Monsanto Attacks Scientists After Studies Show Trouble for Its New Weedkiller
npr.org
npr.org
http://www.npr.org/search/index.php?searchinput=dicamba
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/10/13/557607443/wit...
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/10/07/555872494/a-w...
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/07/06/535669282/dam...
http://www.npr.org/2017/06/14/532879755/a-pesticide-a-pigwee...
It's not surprising that Monsanto would try use their widespread influence to stop research on their product.
Monsanto has claimed that the issue with Dicamba drifting and killing crops in fields that it wasn't applied to was the fault of the farmers mis-application of Dicamba. Evidence now shows that Dicamba will evaporate from the soil _after_ being applied to crops safely, meaning that it cannot be prevented from drifting into other fields and killing innocent farmer's crops.
This is a _huge_ issue for Monsanto. There was an estimated 3 million acres of damage to non-dicamba resistant crops last year. Right now Monsanto is claiming that 88% of the crop damage was caused by improper application (wrong nozzles, spraying to close to other crops, etc.), but the evaporation tests could throw a wrench in that claim. The current Dicamba formula is not supposed to evaporate, so if it does then Monsanto could be on the hook for a lot more damage than previously thought.
Even if they are sued and lose, the fine will most likely be a percentage point of their operating profits.
Essentially the drift is a positive for them. Neighboring crop fields are damaged. The farmers cannot afford to sue Monsanto or fear doing so, and their only recourse is to switch over to Monsanto branded seeds next season.
Another interesting tactic is that if you plant a Monsanto crop for a season, you are not allowed to use any seeds generated by that crop to plant the next season, you have to purchase new seeds every season. [Edit: This next point was debunked] In addition if any seeds blow onto a neighbors farm and those seeds grow, that farmer can and will be sued by Monsanto for growing their IP.
> So why is this a myth? It's certainly true that Monsanto has been going after farmers whom the company suspects of using GMO seeds without paying royalties. And there are plenty of cases — including Schmeiser's — in which the company has overreached, engaged in raw intimidation, and made accusations that turned out not to be backed up by evidence.
> But as far as I can tell, Monsanto has never sued anybody over trace amounts of GMOs that were introduced into fields simply through cross-pollination.
Another source [1] says, "its report, called Seed Giants vs US Farmers, the CFS said it had tracked numerous law suits that Monsanto had brought against farmers and found some 142 patent infringement suits against 410 farmers and 56 small businesses in more than 27 states."
I wonder how judiciously the NPR reporter reviewed these 142 patent infringement suits to discern whether none concerned small amounts of cross-contamination. Color me skeptical.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/12/monsanto... (2013)
[2] Primary source: https://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/files/seed-giants_final_...
The case was thrown as it was ruled as Monsanto stated that they didn't intend to sue if you had trace amount of contamination.
https://www.biofortified.org/2015/12/lawsuits-for-inadverten...
I'm not sure how I feel about that. There's lots of potential for biopatents to be harmful but there is also a pretty huge gray area.
https://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2012/Online_Resou...
3 million is still pretty big.
Don't get me wrong. This is a problem. This is not okay.
It's just this isn't quite Set The World Ablaze And Panic level bad. Is mostly just annoying. Of those three million acres, they were 'damaged' which is different than 'destroyed.' I suspect we will still have plenty of HFCS and ethanol.
The new "low volatility" versions of dicamba didn't stay where they belonged. They drifted into nearby fields, damaging crops there — mostly soybeans, but also vegetables and orchards.
There are scientific proof, clear documented $$$ damage, etc.
Any idea why it has not initiated yet?
Let's say you sue for an entire year's worth of crops and you win. Then you win the appeal. And you win the appeal of the appeal. All the way up the chain. For 10 years, you win on every level.
But you never plant another crop and you go out of business. At this point, Monsanto owns the world of agriculture. If you are planting something that is not owned by Monsanto, you are losing. Monsanta-engineered crops have such a higher yield that to plant anything else would wipe out your profit margin. The higher yield is magnified by the fact that non-Monsanto crops planted anywhere near Monsanto crops are dying from Monsanto herbicides.
It's simple math. No farmer can survive 10 years of losses due to inferior production. The giants like ADP won't go after Monsanto because they have not been affected. They are already using Monsanto seed. Young independents won't go after Monsanto because the only way they can compete against the ADPs is to use Monsanto.
So you have a few handfuls of old farmers who are ready to retire and have no family who want to carry on. They are going to sell out to some cookie-cutter subdivision developer anyway, so maybe they could be enticed into an otherwise suicidal court case. Or maybe they don't have the energy for it.
