Why the Climate Corporation sold itself to Monsanto | Hacker News Reader

Why the Climate Corporation sold itself to Monsanto

newyorker.com

47 pointsyapcguy33 comments

I really dislike his attack on Google, yes they are occasionally evil, but they don't own the FCC like Monsanto owns the FDA.It doesn't matter how many people you have in office as long as the head of the government body established to regulate you is run by one of you former employees. Also, why would Monsanto want to sue their consumers, their policies allow for such small margins that the farmers are worth almost nothing.

It seems odd to me that such an appeal to reason would have a prelude of several paragraphs of emotional rhetoric, with no references to the science that backs up his position.

It also strikes me as amazingly, incredibly naive, the idea that a small, newly-acquired business unit would have any say in how the rest of the corporation operates.

For so much rationality, the clear strawman of attacking anti-GMO positions as purely anti-science is also striking; there are very well-reasoned arguments that go beyond the genetic modifications, which instead talk about genetic IP, food sovereignty, the atrociously excessive use of pesticides that GMO seeds promote, and the destruction of traditional methods for preserving soil quality in place of monocultures that devastate topsoil to the point of complete dependence on Monsanto's products to keep the land productive.

> the atrociously excessive use of pesticides that GMO seeds promote

I would appreciate if you could provide a link or a reference for that claim?

It's their primary product: RoundupReady seeds are seeds that have been genetically engineered to be resistant to the Roundup pesticide. This allows farmers to plant the RoundupReady seeds, spray Roundup indiscriminately everywhere, and be certain that everything is dead except the crop.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundup_Ready_soybean

Soy monoculture in Argentina has destroyed soil quality, and gliphosate-resistant GMO seeds have motivated the large producers to spray indiscriminately to maximize returns.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-18997297

http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2013/10/21/photos-argen...

Neither of your links offer support for your statements. As the BBC article notes glyphosate is considered one of the "most environmentally friendly" farm chemicals by the World Health Organisation (glyphosate breakers down in water unlike older herbicides). GMOs and Monsanto are not even mentioned in the BBC article. Your second story is a photo essay with sad pictures but very little actual information. It is much more likely if farm chemicals did cause any of these illnesses it was older pesticides that are known to be much more dangerous.

Do you have better evidence than this? If not why are you so sure you are correct?

A paper examining residual glyphosate on soybean crops with well-researched references to the health impacts on crops and humans, as well as analysis of additives to pesticides.

http://www.testbiotech.de/sites/default/files/TBT_Background...

Aside from the known biological effects, the simple reality is that there are cancer cluster now where there weren't ten years ago, and the only variable explaining them is the appeareance of glyphosate-resistant soya bean plantations. This is enough for me to consider it a massive publich health issue, which is not being publicized given the tremendous importance of soybean in Argentine exports.

Now let me tell something about normal agricultural practices:

Do you know what is crop desiccation? [1] It's the application of glyphosate (brand-name: Roundup) a bit before harvesting, to ripen (read: killing the green parts, so the plant begins to dry) the plants to make harvest easier. And to make subsequent storing easier, as the drier plants e.g. are not so susceptible to mold etc.

So, the application of herbicides (not pesticides like you wrote) to effectively poison the plants dead, to make harvesting and storing easier, is business-as-usual in agriculture.

So yes, there are "Roundup ready" varieties of crop plants, that are resistant to glyphosate. So the farmer can kill the weeds with glyphosate, and the crop plants won't die. And if you only know this application of glyphosate, you probably make the conclusion that the "Roundup ready" GMO varieties would promote "atrociously excessive use of" glyphosate.

But which do you think is actually more atrocious use? The business-as-usual use for crop desiccation before harvest, or the extra use during growth, allowed by the "Roundup ready" varieties?

(Northern Europe and Switzerland are the only countries I know, that prohibit the use of herbicides for crop desiccation, if the crop is for human consumption.)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_desiccation

Funny how the anti-Monsanto position is always caricatured as a liberal anti-GMO person.

I think it is just as likely to be a libertarian person who finds their legal pursuit of farmers who have (frequently accidentally) had their crops cross pollinate with Monsanto patented breeds to be ethically distasteful.

>who finds their legal pursuit of farmers who have (frequently accidentally) had their crops cross pollinate with Monsanto patented breeds

This is mostly a myth. All of the lawsuits have been about people who have intentionally used Monsanto breeds (mostly just one court case about one farmer in particular). The rest of their lawsuits, which are a relatively small number, have been against people who broke their contracts with Monsanto, not people who have experienced accidental cross pollination. There are no cases of Monsanto going after farmers for inadvertent contamination and the company has even explicitly stated that it will not sue farmers for it.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto#As_plaintiff

Citation needed for the "frequently accidentally" bit--I've found that this is essentially an urban legend. Dig a bit deeper and things probably weren't so "accidental."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc._v._Schmeis...

