I don't think this article is as damning as many of the commenters seem to think.
- The section addressing the lawsuits includes a lot of "farmers say this" type statements. It's not very long on facts. It even admits that some farmers simply aren't aware of their obligations in many cases. The only case that was actually litigated that I'm aware of is Monsanto Canada Inc. v. Schmeiser -- a case in which the farmer almost certainly was saving seeds in violation of his contract with Monsanto.
- The section on past environmental violations can be mostly ignored in the context of this deal. It might be an interesting historical conversation, but Monsanto is no longer a chemical company. Cloudant has not struck a deal with the company described in that section.
- I'm sympathetic to the opposition on the labeling debate, but it's a labeling debate! It should take more than a labeling debate to generate comparisons to Nazi Germany (as more than one commenter has done below).
Feel free to correct me on this, as I'm likely to be wrong.
Loosely, the way Monsanto's GMO crop system works is, their crops are designed to resist a specific herbicide, which Monsanto also sells. Farmers pay a per-acre licensing fee to use the system, meaning they plant the GMO crops and then bomb their fields with the herbicide to kill everything but the crop, which improves yield.
The fact pattern in these Monsanto lawsuits seems to be that farmers are doing three things: (1) planting Monsanto's GMO crops (intentionally or not), (2) using Monsanto's herbicide to take advantage of the improved yield made possible with the crop, and (3) not paying Monsanto.
It is obviously possible for Monsanto GMO crops to end up in an unsuspecting farmer's field. But it's not possible for a farmer to accidentally use Roundup as an herbicide in that field. If they do that without paying Monsanto, they are trying to get something for nothing. That, to my understanding, is what's motivating the lawsuits.
1) Their seeds spread contaminating other farmer's fields. Once GMO is out in the wild, nothing can be pristine anymore. I wouldn't be surprised to find Monsanto genetics having made its way into humans in 20 years.
2) By "bombing their fields" with herbicide (biocide, you can't make something that only poisons one class of organism like this) AND genetically modifying the crops to be resistent to the biocide you are creating a perfect storm to quickly develop resistent parasites. Now everyone has to use your system, because there is no other way to have a crop survive due to super-bugs.
This is a direct parallel of the SUV insanity. Vast numbers of people drive SUVs because they don't want to be in a car hit by an SUV.
I'm well aware of horizontal gene transfer, but thanks for linking it anyways for the people who don't know.
Edit: My response was lacking, apologies. AFAIK, there's never been a horizontal gene transfer from a prokaryote/eukaryote/any other kingdom to a mammal or animal. The last time may be when we got mitocondria.
Isn't that because it's sometimes useful to kill everything?
I'm no expert, but my understanding of the problem is that if you attempt to kill everything, you'll end up with a few super-resistant [things] (organisms, bacteria etc.) who'll only increase the problem:
Going off on a slight tangent, my personal worry is where we'll be after another 10 years of antibac hand wash use. I'm open to being corrected, but my current understanding is that we should be very, very worried.
I was being pretty imprecise there; the point is that Roundup is (again, imprecisely) potent and broad-spectrum. You couldn't just spray it over a normal crop; it would kill the crop along with the weeds.
It is obviously possible for Monsanto GMO crops to end up in an unsuspecting farmer's field. But it's not possible for a farmer to accidentally use Roundup as an herbicide in that field. If they do that without paying Monsanto, they are trying to get something for nothing. That, to my understanding, is what's motivating the lawsuits.
It's not necessary that the farmer derive any benefit from mis-use of Monsanto's IP for them to be in violation of their contract with the company. They buy the seeds on the condition that they will not reuse them. Full stop. However, it's the case that Monsanto modifies crops in other ways, too (to be resistant to drought, for example [0]), so Roundup use is definitely not the only motivating factor.
Nationwide review found that Monsanto has filed 90 lawsuits targeting 147 farmers & 39 small businesses since '97. Article from '05, assuming research was done up until then.
Probably the sole one to go to trial & get significant bouts of attention.
You're not replying to my comment so much as you're using it as a coat rack to hang more random news stories about Monsanto on.
Obviously, the practice of suing farmers for (ostensibly) abusing licensed seed is controversial. Obviously you're going to find a lot of stories with a lot of angry farmers and angry farmers' advocates.
But you're not actually making a point with those citations, unless I'm missing it. Help me understand what this has to do with whether Monsanto is right or not?
Schmeisser, by the way, is a uniquely bad example: he didn't just make unauthorized copies (accidentally or not) of Roundup-ready seeds; he also used Roundup to control weeds on the Roundup-ready crops.
"The ruling did increase the protection available to biotechnology companies in Canada, a situation which had been left open with the Harvard mouse decision, where it was determined that a "higher lifeform", such as an animal, or by extension a plant, cannot be patented. This put Canada at odds with the other G8 countries where the patent had been granted. In Monsanto vs. Schmeiser, it was determined that protection of a patented gene or cell extends to its presence in a whole plant, even while the plant itself, as a higher lifeform, cannot be patented. This majority view, based on the precedent of mechanical devices, was central to the Supreme Court's decision, and put the onus on the Canadian Parliament to make distinctions between machines and lifeforms as it saw fit."
Sure sounds like a win in comparison to the alternative.
