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Author Topic:   Monsanto - Bad Food, Good Capitalism
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 2 of 46 (685962)
12-28-2012 10:47 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by Stile
12-28-2012 10:25 AM


Monsanto is a food company.
Technically Monsanto is a biotechnology and chemical company.
I'm biased, I've seen the videos that say things about how Monsanto get these patents, and adds genetic modifications not just for their food's foodiness... but also so that the crops are extremely aggressive.
Look, I have a degree in biochemistry, I worked for years in and around agrosystems, and I can tell you that agricultural crops are the exact opposite of "aggressive." It's just a function of directed evolution - we've long since bred out any natural defense against competition in our crops because it's not necessary. The field environment is so completely artificial - if for no other reason than a human being is deciding which organisms are going to get to grow there - that our crops have long since stopped being able to compete in a truly wild environment. They're very much "hothouse flowers" if you know that term.
And it's so, so hard to engineer these traits - in order to insert the Bt gene into corn, for instance, Monsanto had to almost completely re-engineer the gene to correct for the different codon bias between the genetics of Bacillus thuringiensis and Zea mays, or else the expression of the protein would be hampered by the fact that some tRNA's are rarer in the average Zea mays cell than they are in Bacillus thuringiensis. It took years. Genetic engineering for something as unspecified as "aggressiveness", by which you apparently mean "fecundity" or "pollen dispersion volume" or something, is just not something anybody's yet able to do. Not even the Evil Monsanto.
Then they'll "accidentally" lose some seeds in a farmer's land, then when their seeds take over, they'll take the farmer to court for "breaking the patent" and end up controlling the farm.
This is not something that has actually ever happened.
They are, however, trying to get some laws in that would force food to actually label itself on whether or not it contains GM or GE products.
I applaud the recent electoral defeat of that amendment. Not everybody's irrational prejudice should be catered to. I think people would rightly object if foods had to be labeled about whether they were picked by Mexicans or handled by African-Americans, even though that's something that some number of people find objectionable. It's basically the same thing - opposition to GM crops, at this point, is an irrational prejudice.
But, does someone want to defend these guys?
I dunno, does this constitute a defense? For what it's worth, it's long been recognized that one of the purposes of the law is to protect the germlines that farmers and breeders spend decades or even generations developing. One of the oldest court cases in the US involves a farmer suing another for stud fees, after the other farmer started sneaking mares onto his property to be impregnated by his stallions. The current state of the law is that developing germlines is such an investment of time, money, and effort that the people who do it are entitled to a kind of "copy protection", perhaps similar to copyright, that prevents end users from simply running off millions of perfect biological copies and selling them to other people. I'm not sure that's wrong, or that what Monsanto is doing is any worse in principle than an heirloom tomato breeder who sues to protect her investment.
Despite the usual food-scare propaganda, I've never seen any evidence that Monsanto is worse than any other big corporation. To be fair, though, that's pretty bad on its own.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Stile, posted 12-28-2012 10:25 AM Stile has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 4 by Stile, posted 12-28-2012 11:31 AM crashfrog has replied
 Message 7 by Jon, posted 12-28-2012 12:17 PM crashfrog has replied

  
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 6 of 46 (685979)
12-28-2012 12:09 PM
Reply to: Message 4 by Stile
12-28-2012 11:31 AM