Those who win (iffy at best) will not win a real windfall. No court is going to give Monsanto a death sentence. And the farmers will have a hardtime arguing too much harm when they still got 50% of their crop harvested and made $millions$ by selling the land. Mansanto can absorb a million dollar settlement here and there.
If I'm Monsanto, I'm not worried.
If I'm a no-holds-barred in-it-for-the-buck securities advisor, I'd say "buy Monsanto." I might also say, "short Whole Foods" because their supply is dwindling and their prices have to go up. If I'm a save-the-world stop-injustice activist, I'm looking for new sources of significant capital to stem the tide. And I'll keep fighting on because it was a dim prospect from the beginning anyway.
There are many more than 1,000 separate seed companies that supply the many types of commercial seeds globally, and hundreds of seed companies that sell corn and soybean seed to American farmers. In fact, aggregate commercial sales by all seed companies account for only about 40 percent of the total volume of seeds used globally in 2014 (not sure of the last seasons). Of those commercial seed sales, roughly 2/3 of the seed volume comes from private breeding programs and significantly 1/3 comes from national or public institutions.
The remaining non-commercial seed volume is seed saved and replanted by farmers. Monsanto participates in only a few crops, with the two largest being corn and soybeans. While Monsanto is one of the largest commercial seed companies, even in those crops their output probably accounts for less than one-third of global commercial volume.
Therefore, if a farmer wants to plant seed from someone other than Monsanto, it’s very easy to do that. People use Monsanto products because of the genetics/profitability not out of intimidation or fear.
> While Monsanto is one of the largest commercial seed companies, even in those crops their output probably accounts for less than one-third of global commercial volume.
These are very specific quantitative statements. Can you provide your sources? it seems like whatever this is from is overall very interesting to read.
Herein lies the beauty of a class action suit. Let the lawyers finance and worry about the lawsuit while you go on your merry way running your farm.
I don't think it's an option to consider alternatives in this case.
If Monsanto think they can stop selling you their wares because they don't like you they should be dissolved today.
I would have read it as a typo, but they did use it twice.
There are many other examples. Often, they are mixed with sentimentalism or sensationalism (and these examples might be, too-- they're the result of 5 seconds of Googling). But beneath the ones I've read/watched, there's clearly some truth.
[0] https://modernfarmer.com/2015/09/seeding-fear-the-story-of-a... [1] https://www.rt.com/news/206787-monsanto-india-farmers-suicid...
Monsanto is a modern day Mafia cartel, it's insane.
This is not true. This NPR article, written by the same author as top link, was already linked above: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/10/18/163034053/top...
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/10/18/163034053/top...
But as a footnote, the sibling comment here happens to also be correct: like any truly effective propaganda outlet, RT leverages a mix of largely legitimate / mundane news along with a certain proportion of fake or distorted news. But for the sake of simplicity it's best to stop citing RT or feeding it attention of any other form, altogether.
This whistleblower guy at the University of Missouri, his career is over. Monsanto will see to that through either withdrawing its funding to their research programs, or by funding them even more, with the quid-pro-quo that this guy is fired for some unrelated reason, like phony performance reviews, or perhaps allegations of him sleeping with a student.
Hire extremely attractive men and women to go to farms and sell some 'Santo Seed.
According to one of the side bars, disputes between farmers have already led to one death.
https://www.dtnpf.com/agriculture/web/ag/news/article/2016/1...
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/rough/2005/07/seeds_of_sui...
The suicide rate among Indian farmers is 1.4 to 1.8 per 100,000. That is about 5-6 times lower than the overall rate in India or the United States. Most people pushing the story are relying on the fact that there are a lot of farmers in India, so even a low suicide rate is a lot of people dying.
We should, of course, be concerned whenever people are choosing to commit suicide, but it is nonsensical to point to a population with one of the lowest suicide rates (less than 1/10th the overall Japanese rate!) and call it an epidemic.
Since you're into stats, what do you think of this graph?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bt_Cotton_Hectares_and_Fa...
Point being, the story people "pushing" isn't about the overall rate of farmer suicides in the world's second most populous country - but about the rates in specific regions, and how those rates have changed in recent years, in response to specific events.
It's a rather small time-frame to draw conclusions from (especially since we should have 10 more years of data), but the obvious one you would draw from this graph is that Bt cotton is associated with fewer suicides, and the bump in 2004 was likely unrelated to the introduction of Bt cotton.
Is that, uh, what you thought it showed?
Thanks, Alexa. I actually didn't look much at the graph, one way or another. My point was simply that in a country as large as India (or even not nearly as large), one should be looking at at local rates (and local factors of potential causality) not simply national averages, if ones wants to make heads or tails of a complex set of claims like these.
Your conclusion ("was likely unrelated") differs with what the authors of that study put forth in their abstract, BTW.