"Schmeiser won a partial victory, where the court held that he did not have to pay Monsanto his profits from his 1998 crop, since the presence of the gene in his crops had not afforded him any advantage and he had made no profits on the crop that were attributable to the invention. The amount of profits at stake was relatively small, C$19,832, however by not having to pay damages, Schmeiser was also saved from having to pay Monsanto's legal bills, which amounted to several hundred thousand dollars and exceeded his own."
That's more or less true, but irrelevant. From the Wikipedia article linked elsewhere in this conversation:
Schmeiser's principal defense at trial was that as he had not applied Roundup herbicide to his canola he had not used the invention. This argument was rejected; the court said that the patent granted for the invention did not specify the use of Roundup as part of the invention, and thus there was no basis for introducing the requirement that Roundup had to be used in order for the invention to be used. That is, a patent prohibits unauthorized use of an invention in any manner, not merely unauthorized use for its intended purpose.
Wait a minute. I just read the Canadian court opinion from which this tiny snippet was extracted. The context you've discarded includes:
* Schmeiser was a former Roundup-ready licensee
* Schmeiser admittedly used Roundup (the herbicide) in numerous circumstances after ceasing to pay licensing fees, which is part of the pattern of circumstances that led Monsanto to sue him
* Schmeiser actually verified, with Roundup, that his "volunteer" Roundup-ready crop was Roundup-ready, and then saved the seeds anyways
* Monsanto had at the time been removing volunteer Roundup-ready canola plants at their own expense from fields where farmers noticed it growing
The context of this specific paragraph also concerns Schmeiser's argument that Monsanto's patent did not apply except in cases where the unauthorized user sprayed crops with Roundup; he wasn't merely trying to exculpate himself, but was also attempting to overturn part of the patent.
Wholeheartedly agree. Monsanto's tactics in this situation are the greater evil, imho. The approach is the issue. I'm not under the assumption that every farmer is innocent, but Monsanto's actions against him/her lead my heart to plead on behalf of the farmer nonetheless.
The tactics of Monsanto show me where their heart is, $2mm a day or not in research expenditures.
I just read a bunch of your old comments so I could understand who I'm talking to. You're clearly a pretty smart person. And you've been here for a little while now, so you're presumably somewhat invested in the community on HN.
With that in mind, help me understand what you hoped to communicate with this comment. Did you feel like you were maybe pointing out something I hadn't considered? Did you expect a comment like this might change anyone's mind? Or cause someone to say, "you know what, I hadn't thought of Monsanto this way before"?
I was railing against the idea that business is one thing, and that as long as behavior is not illegal that it is ok. I feel like we are infected with a more virulent form of 1905. Ethics exist everywhere for all time, they don't belong in a free speech zone.
The idea that, business is business. Of course it is, that is a tautology. We both did the snarky comment dance.
I am going to outline an analogous skit, imagine you are at a cocktail party with a bunch of friends and this dude is there and he is funny and charming, but his barbs dig too deep he drinks too much wine and he tries to sow the seeds of discontent between you and your girl friend. You exclaim to your friends that his guy is total narcissistic ass and you want him out. Ahhh they tell you, tptacek, that guy isn't a person, he is a business. He doesn't have to follow the same social norms we do.
But what does that have to do with the question of whether Monsanto is right or wrong to be suing farmers? Because that's the question at the top of this thread.
I said, in effect, farmers are sympathetic, and Monsanto is not, but that doesn't necessarily make Monsanto wrong. You responded --- from what I can tell --- by saying Monsanto is unsympathetic. Why are you telling me that?
You are being over pedantic. This isn't a debate, which btw. Debates aren't about arriving at the truth, they are about winning arguments by whatever means necessary.
For another side of Monsanto's story, see Norman Bourlag's speech commemorating Monsanto's committment to rice and wheat breeding[1].
Norman Bourlag's life work was to develop and distribute high-yield crops. He's a Nobel peace prize winner and is often credited with saving over a billion lives. Monsanto is carrying on his work at a scale he always strived for.
People in this field is deeply passionate and morally involved in their work. Read the responses from this Monsanto employee at IAMA[2] -- his earnest attempts to explain his morals and his rationale speak for themselves. These people aren't even naked capitalists (not that I have any problem with that) -- they're empirical environmentalists and humanists.
I'm kind of disappointed to hear Monsanto shrilly decried here. Modern ag is a deeply interesting and controversial topic, but that Vanity Fair piece is just rhetoric and linkbait.
> Norman Bourlag's life work was to develop and distribute high-yield crops.
Borlaug's work was via selective breeding. He helped countries produce unpatented food at massive scale in order to feed a billion people.
These crops also were productive because they were planted in areas that had not yet been subject to intensive farming methods. The major obstacle with modern farming is NOT the crops, but the soil quality, and depletion of topsoil is a major problem which is only exacerbated by more productive crops.
There's no free lunch -- in order to have a more productive crop, i.e. more output, it has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is the agricultural inputs.
Monsanto's attempts to control and patent food, were an IP regime put in place to actually enforce that, would simply instigate a food crisis.
You can't have Big Pharma profits without severe controls on availability.
"Feeding the poor" is a complete smokescreen that is fundamentally incompatible with their business model.