Re: Some good corrections
Of course, on their own webpage this is what they say...
Sure, but if I may - they don't say that they are farmers, they say that they're about farmers.
And that's certainly fair - the things they sell are for farmers. But what they sell is primarily chemicals and traits; the chemicals they sell directly to farmers and the traits they sell to seed breeders who sell seeds to farmers.
It wouldn't be wrong to say that they're "in the food business", I guess, but they don't sell any food. They don't farm, except for their research. The crops they rear are destroyed after harvest and analysis.
I mean, part of GMing a seed is to get it to grow better.
Sure. Resistance to insect damage is their big thing; the Bt toxin they put in corn, etc. It's a little-known fact that glyphosate resistance - which was their first really successful biotechnology, aka "Roundup-Ready" - is actually something they got by selective breeding, at least in soy, not by genetic engineering.
But the point is that the field ecosystem isn't one where plants compete with each other in the traditional evolutionary sense. It's one where a farmer decides which plants get to grow there. If there's competition, the competition is to be the plant the farmer decides to grow there with the result that in Mexico, where maize is weeded by hand, teosinte (a grassy weed which maize evolved out of and a common weed of maize) has developed to grow in rows and look like maize.
Then the seeds establish themselves in the other farmer's crop.
Sure. And then the part that Monsanto is worried about is the part where - as frequently happens - farmers apply a little bit of Roundup to their crops to see which ones have the resistance trait, collect seeds from them, and use those seeds to plant an entire field of next year's crop - thereby getting access to the economically-valuable Roundup-Ready trait without having to pay Monsanto's license fees.
It's like making bootleg copies of Microsoft Office from a single copy that you found in the street. The fact that you obtained the original by "accident", the court found, didn't mean that you could circumvent the terms of the end-user license agreement. I think people intuitively understand that to be the case, and would side with Monsanto provided that the farmer's action was determined to be deliberate (which the application of Roundup to the field as though he knew the crops would be Roundup-Ready does) and not accidental. But remember, you can lose copyright if you don't enforce it, so Monsanto has to pursue the marginal cases as well.
I am, however, against anyone having a monopoly on food while also not caring about testing to see if their food is safe for human consumption.
They were tested. The EPA regulates GM crops, and they aren't approved for sale until they're GRAS - "generally regarded as safe." Recall, though, that you can't actually prove that something is safe - that's akin to proving a negative - you can only fail to demonstrate harm. GM crops have been in our foodstream now for over 40 years with not even a single incident or negative health outcome connected to them. Asking that "they be proven as safe" is, as Monsanto says, asking an impossible standard that we don't require of other products (like organics.)
I think that Monanto's monopoly on the crops is getting too big, and they're using their "good sentiment" in order to do harm to healthy businesses.
They don't have a monopoly on crops. If you want to grow corn or soy, you can do it with seeds from anybody. You can have a seed breeder retrieve decades-old germlines from a germplasm bank and, in about a season or two, have enough seed to plant all your fields. There's a thousand seed breeders across the country that will produce hybrid planting seed combining traits from any two or four lines you care to specify, from anybody, including the big four or five companies in "Big Agra." It's an enormous open market for seed.
Do you have any input on how to do it "right"?
I'm not yet convinced that I see any problems with how these licenses are working out right now. What's currently "wrong" about it, in your view? When Monsanto sues a farmer, people have this image of a bunch of guys in suits coming down on the bucolic ol' Brown Farm, but people seem to forget that Farmer Brown is running a multi-million-dollar-a-year business with vast assets in machinery and real estate, plus hundreds of thousands of dollars in free subsidies from his state and Federal governments. It's just two businesses resolving a contract in the courts, as far as I'm concerned.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 4 by Stile, posted 12-28-2012 11:31 AM Stile has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 9 by Stile, posted 12-28-2012 12:59 PM crashfrog has replied

  
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 8 of 46 (685982)
12-28-2012 12:26 PM
Reply to: Message 7 by Jon
12-28-2012 12:17 PM


