AP IMPACT: Monsanto seed business role revealed

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

AP IMPACT: Monsanto seed business role revealed
By CHRISTOPHER LEONARD (AP) – 3 hours ago

ST. LOUIS — Confidential contracts detailing Monsanto Co.'s business practices reveal how the world's biggest seed developer is squeezing competitors, controlling smaller seed companies and protecting its dominance over the multibillion-dollar market for genetically altered crops, an Associated Press investigation has found.

With Monsanto's patented genes being inserted into roughly 95 percent of all soybeans and 80 percent of all corn grown in the U.S., the company also is using its wide reach to control the ability of new biotech firms to get wide distribution for their products, according to a review of several Monsanto licensing agreements and dozens of interviews with seed industry participants, agriculture and legal experts.

Declining competition in the seed business could lead to price hikes that ripple out to every family's dinner table. That's because the corn flakes you had for breakfast, soda you drank at lunch and beef stew you ate for dinner likely were produced from crops grown with Monsanto's patented genes.

Monsanto's methods are spelled out in a series of confidential commercial licensing agreements obtained by the AP. The contracts, as long as 30 pages, include basic terms for the selling of engineered crops resistant to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, along with shorter supplementary agreements that address new Monsanto traits or other contract amendments.

The company has used the agreements to spread its technology — giving some 200 smaller companies the right to insert Monsanto's genes in their separate strains of corn and soybean plants. But, the AP found, access to Monsanto's genes comes at a cost, and with plenty of strings attached.



Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j8W6nfSayRO5KaPsqecPMSfTXjKQD9CIJ1Q00

[ananda]

1. Evil.. just pure evil.

That's Monsanto.

[audas]

11. Thats America.

[YOY]

76. No. That's America when we remove regulations and allow unfair competition.

Thereby hindering the evolution/emergence of new companies to replace old and in the way.

And Monsanto has been cruisin' for a bruisin' for quite some time.

[twitomy]

27. Evil?? no such thing!!!

Didnt you read the thread on everyone getting upset over Obama's use of the word "evil"?

Dont prescribe religious overtones to business...

[bvar22]

82. Obama installs Monsanto lobbyists in the White House.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3650011

[RaleighNCDUer]

89. Evil as religion might be, it doesn't have a copyright on that word.

There is such a thing as purely secular evil, and fucking with the food supply for profit is EVIL.

[twitomy]

93. So maybe when Bush and Obama railed against "Evil"

They were talking about "secular Evil" as well.....BTW "secular evil" is a new one on me..

On a related note,
I am do a little orgnaic farming myself. Have planted a seed crop of an heirloom wheat...

[tinrobot]

29. Obama - "Evil Does Exist In The World"

I'm sure he'll get right on it. Perhaps send some drones to take out Monsanto.

[bjobotts]

53. From every direction these multinational corporations are destroying America & the world for profit

[bjobotts]

54. Deny the greedy bastards the ablility to incorporate, and regulate the hell out of the market

[RaleighNCDUer]

96. And wouldn't THAT screw with DU? nt

[AzNick]

58. Weird... I just watched Food Inc.

My wife did not have a clue what this was about, when she realized what it meant she could not believe it.

These people are pure evil, I agree.

[LiberalEsto]

71. It's Mon SATAN nt

[Vinnie From Indy]

2. This company is terrifying

They have single handedly destroyed the "seed cleaning" business in Indiana. Ten years ago, there were over 200 small businesses around the state that would clean the seed of farmers and bag it for next years planting. Now there is one or two in the whole state. Monsanto's method of destruction was unrelenting lawsuits, threats of lawsuits and intimidation. Their preferred method of intimidation was to assault a prosperous business and destroy it with lawsuits and then let the farmers in the region know that they could be next if they piss off Monsanto. It worked like a charm. Many farmers simply are scared to death of being mauled by Monsnato's lawyers.

[Gormy Cuss]

24. Right, because seed saving means less profit for Monsanto.

The degree to which Monsanto controls seed for basic crops like corn and soy should make them subject to an antitrust investigation, at the very least.

[Lorien]

49. And they now run the FDA. nt

[Hannah Bell]

62. On what grounds were they threatening lawsuits?

[truedelphi]

63. Google Percy Schmeiser. Or watch documentary "The World

According to Monsanto."

Basically once Monsanto seed is established in an agricultural area, they have the farmers that buy the seed from them pledge not to save seeds. Then they can patrol your farmlands and if they think some part of your crop is not from their seed, they will sue you.

You have two choices at that point. One is to fight them legally and turn your farm over to your lawyers, because after a protracted legal battle with a giant like Monsanto, you won't be able to pay the lawyers' fees.

Or to you can not fight and just hand your farm over to Monsanto.

Organic farmers whose lose their rights to sell their "organic" crops cannot recover when pollen from Monsanto Frankend crops blows into their fields. But the giant monopoly can sue them.

[Hannah Bell]

65. thanks, but i meant in the seed-cleaning business. the ps thing was different.

[jbnow]

67. The way they fought over rBGH for dairy cows. They would sue

the dairies and stores that dared to advertise or label their milk as free of the hormone. In places they couldn't win that fight they won demand for a big label saying how there are no health differences between them and blah blah and then they sued because they were not strong enough.

They tried to bully overseas as well but while we were not allowed to know what dairy products had their crap their product has been 100% banned in Canada since 1999 (but European Union did end up allowing USA milk to be used in food production...just dairy farmers can't use the product and it's dairy products can't be sold for consumption.

For silly reasons like it causing many disorders for the cows and it ending up as a carcinogen that can increase human cancers and oh the company hadn't been so open about their studies on rats...
This evidence stood up to all of Monsanto legal challenges trying to force it.