It's been awhile since I've read in depth on this subject, but I believe when the authors say in the abstract "Nevertheless, in specific districts and years, Bt cotton may have indirectly contributed to farmer indebtedness, leading to suicides, but its failure was mainly the result of the context or environment in which it was planted.", they're referring to analysis showing that the suicides mainly correlated with regions where the banking infrastructure was under-developed (and good loans were not available to the farmers, to help them through rough times) that were subsequently hit with a bad year; within those regions, farmers who had planted Bt cotton were slightly worse off than farmers who hadn't, but it was a weaker correlation than the rest.
(But again, it's been years since I read in depth on this, and I could be confusing this paper with another.)
The point is, that if you watch the documentary (and if you actually believe it ((jury is out))) that the farmers were committing more suicide after the intro of Monsanto products REDUCED their yields and they fell into even more poverty as they couldn't pay the Monsanto tax - and thus fell into despair and killed themselves.
IIRC.
You forgot to add the end of that sentence. It goes, "... and you'll find, in amazement, that farmer suicides went down in line with the introduction of GMO crops".
This tends to be quite contrary to a commonly held view.
the data could get skewed to fit that narrative if you dont have a control group, no?
how validate
and also, note, im not trying to push the narrative - just relaying what i saw, which obviously has a narrative
I've lived among large production farm, much of my life. The application of spray products (keyword: sprayers that produce mists of liquid products) are easily caught and carried by the lightest winds.
Dicamba does not "evaporate" in any appreciable amount. It is highly soluble in water and has a melting point 237-241 degrees F.... The water would evaporate, leaving the chemical behind.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/10/13/557607443/wit...
Bob Scott, a weed scientist at the University of Arkansas, recently showed me some experiments that he and his colleagues conducted. They sprayed trays of soil with dicamba, then placed those trays in a field of soybeans far from any dicamba spraying. The soybean plants next to the dicamba-treated soil showed clear signs of exposure to the chemical.
"We had a lot of volatility in these trials, a lot of movement" in unpredictable directions, Scott says. It wasn't what they were hoping to see, Scott says, but the results "do help explain why we had 966 complaints in our state."
The evidence is the study in which they applied Dicamba as directed to waterproof trays of dirt in one field. They then trucked the trays of dirt to another field, and laid them between rows of non-resistant crops. The crops died, showing that the Dicamba in the trays must have affected the crops.
Water has a melting point of 212F. Nonetheless, it evaporates, and does not all stay behind.
Some volatile chemicals--such as the acetone in nail polish remover--are detectable as odors even when their temperature is well below their boiling point. This is the liquid phase establishing an equilibrium with the gas phase at that temperature. The most energetic molecules in the liquid escape into the gas (cooling the liquid in the process).
Imagine a lake in a desert. The maximum daytime temperature in that desert is 40 degC, well below the boiling point of 100 degC. The lake has no outflows. Over the course of a month, the lake disappears. Where did the water go? It evaporated, and the water in the gas phase blew away and was replaced by dry air, thus allowing more of the liquid water to evaporate. If you put an airtight dome over it, the lake would stay put, and the air in the dome would get very humid. You would probably also be able to see condensation on its walls, as the vapor movement continuously transfers heat from the lake to the dome.
The dicamba is likely evaporating from the soil into air with no gaseous dicamba in it, blowing to adjacent fields, and the plants are uptaking it as a gas via their normal respiration. No condensation is required, for the same reason that plants don't eat dry ice to get their CO2. Once inside the plant, the vapor dicamba is free to dissolve into the plant's own water. It is not necessary for it to dissolve in water outside the plant to be taken up by the roots. Those plant cells might not have a lot of water in them, or they might be filled to bursting with it. Plants have to deal with deluge and drought differently than we animals do.
The questions everyone have to ask are what concentration of dicamba is damaging to the plant, and what is the exact relationship between wind, distance, ambient moisture, and concentration? By calculating from the vapor pressure vs temperature of the chemical, and solubility, you should be able to draw a plume-shaped area on a map that shows where dicamba-vulnerable plants will die after an application. If plants outside that area die, something in your model is wrong. And people are claiming that plants outside the area are dying. What part of the model is wrong? Based on the article, it seems like the volatility is off.
Why do you think the melting point matters? Camphor has a melting point of ~350F and still has sufficient vapor pressure to serve as an insect repellent.
There's about 40 years of research on dicamba's volatilization problems.
The reason we use pesticides and weed killers is mainly to reduce the labor input. Once we have cheap, non-fossil-fueled agricultural robots, then a large percentage of our food plant production can be cheap and, by today's standards, "organic" (perhaps better since organic farms can use different pesticides).