Would the farmer's case have been as valid if his stallions had escaped from their stable and ran around knocking up mares on other farms?
I think it would have, yes. That something falls into your lap "by accident" (and suppose, instead, that the second farmer had simply made a hole in the fence between their properties, and then benefitted when the stallion came over to impregnate the mares in heat) doesn't mean that whatever license agreement its sold under ceases to apply to you. The fact that you've voluntarily nominated yourself as an end-user is what causes the end user license agreement to apply to you.
Simply having some of your neighbor's Roundup-Ready canola on your farm doesn't attach the EULA to you, but the part where you collect that canola, separate it out from your other canola, and then plant it (and only it) next season so that you can use Roundup on your canola (which you then do) does cause the EULA to apply to you. And that's what's been happening. The supposed cases where Monsanto is just suing people who happen to have a few Roundup-Ready plants on their farms are largely made up or being misrepresented (by the farmers, usually, who like any businessmen are trying to market their side of the case in the most advantageous light), and again Monsanto has to pursue even the marginal cases - where it's maybe not clear if the farmer knows he's taking advantage of Roundup-Ready traits - or else they risk losing their rights on the basis of nonenforcement. Maybe that's a problem with the law, I don't know; but actually I think rights holders should lose their rights if they opt not to enforce them, those rights should return to the public.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 7 by Jon, posted 12-28-2012 12:17 PM Jon has not replied

  
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 12 of 46 (685990)
12-28-2012 1:18 PM
Reply to: Message 9 by Stile
12-28-2012 12:59 PM


Re: Trying Again
Maybe I'm just worried about anybody having the ability to control "over 90%" of food that's made from corn or soybeans.
That's worth worrying about, I guess, but I don't think they have that. I don't think they could have it. Seed breeding is by definition a local industry. When people say "farmers buy seeds from Monsanto" they're collapsing several levels of the actual process - Monsanto sells traits to local seed breeders in the form of true-breeding P1's, which breeders cross to make F1 hybrids, and that's what they sell to farmers. Farmers plant the F1's, which "self", self-pollinate, producing F2 seeds which are the actual marketable grain.
Therefore, the weed killer's "active ingredient" can be increased in order to pretty much wipe out everything else, while the crop itself remains alive.
Sure. Overall, the result is using less pesticide because you can burn down all your weeds in one go, instead of having to progressively weaken the weeds with repeated applications at low enough concentrations to avoid burning your crop.
Herbicides are the number one must expensive input into the crop system. Farmers are businessmen. They wouldn't want Roundup-Ready crops unless they could save money on expensive pesticides by planting them. And they do. Glyphosate resistance in crops helps the environment (less pollution) and helps farmers. That, frankly, is why farmers try to steal glyphosate resistance.
How practical would it be for the people to stop eating Monsanto GM corn products, and switch to something else until Monsanto can correct the problems with it's product?
I don't know how long it would take GM corn to pass out of the food stream, or how long it would take to recall and destroy all products that have GM corn, but the USDA does keep track of that kind of thing now - when you hear about a recall affecting a million jars of peanut butter, for instance, it's because they can track anindividual crop of peanuts through the food stream, through every machine that it was processed in, every pallet-load of peanut butter that was produced by those machines, and so on. Everything that could possibly be contaminated by direct or transitive contact with one crop of peanuts that may have been contaminated with Salmonella.
How long would it take farmers to switch? One season. They'd just plant the next season with different seeds. Easy.
That is, does the same company generally work on a GM crop as well as a weed-killer at the same time, and sell them together... is that just how it works?
Offhand, I don't know if anybody else has been able to capture the "lightning in a bottle" in regards to Roundup and Roundup-Ready. Technically glyphosate isn't even patented anymore, anybody can make and produce it, but the corresponding resistance trait is still belongs to Monsanto. Pest resistance traits are what everybody's working on now, for the most part, particularly root-level pests because you can't really spray anything for those (since they're underground.)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 9 by Stile, posted 12-28-2012 12:59 PM Stile has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 13 by Stile, posted 12-28-2012 2:06 PM crashfrog has replied

  
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 14 of 46 (686010)
12-28-2012 2:25 PM
Reply to: Message 13 by Stile
12-28-2012 2:06 PM


