer sows the seed, waits around until the weeds appear, and then douses the hell out of his field with Roundup. So Monsanto wins twice, if not three or four times (depending on how often Farmer Jones sprays his field). 

Monsanto wins—but does the farmer? Do we, eating the farmer’s crop? One source reports that over 90% of the soy and canola harvested come from Roundup Ready (as the seeds are called) seeds. Since a lot of soy is used for livestock, nobody knows how high up the food chain Roundup really has gotten.

And Monsanto is not a company particularly easy to like. It tends to go after the people least likely to be disliked—those good farmers out there in the field. Such as the Canadian farmer, who the company charged had a Roundup Ready canola plant growing in his field.

“Hey,” said the farmer, “I don’t use that stuff. The pollen blew in from my neighbors field…”

And are you wondering—how can a company go after a farmer for having a plant in his field?

Because that’s no plant, that’s intellectual property. Yes, in 1980, the Supreme Court decided that the patent laws applied to manmade living organism. So now, 93% of soybeans are from Roundup Ready seeds. Oh, and guess what? The price of seed has tripled since then.

Nor is Monsanto content just to operate this scheme, it is today arguing before the Supreme Court that a farmer violated the law by first buying seeds from Monsanto and then buying seeds from a local grain elevator to plant a second crop. The farmer argued that he had already bought seed for the season, and that the second crop would be less productive, and less profitable. Monsanto said he had no right to buy Roundup Ready seed from anyone except the company.

Can it get worse?

Of course. If memory serves from reading Michael Pollan, Monsanto is now developing sterile seeds, which will have the farmers really locked in a corner. And what will happen if the genes causing the sterility in the seed are transferred to other seeds—not genetically modified? Oh, and what will happen—as it has happened—when the plants develop resistance to Roundup? Already, farmers are told to use multiple herbicides.

Five minutes ago, I decided I was hungry, and so I am eating a peanut butter sandwich. Since I didn’t grow the peanuts, and since the peanut butter in not organic, I am very likely eating a food made from genetically modified seed. Shouldn’t I know? Shouldn’t Skippy be required to label that?

Wanna guess my answer?