I spent some time kicking around an ag robot startup idea. Farmers have low margins and tend to be conservative, but the successful ones† are all spreadsheet jockeys who are much more comfortable than those in other sectors to swap op ex for cap ex. And in the usual B2B the killer ROI is within a year. In Ag it's within 10 years. Not an easy market technically but on the business side pretty straighforward.
It's not a panacea; not all pests are amenable to mechanical (hand or machine) removal (e.g. phylloxera) and the Haber-Bosch process will still be important, but a HUGE reduction in chemical application is very likely. And with robots, no-till and other soil-saving processes can become economically valuable in the short term (NT has always been valuable in the long term, but people don't live/think on that time scale).
† which is all of them today in the US, and to a great degree in Europe; the unsuccessful ones were long since bought out
What you say is not incompatible with my assertion. Labor is a productivity-increasing tool. If you weed and prune your yield goes up. If you water (but not too much) yield goes up. If you remove pests, yield goes up. Etc. Those are all labor-intensive, so if it's cheaper to use a machine or chemical to do it, you do. And in fact robots are likely to be able to individually water plants more efficiently than either a human or a standard irrigation system. Which people will do if it is cheaper than current irrigation (flood, or drip primarily today, depending on crop and conditions).
Sure, I believe fertilizers will still be needed and some other chemicals as well. But many of these pesticides and herbicides have "unfortunate" side effects (e.g. destruction of the rhizome) which also reduce productivity so avoiding them has a double benefit.
And note that there is some evidence that artificial fertilization and overwatering may be reducing the nutritional value of grasses (think of it as "the same number of nutrients divided by a larger amount of plant matter". The mechanism, if real, is more complex, but that's an analogy).
‡ I don't mean productivity in the macroeconomic definition of "economic output per labor hour" but in the sense you used it: "economic output per unit area"
we will still use pesticides and weed killers when fully automated harvesting/tending is a thing to still protect yield.
what will ostensibly (and monsanto has been actively doing this - SPECIFICALLY with their Roundup-immune plants) is to engineer plants that can thrive with their yields when doused in poison.
And this is the problem with Monsanto - "fuck the cancer the humans will get - make sure that corn plant is like octomom!"
GMOs are GMOs not because they add to nutrition and health of humans. They are GMOs because they add greater yield to the profits.
Then you GMO the patented seed market and then you control the entirety of humanity.
Three things humans need:
Food, water, energy.
Monsanto, Nestle, Exxon.
They literally are seeking to control those respective areas - and thus, humanity.
>we will still use pesticides and weed killers when fully automated harvesting/tending is a thing to still protect yield.
I think you might misunderstand how agriculture works.
For thousands of years people manually pruned, watered and removed animal and vegetable pests from plants. The use of chemical pesticides (against bugs etc) and herbicides (against nonproductive plants that consume resources i.e. weeds) reduced the labor input immensely and increased yield both of which increased the total economic value.
The best way to think of a modern farm is as a factory; the manager is always looking at ways of reducing inputs. Nobody uses these chemicals for fun.
Also because then we're one closer to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_(1984_film) becoming fact.
Glyphosate was an awesome herbicide and Roundup Ready crops a big hit, but between the expiration of patents and the introduction of generic glyphosate-resistant crops and the increase in glyphosate-resistant weeds, it's losing its value, both to the company and to the consumers. So they need another hit.
And like a million tech companies before them, they took an uninspired rehash of their first hit, ignored feedback from early adopters and internal dogfood about glaring problems with the new product and are trying to push it as the second coming. And now they're lashing out at anyone who says it isn't, and insist their new product is as revolutionary as their first.
Only, you know, it's not bloggers and tech journalists they're mad at, it is farmers and scientists.
It's almost funny when it happens to someone else.
I'll be interested to see how HN responds to this.
On the one hand, by and large we're probably pretty friendly to the sort of hacking Monsanto wants to do. Not that we're all on board with GMO crops, but I'd say we collectively lean that way.
On the other probably stronger hand, independent scientists should win out over corporations with this crowd. I mean, there's an awful lot of corporate love here, but science trumps all, right?
Then there are the paid shills, and those who show up to remind us all that there are the paid shills.
Instead, we’ve got a lousy product being sold by a large multinational that’s trying to suppress the evidence of the awfulness of its product.
So yeah, they deserve to be sued into the ground, but it doesn’t move the needle one jot on what I think about GM in general.
So, the GM application is mainly pesticide resistance, and the subsequent shitty pesticides they use which kill everything that hasn't been modified. The use of these pesticides is because they are growing GM crops.
Secondly, GM opposition is a very odd thing. Every carton of milk I buy has a little sticker that it comes from non-GM cows, Every one of those stickers is a lie. We have selectively bred cattle for hundreds of years to build the modern dairy cow with specific genetics. It's been very scientifically done for a long time.