Re: Peanutbutter and Cheese
This procedure ensures that the highly-important process is kept up to government standards, regardless of how much the company may want to change it for any reason. (In Canada, anyway... but I'm assuming the US would have something similar).
That's really interesting. I don't know if we do it that way. One would hope, though.
Those different seeds would have to come from somewhere, right?
They come from seed breeders. Seed breeders keep stocks of seed.
Do you know of some stockpile of non-Monsanto seeds that is kept for just such an occurrance?
Your local seed breeder keeps a "stockpile" of non-Monsanto seeds for the farmers who want to buy seed with traits that Monsanto doesn't offer, in the same way that Best Buy keeps a "stockpile" of non-Apple computers for people who want to buy a computer that Apple doesn't make.
If they do, indeed, control 90% of the crops... then it would be reasonable to suggest that from the seeds prepared for next year would be about 90% Monsanto seeds.
No, that doesn't make any sense at all. The seeds for each season's planting don't come from the previous season's crop. It hasn't worked like that in sixty years. Farmers buy their seeds from seed breeders, because they want to plant F1 seeds to grow F1 crops. F1 crops produce F2 seeds. F2 crops grown from F2 seeds would have wildly inconsistent traits because for each individual trait a quarter of the crops would be homozygous dominant, a quarter would be homozygous recessive, and the rest would be heterozygous. You know, like you learned in high school. Do the Purnett square, you'll see.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 13 by Stile, posted 12-28-2012 2:06 PM Stile has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 15 by Stile, posted 12-28-2012 2:59 PM crashfrog has replied

  
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 16 of 46 (686029)
12-28-2012 3:07 PM
Reply to: Message 15 by Stile
12-28-2012 2:59 PM


Re: Seed Breeding
So... these seed breeders, how fast can they supply a demand?
Well, they generally supply most of the farmers in their area with seed for every season. Seeds can be stored for years so they have stock enough for whatever they perceive their business need to be. If suddenly they had to produce all new seeds for the regions farmers, it would take them a season to do it, because they produce the seed by planting it, rearing the crop, and then harvesting it.
So, how do seed breeders produce seeds?
Well, they buy P1 seeds from trait producers, or they have their own P1 generations they keep going. P1 generations breed true - they're not hybrids, that's the point - so you can keep those going generation after generation without much issue. Then, to produce hybrids, they cross P1 with another P1, to produce hybrid F1 seeds. These are what they sell to farmers, sometimes after "treatment" where the seed is coated in some pre-emergence pesticide to discourage loss from soil-dwelling insects.
It's just breeding. The purpose of hybridization is to exploit heterosis, or "hybrid vigor", the phenomenon of organisms crossed from two pure-bred lines to be "better" than either parent.
If you're just breeding seeds, is the cycle reduced to, like... a month? a week?
Well, it depends where you live and what crop we're talking about. Getting in two seasons of wheat or corn in a year isn't unheard of throughout much of the midwest. Depends on the weather, basically. Water is usually the limiting factor.
I tried to google these questions... but just ended up with a bunch of marijuana seed breeding hits...
Visit your local university extension office. That's what they're for. They'll have a ton of literature about farm practices. Farmers aren't born knowing all this, that's what the extension office is for.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 15 by Stile, posted 12-28-2012 2:59 PM Stile has seen this message but not replied

  
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 17 of 46 (686784)
01-03-2013 10:09 PM


Somewhat apropos
quote:
If you fear genetically modified food, you may have Mark Lynas to thank. By his own reckoning, British environmentalist helped spur the anti-GMO movement in the mid-‘90s, arguing as recently at 2008 that big corporations’ selfish greed would threaten the health of both people and the Earth. Thanks to the efforts of Lynas and people like him, governments around the worldespecially in Western Europe, Asia, and Africahave hobbled GM research, and NGOs like Greenpeace have spurned donations of genetically modified foods.
But Lynas has changed his mindand he’s not being quiet about it. On Thursday at the Oxford Farming Conference, Lynas delivered a blunt address: He got GMOs wrong.
http://www.slate.com/...pposed_gmos_admits_he_was_wrong.html

Replies to this message:
 Message 19 by ramoss, posted 01-04-2013 1:36 AM crashfrog has not replied

  
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