The way Monsanto's Round Up works is that the genetic modification is actually resistance to a particular potent pesticide. Just having your crops cross-pollinated isn't enough to help you, or to get Monsanto on your case. They sue farmers who also try to take advantage of the situation by using the special pesticide, which would kill non-cross pollinated plants.

Also, while its hard to pin down libertarianism, there is a lot of conflation between libertarianism and anarchism online. There is nothing un-libertarian about what Monsanto does. Classic libertarians believe in property rights and contractual rights. Monsanto's legal actions largely rely on a web of contracts. There is nothing about classic libertarianism that is inconsistent with patents as property rights. Indeed, patents are a basically libertarian response to the neoclassical economic problem of free riding. The libertarian preference for addressing market failures is the creation of property rights. In this context, its more consistent with classical libertarianism for Monsanto to get property rights in its Round Up Ready seeds, and thus make the money that bankrolls their billions of dollars in annual research, than for say the government to spend that money to do basic research.

> pesticide

Herbicide, not pesticide.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbicide

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesticide

That's really only "libertarianism" in the American tea party sense, and fairly unique to the US. It's not that it is conflated with anarchism online, it's that Americans have conflated it with laissez-faire capitalism offline. The reason it seems different online is because you're seeing what the majority of the world understands it to be.

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/noam-chomsky-kind-an...

"Chomsky: Well what’s called libertarian in the United States, which is a special U. S. phenomenon, it doesn’t really exist anywhere else — a little bit in England — permits a very high level of authority and domination but in the hands of private power: so private power should be unleashed to do whatever it likes."

Powerful patents being used to dominate individuals, whether through infringement suits or through depriving them access to the market is about as far from libertarianism as you can get. This becomes more intuitive when you observe that the individual farmer has been put in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario. He does not, in fact, have his economic liberty.

Are you certain that Chomsky is the best source for information about libertarianism? Could he pass the ideological Turing test?[1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_Turing_Test

Chomsky isn't saying that the U.S. has an atypical definition libertarianism, but that libertarianism is not a popular ideology outside the U.S. There is not some other set of beliefs the rest of the world recognizes as "true libertarianism." Laissez-faire capitalism combined with a strong emphasis on individuality and property rights is what characterizes libertarianism. Its the beliefs of the neoclassical economic liberals minus the social contract thinking many of them also had.

Your characterization of the farmers plight isn't accurate. They are not in a "damned if they don't" position. The roundup ready plants behave like ordinary plants if you don't use roundup. They had no reason to either enter into contracts with Monsanto or to use Monsanto's property by applying roundup, other than to gain the benefit of Monsanto's invention. Once they do those things, libertarianism says that Monsanto can dictate whatever terms it wants, and furthermore that one of the few legitimate purposes of even a limited government is providing courts for the enforcement of contractual and property rights.

You're quite wrong on that first point. He's discussed that very issue many times. Here is another:

http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2009/08/chomsky-on-lib...

"The term "libertarian" has an idiosyncratic usage in the US and Canada, reflecting, I suppose, the unusual power of business in these societies. In the European tradition, "libertarian socialism" ("socialisme libertaire") was the anti-state branch of the socialist movement: anarchism (in the European, not the US sense).

I use the term in the traditional sense, not the US sense."

The farmer is indeed damned if he doesn't. Monsanto crushes him because he can't compete in the market. Did you not hear of the mass suicides among farmers in India, where they took 95% of the seed market?

Monstanto has been very successful in executing the equivalent of "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" in the seed market, and now enjoy an 80% - 90% monopoly on seeds depending on the crop. It's now difficult to purchase non-patent-encumbered seeds even if you want to, and if you do so, you're at a severe disadvantage.

Seeds. Think about that for a moment. That small piece of biomatter, the source of life, which grows into staple crops for feeding our planet. This and all future generations of it are patent encumbered, and controlled by a large corporation. To equate this with liberty is hilarious. Laissez-faire capitalism leads only to tyranny, not liberty. Even Greenspan finally figured this out. Too bad it took destroying nearly half of the global wealth for him to do so.

Chomsky is taking some liberty in characterizing the American definition as "idiosyncratic." Libertarian socialists and Libertarian anarchists usually identify themselves with the qualifier. Indeed, it's in your quote: ("socialisme libertaire"). That branch of libertarianism arose contemporaneously with the leftist movements in the early 20th century: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism#Left-libertarian.... American libertarianism has older roots, in the work of Locke and Adam Smith. It's in the lineage of the beliefs of classical liberals. It's largely an Anglo phenomenon, but that doesn't make the American usage of the term "idiosyncratic."