Third, the real issue here is not GM. It is IP. (I know Stallman would bristle at generically lumping it all under IP). But this new idea that one party can own a seed and just license it to others for planting is crazy. The idea that they can contaminate other crops and then claim ownership of those crops, too? Crazy.
Genetic Manipulation is a form of breeding, but not all kinds of breeding fall under genetic manipulation. Genetic manipulation allows you to do things you cannot do with other breeding techniques such as horizontal gene transfer. You cannot produce medicine by breeding tobacco, but you can do with genetic manipulation (which is also being done).
I don't think it is a good idea to conflate selective breeding programs with gene splicing as they are very different.
Yeah, we have a lot more specific control and selectivity with gene splicing than selective breeding.
Also, the idea that seed patenting is new is ludicrous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_Patent_Act_of_1930 Also the wind-contamination and lawsuit bullshit is a lie and clearly demonstrates that you don't have a fucking clue what you're talking about.
If people just grew the GM crops, there wouldn't be a problem, but it's the use of the accompanying pesticide that is destroying innocent crops.
If they didn't use the herbicide, they wouldn't want the GM crops.
Why? This has no bearing on the validity or existence of claimed Monsanto research.
Then, they did not allow independent testing of the modified herbicide before making it commercially available.
This is for vegetables and row crops, rather than field crops. It's been used on cotton and lettuce so far. For lettuce, it's weeding as a service. They bring in the machines and do the job at a flat fee per acre. They're doing 35,000 acres in California and Arizona now. This isn't experimental. It's out there working in fields.
Bosch has a similar product. Blue River kills with a spray. Bosch either pounds the weed into the ground or zaps it with a laser.
>> Blue River kills with a spray.
But with Monsanto at the helm (or at least most frequently associated), their unethical business practices shine a bad light on GMOs as an entire field. It's a shame that the forerunner in this extremely important area could not act as more of a positive envoy on behalf of GM technology.
The amount of FUD and science denying rhetoric that Greenpeace directed at Golden Rice or any public backed GM effort is basically reminded me of the press releases from climate change denying groups. Whats also hypocritical of Greenpeace is that they are fine with mutation based on radioactivity (that has been practiced since the early 20th century and where we get a lot of our varieties from today)
[1] https://source.wustl.edu/2016/06/genetically-modified-golden...
Its true that we can also combat VAD with supplements, but shouldn't we have multiple strategies to combat it?
Regarding the article, who is to decide when we should abandon an approach? You could apply the same argument to Organic Food. After 30 years, it still only accounts for more or less 1% of global food production, and there is evidence that its not necessarily more environmentally friendly than conventional agriculture. By that logic we should also abandon it.
http://www.thedailystar.net/frontpage/vitamin-rice-now-reali... https://ourworldindata.org/is-organic-agriculture-better-for...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-07-13/does-the-...
This reminds me of the campaign against Rachel Carson.
https://www.reddit.com/r/law/comments/78o0zy/a_release_of_in... It was in this thread but the comments are now deleted.
The sad part is all the "scientists" who take money from them to do "research" and, shockingly, find only positive things about Monsanto's products.
At least that's how drug companies have systematically biased studies in favor of their products without needing to find amoral shill scientists. The way to prevent it is trial pre-registration, so that all trials are known about, not just the ones that turn out favorable after completion.
Is this not required? I am required to pre-register my clinical trials well in advance, and they are publicly searchable worldwide.
Broadly applicable
[0]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-monsanto-m-a-bayer-eu/eu-...
For agriculture, weeds can be a fierce problem. On small gardens it's possible to use various tactics to control weeds without chemicals. But on large farms, usually a variety of tactics need to be used to control weeds, and chemicals end up being the simplest and quickest. But they are certainly not required. Here is one list of non-chemical weeding options: https://thefanningmill.com/2015/05/27/infographic-weed-contr...
Really I think we should be having a conversation about whether the risks of chemical weeding are worth the benefit, which is primarily just an economic one from agricultural exports. We can easily provide for our nation's agro needs without dangerous weeding techniques, and at about half to a quarter of the current amount we produce.
On top of this, our diets in general are hampered by the crazy way we consume specific foods. We let "consumer demand" drive what crops are grown and brought to market, even though it's been shown that consumers often demand things that are bad for them, or are overly picky. We consume too much food in general, but consuming less would hurt the economy, even if it would make us healthier and reduce healthcare costs. And we give up the option of purchasing from small local farms in order to get more food for less money. Not to mention the fact that processed foods are still in high demand, as well as meats which place burdens on both agriculture and environment.
