The embattled corporation has decided to stop tilting
against the windmill of European resistance to its controversial biotech
seeds. Eight EU nations have already prohibited GM (genetically
modified) cultivation on their territory and banned the import of
genetically modified foods from abroad.
But Monsanto's prospects in the United States took a
very different turn last month when the US Supreme Court ordered Indiana
farmer Vernon Bowman to pay Monsanto over $80,000 for planting its GM
soybean seeds. Bowman had purchased the seeds from a grain elevator
rather than from Monsanto itself, as their corporate contract requires.
The seeds had been saved from an earlier crop.
For as long as humans have been growing food, farmers
have saved seeds from their harvest to sow the following year. But
Monsanto and other big seed companies have changed the rules of the
game. They have successfully argued that they spend millions of dollars
developing new crop varieties and that these products should be treated
as proprietary inventions with full patent protection. Just as one
can't legally reproduce a CD or DVD, farmers are now prohibited from
copying the GM seeds that they purchase from companies like Monsanto,
Bayer, Dow and Syngenta.
In one sense, these corporations no longer sell seeds -
they lease them, requiring farmers to renew their lease with every
subsequent growing season. Monsanto itself compares its GM seeds to
rental cars. When you are finished using them, rights revert to the
owner of the "intellectual property" contained within the seed.
Some farmers have saved their seeds anyway (called
"brown bagging"), in some cases to save money, in others because they
don't like the big companies telling them how to farm. Monsanto has
responded with an all-out effort to track down the brown baggers and
prosecute them as an example to others who might be tempted to violate
its patent. By aggressively enforcing its "no replant policy," Monsanto
has initiated a permanent low-grade war against farmers. At the time of
this writing, the company had not responded to emailed questions about
its seed saving policies.
"I don't know of [another] company that chooses to sue
its own customer base," Joseph Mendelson of the Center for Food Safety
told Vanity Fair Magazine. "It's a very bizarre business strategy."
Yet the strategy appears to be working. Over 90 percent
of the soybeans, corn, canola and cotton grown in the United States are
patented genetically modified organisms (commonly known as GMOs). The
soybean variety that Bowman planted has proved popular with farmers
because it has been modified to survive multiple sprayings by Monsanto's
best-selling herbicide Roundup, whose active agent is glyphosate. While
Monsanto claims that GMOs increase crop yields, there is little
evidence that this is the case. The chemical giant turned seed company
also claims that the new technology decreases the need for
agrochemicals. Yet 85 percent of all GM crops are bred to be herbicide
resistant, which has meant that pesticide use is increasing as a result
of the spread of GM crops. What GMOs were designed to do - and indeed
accomplish - is create plants that can be grown efficiently in the
chemical-intensive large scale monocultures that dominate American
agriculture.
But the dominance of GMOs has come at a cost. In
addition to the uncertain environmental impacts of the GMOs and the
chemicals that are used to grow them as well as the possible negative
health impacts of eating genetically modified foods, their production is
sowing seeds of conflict in America's rural heartland. Worldwatch
Institute says that the GMO regime has initiated a "new era of
feudalism," no longer by wealthy landowners, but by powerful
multinationals who have consolidated their control over the lives and practices of farmers everywhere.
Like the old feudalism, the new one is backed by the
iron fist of the law. Bowman is just one of the untold thousands of
farmers who have run afoul of Monsanto's legal department in recent
years. You don't even need to be a farmer to be targeted by the
multinational. Ask Gary Rinehart.
As reported in 2008 in Vanity Fair,
Rinehart was standing behind the counter at the Fair Deal, an
old-fashioned country store that he owns in Eagleville, Missouri, when a
man strode in and accused him - in front of his customers - of
illegally planting patented seeds. "Monsanto is big," the stranger
announced. "You can't win. We will get you. You will pay."