> The farmer is indeed damned if he doesn't. Monsanto crushes him because he can't compete in the market.

So what? That's how the market works.

> It's now difficult to purchase non-patent-encumbered seeds even if you want to, and if you do so, you're at a severe disadvantage.

They're at a disadvantage because Monsanto's product is dramatically superior. Within the framework of libertarianism (American libertarianism if you want to quibble about that), there is nothing wrong with a superior competitor crushing inferior competition.

No comment on Monsanto in particular, but it's frequently, but not exclusively, lobbying and regulatory capture that libertarians dislike about large corporations. This tends to especially be true when about a company that sells something that affects basic life (eating.)

Given that the remaining patents that Monsanto holds on the trait I believe you are referring to expire this year in the USA, and already expired three years ago in Canada, isn't it a bit late to be getting worked up about the theoretical potential of being sued over something that they have never tried suing anyone for before? Using roundup on a field that was "accidentally" cross-pollinated with the patented trait has been a big no-no, but who does that anyway? The cases that have gone to court were pretty clear-cut patent violations, not simple accidents.

More info on Monsanto:

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/16985-life-in-the-rural-p...

EDIT: The truth hurts, bitches.

Because Monsanto gave them a Billion dollars. Next question.

He never got to saying what he liked about Monsanto, or why it is good, or why it's not evil.

He mostly says lots of people call lots of companies evil, it's not just monstanto people call evil. Okay, sure. And then he says genetic engineering isn't new, we've been doing it for thousands of years (umm.... okay, I guess you can call that genetic engineering. But there wasn't any intellectual property ownership in it, for one difference in social context.) And Monsanto isn't as big a company as you might think, he says.

Okay, I'm still waiting for him to tell me what he likes about Monsanto, other than that they are huge. But I guess that's it, why did they sell to monsanto? Because monsanto had the money to pay, and the money to support their continued work. Okay, fair enough, that's a pretty typical answer to "why did you sell your company." Am i supposed to be impressed?

>He never got to saying what he liked about Monsanto, or why it is good, or why it's not evil.

Money.

When commenting, be careful not to fall into Argumentum Ad Monsantum:

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/but-not-simpler/2013/10/...

Given the bizarre letter, the CEO must have known that many of his employees considered Monsanto the enemy. So it looks like the CEO was a sell-out and took the easy money.

Data scientists, programmers and agricultural experts were hired to help build systems and crunch numbers to help farmers make the best from their soil and weather.

By contrast, Monsanto sell magic seeds, resistant to everything, guaranteed to improve yield and profits for farmers... who needs weather analysis when you have Monsanto?

Does anybody know how the employees feel about it? Is the company struggling to retain employees? It seems they are aggressively hiring, but hard to know if this is actual expansion or replacement hires.

Good question - I was targeted by a CC recruiter and wondered the same thing.

The two I talked to were towing the company line, and said they still had the autonomy to work on everything they were before the merger, and just had more resources at their disposal to do so. The whole team was also flown by private jet to meet employees at a Monsanto facility shortly after the acquisition, so..yeah. Didn't get into comp, but I'm guessing we'll see how everyone really feels once they hit their (presumed) bonus date.

Climate Corp employee here, we flew on a charted airplane, not a private jet. You should be thinking "white label Delta economy" not "like a G6."

"Magic seeds" only get you so far. Farming is a production optimization problem like anything else, it just takes place outside and is subject to many more variables than your garden variety manufacturing line.

Currently the way farmers know what's happening in their fields is they send guys (called scouts) to go and check. This may seem like a good idea until you think about how long it would take to cover 1000 acres on a four wheeler (or even on foot). So yes, despite "magic seeds" farmers need more information to make better decisions. Evil or not, Monsanto's acquisition of Climate Corp absolutely makes business sense.

I work with The Climate Corp as a product manager - there have been no problems retaining employees. In fact, from my point of view, morale is higher than before the acquisition. We are pretty passionate about our mission of helping farmers improve their yields. Our vision is to use data and analytics to help them do that in a more sustainable way. The acquisition has helped accelerate our vision by at least 3-5 years - which is why people are pretty excited... also why we are hiring aggressively.

The Climate Corp is one of the best companies I've worked for - the combination of great (and smart) people, mission, vision and real world impact are hard come by. If you're interested in learning more, I'd be happy to chat anytime.

Even taking as a given that for any crop Monsanto has the best variety, you still have the issue of what exactly to plant, in what proportions, for your likely climate & soil conditions, equipment/water/fertilizer/labor & other input costs, and market prices. That analysis is exactly what Monsanto will provide you with now.

Interesting to stand this up next to the Nest news from today. Is it the market size that makes Nest worth 3x more than the Climate Corporation?

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