Weedkiller seems like a good place to start this conversation. Do we need weedkiller? Do we need such gigantic amounts of just a few crops? Do we need giant farms owned by a few companies? Do we really need to eat oranges year round? And should we really be letting vendors [whose primary objective is profit, not health or choice] control what foods we are given the option to eat?
Overall though I agree with you - it's said that the British were never as healthy as under rationing. We don't need anywhere near as much as we produce, and would all look and feel better eating less. And less cash going to Monsanto - who IMHO seem to be a truly sinister outfit - would be a welcome side benefit.
Dousing fields with glyphosate and dicamba has more to do with maintaining the dense crop monocultures we use in industrial agriculture than feeding the poor.
Meanwhile in Europe, countries are considering signing free trade agreements with Canada and US (CETA and TTIP). How would anyone in their right mind want to open up the door to allowing companies to sue governments? (if you wonder, this is part of these trade deals and the kind of attitude Monsanto is putting here is exactly what they could reproduce once their products are "threatened by regulations")
Yet, only the far left are fighting this in bigger European countries. I'm not sure people grasp the implications! I'm not politically aligned with the far left but this is clearly a loss of sovereignty against the power or money. Kind of gets me wondering what the point of voting would become...
Ok, maybe I'm a little left leaning (in European terms that is)
German: https://archive.org/details/WE_FEED_THE_WORLD_DEUTSCH
Sadly I could not find a link to the english stream, but here is a link to the english version of the website: http://www.we-feed-the-world.at/en/index.htm
it's just not as profitable in the US compared to corn or soybeans and therefore it is destroyed and considered a pest.
that's really sad if you ask me, because they undergoe such troubles to kill a field crop. why not just embrace it and farm it??
Nobody will plant something they can't sell.
it's a healthy nutritious crop, regarded as food in other countries and the palmer amaranth especially is very drought resistant and resilient.
but because soy and corn is more profitable in the US they undergoe so much trouble to kill what would otherwise considered to be a perfect choice of crop.
I've been telling HN about this, and mostly derided for it. I was working as a sysadmin for a bigag company in 2010 or so, who touted themselves as good ol local farm people who take care of their own. Come to find out, the millions the owner got to fund his extravagant lifestyle (besides from daddy), was from selling some of the genetic modifications to Monsanto. I was in the middle of my Decartes reset after getting back from Iraq, and dug into Monsanto.
Monsanto is one of the worst companies in America. As a constitutionalist, my primary issue is with their blatant undermining and corruption of the legal process, for example a SCOTUS who formerly worked for them refusing to recuse himself from relevant cases, infiltration and takeover of the top positions at the FDA and other regulatory capture issues, and the stifling of free speech through their massive propaganda machine, which includes online.
As a military person, I came to find out they were the ones who had been responsible for agent orange in Vietnam. Something many of my friends and family have directly had to deal with. (to be fair, it was a different business than the current Monsanto, the same in name only)
I learned they were one of the main sources of lobbying to allow patenting of organtic material (so they could patent genes in their gmos), that they created the BT killer strain of seeds designed to prevent farmers from saving their seeds, (incidentally Monsanto gmo seed business has been tied to large numbers of farmer suicides in India), and have brought legal action against farmers who saved their seeds. They have participated in farm mergers in aquisitions to the point that almost no farm is truly a family farm anymore, and they have been involved in illegal waste dumping more than once.
Once I learned all these things, I quit the job on principle. As luck would have it, the good ol rich guy who "would always take care of his people" subsequently, a year later, sold the company and fired half the staff... and now the local "community", despite protests from many of the farmers, decided to give Monsanto a 5.8 million dollar tax break to built a state of the art facility because it will "bring jobs".
To top it all off, our anti-trust, anti-monopoly laws seem to be completely dead and ignored, because the Bayer Monsanto $66bn merger seems to be full steam ahead at the moment.
They have created a sitution that requires more chemicals, causes more nitrogen runoff, have drastically reduced seed diversity (therefore setting up a massive crop failure potential across many crops), and continue to ignore GMO warnings.
Having sysadmined in a bigag company with a genetics department, and at a genetics company, my primary issues with GMO's is that there is a lack of rigourous scientific testing, especially over longer time frames. It wasn't uncommon to see a new GMO go from testing to prod within a year! That's not enough time to truly understand the implications of those kinds of products. Not to mention, as the article suggests, that they have artifically affected the actual science to be in their favor regardless of the real results.
If there ever is ecocide, Monsanto will be the primary hand to have caused it. I am willing to bet roundup will be the new agent orange. And finally, for your viewing pleasure:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovKw6YjqSfM
Relevant past comments:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9009446
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12893325
This can't be true, or I must be missing something. Why can't they buy these chemicals as "farmers" and test them?