It must have seemed like a bad joke to Rinehart, who
owns no farmland and doesn't plant seeds. He doesn't even sell them. The
shopkeeper told the obnoxious stranger to get the hell out of his
store. But it didn't end there. Some weeks later Rinehart was served
with court papers from Monsanto which was suing him for sowing
second-generation seeds, which it said were produced from Monsanto's
genetic stock.
Rinehart fared better than Bowman. He easily won his
case against America's largest seed company. Everyone in town -
including the judge - knew that Rinehart was not a farmer. Even Monsanto
eventually realized that it had targeted the wrong man. But they didn't
send him a letter of apology, or offer to pay his lawyer's fees.
Rinehart never heard from the company again.
"I don't know how they get away with it," Rinehart told
Vanity Fair. "If I tried to do something like that it would be bad news.
I felt like I was in another country."
Sadly, Rinehart is hardly alone in feeling like a
character in a middle-American Kafka novel. Monsanto boasts one of the
largest corporate security operations in the world, with agents working
both openly and undercover in rural counties throughout the United
States and Canada. Monsanto's investigators show up at front doors, and
in some cases in the middle of farmers fields, making accusations,
brandishing surveillance photos and demanding to see the farmer's
private records or to be handed over their hard drives.
Bill Freese, a science policy analyst at the Center for
Food Safety (CFS), told Truthout that these investigators will say
things like, "Monsanto knows that you are saving Roundup Ready seeds,
and if you don't sign these information-release forms, Monsanto is going
to come after you and take your farm or take you for all you're worth."
Of the hundreds of cases that Monsanto pursues every
year "the great majority end in out-of-court settlements," Freese said.
"Farmers are terrified of standing up to the multinational and losing
everything."
The litigious corporation claims that it has transformed
the way farming is done and that big changes require tough action.
"This is part of the agricultural revolution, and any revolution is
painful," Karen Marshall, a spokeswoman for Monsanto in St. Louis told
the Washington Post in 1999. "But the technology is good technology."
In the effort to police its "revolution," Monsanto does
not limit itself to suing errant farmers. It also monitors farmer's
co-ops, silo owners, seed-sellers, virtually anyone who has dealings
with their patented seeds. And it employs tactics that may occasionally
put it on the wrong side of the law. Iowa corn farmer Scott McAllister
told Daily Finance that company investigators broke into his house,
tapped his phones and "tailed his vehicles," charges which company spokesman Mica Veihman denied. But McAllister's allegations of Monsanto's extralegal intimidation of farmers is hardly unique.
Seed cleaners like Parr remove chaff and weed seed from
harvested seed. Parr said that he was not aware that the seeds he
cleaned were Monsanto's. Nevertheless, he racked up over $25,000 in
legal fees before even setting foot in a courtroom and, like so many
others, reluctantly settled out of court. Parr lost almost 90 percent of
his former customers, who were afraid that associating with the hapless
seed-cleaner would lead to prosecution against them as well.
Monsanto has spared no expense in its effort to nab
patent violators. As early as 2003, the corporation had a department of
75 employees (dubbed "the gene police") with a budget of $10 million for
the sole purpose of pursuing farmers for patent infringement, according
to the Center for Food Safety/Save Our Seeds report. It has also hired a
private investigation firm, McDowell & Associates
in Saint Louis. This investment has produced ample returns over the
years. An analysis by the Center for Food Safety used Monsanto's own
records to estimate that, as of 2006, farmers had paid the company an
estimated $85 to $160 million in out-of-court settlements.
Monsanto's investigatory and prosecutorial efforts are
likely even larger today. However, the company no longer publishes this
information, and they recently withdrew the data which CFS used to make their estimate from its Internet site. [See page 6 of PDF.]
In its war against "seed pirates," Monsanto employs
methods that are better known in law enforcement and military
intelligence than in the world of farming. Monsanto analyzes satellite
images, USDA planting data and bank records in its effort to track down
errant farmers. Freese told Truthout that Monsanto agents sometimes
pretend that they are conducting surveys of seed and chemical purchases
and impersonate farmers or surveyors. Freese described one incident in
Illinois, where a Monsanto investigator bragged that the company
routinely hires retired farmers to pose as seed sellers in an effort to
nab unsuspecting buyers in sting-type operations. Monsanto also has its
own toll-free tip-line (1-800-ROUNDUP) where farmers are invited to
inform on their neighbors, as thousands have reportedly already done.