The researchers interviewed by Reuters - Jason Norsworthy at the University of Arkansas, Kevin Bradley at the University of Missouri and Aaron Hager at the University of Illinois - said Monsanto provided samples of XtendiMax before it was approved by the EPA. However, the samples came with contracts that explicitly forbade volatility testing."
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-pesticides-dicamba-in...
Buying stock in Monsanto.
If you negligently spray your fields and ruin your neighbors field, you're at fault.
This kind of thing isn't new, and has little to do with GMOs. Pesticide drift has been a issue for 100 years, and GMOs actually helped relieve it by shifting farmers to less volatile chemicals.
This was doing the rounds:
https://twitter.com/GeorgeMonbiot/status/920935967082639360
and this
http://swns-digital.com/2KU4-15FL6-095I05M7FE/cr.aspx
Hi Monty
We have a story that we thought might be of interest to you, looking at plans to ban key chemicals in weed-killers.
Quick Pitch: Green-fingered Brits could soon be forced to weed their entire gardens by HAND if Brussels bureaucrats ban a chemical found in the biggest selling weed-killers, it has emerged.
More: For more than 40 years glyphosate has been the key component of weed-killers such as Round-Up, enabling keen gardeners to eradicate menaces such as knotweed, hogweed, bindweed and black grass.
But environmental activists Greenpeace and a string of anti-pesticide socialist MEPs want it banned despite it being certified as safe by numerous chemical and food safety agencies.
Experts fear a vote in favour of removing the chemical will leave gardeners to rely on less effective weed-killers, or even further down the line products which contain a fast-tracked replacement chemical.
News Copy can be downloaded from our online newswire.
Decades of faulty chemical review procedures are beginning to be overturned. Last week, after years of asking, I received an email from the EPA confirming that the National Toxicology Program is currently reviewing glyphosate and glyphosate formulations.
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/energy-environment/324...
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/michele-simon/top-10-lies-tol...
^That's the original comment you replied to. We're talking about Monsanto's history of lying and manipulation through the media.
He said no such thing. He was addressing the extremely common practice of using PR to further business.
Real astroturfing and shilling exist, but internet users also frequently imagine it. There's no way out of this hall of mirrors—discussions just die there—so we all need to have the discipline to avoid it by default.
If anyone thinks they're seeing real astroturfing on HN they should email us so we can investigate.
https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/38wl43/we_used_sock...
Imagine that.
Ironically, there is a lot of propaganda pushed by the likes of USRTK and the OCA, calling anyone including university scientists that contradict them as Monsanto shills. These groups are also anti vaccine, against water fluoridation [1] etc...
I've largely stopped arguing online, because conversations become really super polarised and sometimes nasty. Its hard to have an intelligent discussion. A good place to find info on these issues is the Food and Farm Discussion Lab
https://facebook.com/groups/FAFDL/
[0] https://www.organicconsumers.org/essays/how-mainstream-media... [1] https://www.organicconsumers.org/news/water-fluoridation-che...
The scientific consensus on GMOs being safe is stronger than consensus on climate change. If you go against the scientific consensus, you are rightly labeled as being anti-science.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-entine/post_8915_b_657213...
https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/mark-lynas/gmo-s...
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/once-again-us-expert-...
I'm meh about the genetics of GMO, its just accelerated selection. Transgenetic could be worrisome, so we should be hippocratic there.
But crops that allow us to expand into more arid, saline, or whatever areas are probably good to have. And developing perennial grains (eg kernza) sounds great.
But that's not why I oppose GMO.
--
I'm utterly opposed to "ReadyUp Ready" genetic engineering. Any effort to increase, permit the use of more pesticides (herbicides, insecticides) must be opposed. We need to reduce the use of pesticides, maybe even eventually ban all pesticides.
I'm utterly opposed to Monsanto's (and Big Ag's) business practices, especially patenting life, and secondarily turning all farmers (people who work the land) into serfs. Their GMO efforts, independent of the actual plants and biology, or just the wedge for those strategies.
I reject the pro-GMO arguments about increasing yield. We already toss 1/3 to 1/2 of the food produced. Trying to increase yields is passing over dollars to pick up pennies.
Lastly if Monsanto (and Big Ag) is for it, I'm against it. They've done so much harm, for so long, with zero contrition, I presume they're guilty. If there was some kind of truth and reconciliation tribunal, maybe, just maybe, I'd give them a second chance. And massive reparations followed by acts of goodwill.
But the burden of proof is on them, not me.
You are fighting your own best interests.
Roundup ready has reduced harmful pesticide application by millions of tons.
Yes, zero pesticide is best, but you can't reach the moon in one step. It takes incremental change. Glyphosate replaces much more harmful pesticides like atrazine, and we are all the better for it.
>especially patenting life,
You can't patent natural genetic sequences.
>and secondarily turning all farmers (people who work the land) into serfs
Contracts are willingly signed, and those that don't sign are successful in other areas of agriculture (see organic farming).
>I reject the pro-GMO arguments about increasing yield.
No GMO plant has ever directly tried to increase yield. Rather they mitigate risk from weather or pests.
>Lastly if Monsanto (and Big Ag) is for it, I'm against it.
I'm glad you're willing to approach this topic reasonably, and with an open mind.
Wise words. Big fan of incrementalism. Even though I’m currently freaked out about decline of pollinators, I’ll keep your viewpoint in mind.
If Big Ag owns this issue, and helps address it, I’ll ease up.
”...approach this topic reasonbly, and with an open mind.”
No such luck. I’m fresh out of goodwill. When Monsanto et al stop lying (being merchants of doubt), I’ll resume listening.
As my libertarian bestie teases me: the problem with you liberals is you can’t tolerate hypocracy. Guilty as charged. To my tribe, any good Monsanto does is completely negated by their (documented, proven) malfeasance.
- Terminator seeds? myth, that technology was never commercialised [0] - Suing farmers for accidental contamination? Mostly false. For example in the case of the canadian farmer, he knowingly replanted GM seeds from plants that he sprayed with roundup and ending up with 95% GM canola, breaking patent law and hence getting sued - Indian Suicide caused by GM Cotton ? Myth. Indian farmers are committing suicide but not because of GM cotton. In fact, GM cotton got approved because Indian farmers where importing it on the black market. [2]
I'm not saying Monsanto is completely blameless in everything (as the dicamba story shows), but they do provide a very easy target to demonise and blame for a lot of issues. I used to be on the anti monsanto bandwagon as you, but after looking deeper, I realised a lot of it is BS. Those stories (especially the Indian suicide one), are very compelling so I understand why a lot of people believe them wholesale. Alas, the reality is a lot more complex.
[0]https://www.biofortified.org/2015/12/gmos-and-patents-part-1... [1]https://www.biofortified.org/2015/12/lawsuits-against-farmer... [2]http://issues.org/30-2/keith/
I wish they'd just argue about sports teams.
Not that I am saying your definitely are, but looking at your post history it is easy to see how people might believe that. You barely talk about anything other than Monsanto being a positive force.
It has a chilling effect and silences the discussion.
An argument should be able to stand on its own regardless of whether an astroturf exists or not. Money doesn't change the facts, and astroturf is by definition finite. Facts, especially quantitative facts will win in the long term.
Money can make facts go unheard and/or unheeded.
>astroturf is by definition finite.
What definition says that? Astroturfing can be and is often automated
>Facts, especially quantitative facts will win in the long term
Many religions and mythologies seem to indicate otherwise
This is why it's important to respond with a factual debate only. You're actually helping them if you make more noise about other matters instead of sticking with facts.
For a time. But people get bored, tired, and distracted. Facts are permanent.
>What definition says that? Astroturfing can be and is often automated
Servers cost money. Bandwidth costs money. Admins cost money. Businesses aren't going to fund astroturfing indefinitely. Even in the most extreme circumstances, like the climate change debate, the truth still dominates.
>Many religions and mythologies seem to indicate otherwise
You're right. Thats why modern science believes in creation, and the geocentric model. Clearly religion and mythology won out.
-If the truth dominates in the climate change debate, why is it still being debated while the problem continues to get worse?
-It remains that the majority of people on the planet have a religious faith, and those beliefs continue to affect government/state policy (i.e. bans on stem cell research, birth control etc) as it has for thousands of years
All carefully calculated to get you to buy their overpriced luxury product!
Look, people disagree about things. Get over it.
Occam's razor. What is more likely :
A. This normal person on the internet disagrees with me.
B. There is a multinational conspiracy to control the narrative on topic X and in reality everyone universally agrees with me that topic X is a bad thing.
How about
B. Huge conglomerate with huge advertising budget uses some of that money on new innovative grass-roots advertising strategy (which is not illegal and can be very effective especially compared to online ads).
— Upton Sinclair
America circa 2018 everyone.
- There are over 1,200 active chemically distinct pesticide active-ingredients
- For every pesticide registered for use there are at least as many that have been pulled from use ("deregistered"). There is no official record for which of these 1000+ chemicals have been deregistered for health reasons.
I wish there was more discussion about the impact of these herbicides on insect populations. For instance the Monarch butterfly population has dropped 90% due to herbicides such as Roundup. No public discussion.
https://www.ecowatch.com/david-suzuki-how-to-save-the-monarc... http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...
Michigan State study: http://makewayformonarchs.org/i/archives/2682