"Instead of helping each other with barn-raisings and
equipment sharing," a CFS report states, "those caught saving seed, a
practice that is hundreds of years old, were turned into 'spies' against
their neighbors, replacing the atmosphere of cooperation with one of
distrust and suspicion." Critics accuse the company of fraying the
delicate social fabric which holds farming communities together.
In a now legendary incident, Schmeiser's fields were
contaminated by seeds from a neighbor's genetically modified Roundup
Ready canola plants, which had blown onto his land. When the farmer, who
was the subject of the 2009 film "David Versus Monsanto," saved the
seeds from these "accidental migrants" for replanting, Monsanto sued him
for patent infringement and won the case but received no damages, since
the court determined that Schmeiser had gained no economic benefit from
the incident. Later Schmeiser countersued Monsanto for "libel,
trespass, and contamination of his fields with Roundup Ready Canola."
But that case was dismissed.
Organic farmers complain that the drift of pollen and
seeds from GMO fields invade their own crops, which is increasingly
making it difficult for them to maintain their organic standards.
What effect this cross-pollination will have on the
integrity of Mexico's staple crop is not yet known. But multiple studies
have confirmed that it has already taken place in regions throughout
Mexico. There is also anecdotal evidence of grotesquely deformed native
corn plants which contained the genetically modified genes.
A Monsanto brochure boasts,
"The good news is that practical experience clearly demonstrates that
the coexistence of biotech, conventional and organic systems is not only
possible, but it is peacefully occurring around the world."
The reality on the ground, however, tells a different
story. Far from peacefully coexisting with other forms of agriculture,
the new biotechnology is rapidly swallowing up traditional farming in
the United States. GM cultivation, with its economies of scale, is
proving the latest nail in the coffin of family farming.
Moreover, a small number of "high performing" GMOs
increasingly dominate; fewer varieties of crops are being planted today
than ever before. The Big Ag companies claim that they need patent
protection to encourage the costly development of new seed varieties,
but Freese told Truthout that Monsanto spends more buying up independent
seed companies (to the tune of an estimated $960 million a year) than
on its research and development budget.
The result of this monopolistic consolidation, according
to critics, has been less innovation, rather than more. Not only are
the companies spending less on creating new conventional crops, but
publicly funded agricultural research and breeding, which for most of
the 20th century was the main driver of agricultural development in the
US, declined precipitously in recent years, according to a recent study by the American Enterprise Institute.
Perhaps worst of all, the creativity which fueled thousands of years of
farmer experimentation becomes impossible when growers are prohibited
from replanting seeds.
In the past, farmers selected seeds for traits they
wanted to develop in their crops such as taste, size, nutrition and
suitability to changing local growing conditions. This ongoing process
of selection has led to the fabulous diversity of fruits, grains and
vegetables which were developed by untold numbers of farmers over the
centuries. Nowadays, however, that selection process is increasingly
being frozen by a corporate agricultural system which selects for one
trait alone - greater profitability.
But Barker of Save Our Seeds told Truthout that the
silver lining in the stormclouds of corporate dominance of agriculture
is that farmers are so fed up that they are beginning to take matters
into their own hands. "Over the last few years, I see more and more
people who are not waiting on their governments to do the right thing,"
she said. "Instead, they are making change as citizens of the earth in
their local communities."
Barker cites as examples the growing transition toward
chemical-free farming, the local food movement and the rise of
small-scale regional seed banks to preserve agri-diversity. But she says
it's vital for people to work politically as well.
"Congress constantly hears from agrichemical
corporations," Barker says, "but they don't often hear from farmers."
However that is gradually changing as outrage against corporations like
Monsanto gets transmuted, in America's agricultural heartland, into the
political will to oppose them.