But here? We didn't even have the right to know what it was in, let alone the potential risk it posed.

Monsanto worked a lot with states to get laws forbidding disclosing what products did or did not have that rBGH crap and between that and suing all the small folks they kept things covered pretty well.

Activists helped out state by state exposing them and a lot of scandal was revealed in PA Monsanto move. Soon big chains started refusing their milk and some even started using labels saying that...
It is easy to fins at least milk itself free of them now...

God they have way too much power. I held that against the Clinton's for many good reasons and then Obama picks one of their people.

[dmr]

78. Monsanto and Fox: Partners in Censorship

http://www.foxbghsuit.com/

[diane in sf]

3. I don't want their gmo crap in my food.

[Joe Chi Minh]

10. If you can, avoid processed foods.

[diane in sf]

64. I do avoid processed foods and buy organic. I especially avoid corn and soy unless they

are organic. And I get beef and dairy from grass fed cows when I can.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

4. Worst of the worst of unethical big businesses.

These f'krs will stop at nothing to wreak havoc in sating their greed.

[droidamus2]

5. Has anybody figured it out yet?

Unregulated capitalism is a really bad idea (basically institutionalized greed). The view of the capitalists is so narrow (what makes them the most money in the shortest amount of time) that they would bring the country to its knees if they thought it would bring them a bigger profit. Supply and demand says that when prices rise and resources are available other producers will enter the market thus pushing down prices due to the extra competition. Without regulation companies (or conglomerates of companies) control the resources and use their legal and monetary power to keep new competitors out of the business giving them a virtual monopoly and the ability to set prices at whatever they want it to be.

[Earth_First]

9. Unfortnately, no they haven't...

and I fear that they won't.

[brentspeak]

83. Unregulated capitalism + paid-off corporate politicians =

the end of the blue collar and middle classes. 2nd world status within 15 years.

[Goldstein1984]

85. It's the Adam Smith and Milton Friedman thing

The Invisible Hand

Greed is good

Let "natural forces" regulate the market

[Goldstein1984]

86. When you drive down highways lined with corn and

soybeans, you see signs posted in the fields that tell you what particular line of GMO is planted there.

Monsanto, Cargill, ADM... Food Imperialism

[RaleighNCDUer]

90. Actually, Adam Smith was against corporations and monopolies

because they screwed with the Invisible Hand. A corporation does regulate a market, entirely in its own favor.

[Goldstein1984]

94. That's true

And I should have clarified that. He just believed that natural forces control the market.

I guess if you consider greed a force of nature, then he was correct.

[Joe Chi Minh]

91. Don't insult Adam Smith. He taught that businessmen could not be trusted

not to conspire at every possible opportunity against the public good, and had to be very firmly controlled or they would prove unprincipled and seditious criminals.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/23/4046

How the far-right have managed to get away with their misconstructions of do many of Adam Smith's most basic tenets must surely baffle future generations. His ideas on income tax, alone, would brand him as a Communist of Stalinist hue on Capitol Hill with few exceptions.

[Goldstein1984]

95. I stand corrected

My only reference to Adam Smith in this regard is the "invisible hand" idea, which neoliberals interpret to mean that forces of nature manage markets.

Now that I think about it, if forces of nature include greed, then it all makes sense.

I shouldn't have lumped Smith in with Friedman without being more specific.

Thanks for a good reply.

[Joe Chi Minh]

98. Not at all. But isn't it maddening that they've been able to get away with

the Alice In Wonderland imputation that Smith was in favour of 'free markets' for business in the sense of Friedman's laissez-faire economic promiscuity?

In the words of Rick Wilson's article in the Charleston Gazette:

'Smith died in 1790, before the industrial revolution, mechanization, and the rise of large-scale businesses, let alone the government-sanctioned corporations, trusts, and giant global industrial or financial organizations that were light years from his world of small-scale competition. These often distort outcomes and result in what economists call market failures, such as monopolies, oligopolies and externalities that can cause a lot of damage to individuals and the public but don't show up on a corporation's bottom line.'

How topical and pointed that paragraph is. Why have they distorted Smith's message to a small remnant, totally alien to his views, instead of placing that remnant within the context of his humane and compassionate principles for the WHOLE of society, i.e. STARTING AT THE BOTTOM? Which distortion, of course, being the very reason the world is in such dire straits today. Not only are the most egomaniacal people running the world's economy, they are supremely well-served by the echo-camber of hireling policians and equally corrupt msm, who, by and large, appear to be as reluctant as ever to consider the main thrust of Adam Smith's words relating to an ethic of uncompromising social responsibility, in terms of a just redistribution of the country's wealth. Smith had enough common sense to realise that the more worldly truly need more than the majority of the people, but that that majority should, nevertheless, enjoy a just share of the country's wealth, an ample sufficiency.











'

[gateley]

6. Monsanto and Cargill scare the hell out of me. nt

[SharonAnn]

44. And ADM, and Tate & Lyle, and DuPont, and ???

[druidity33]

7. good on the AP

for finally reporting this. Farmers have known about it for years. As a friend of many NOFA (Northeast Organic Farming Association) members, i can tell you that there are lots of angry people out there. Monsanto is devil spawn. The epitome of ruthless Capitalists with no concern for the harm they do. Worse than the worst polluters almost.

:(

[BelgianMadCow]

18. they ARE the worst polluters: PCB, dioxines, Agent Orange, Roundup

I read "The world according to Monsanto" and it was quite an eye opener. I'll never look at that bottle of Roundup in the same way.

[condoleeza]

66. Singlehandedly led to my father's demise

I've hated Monsanto since I was an infant, quite literally. They nearly killed my sister as an infant when she was poisoned by breastfeeding on nipples that had been exposed to DDT that my mother sprayed in powder form on the vegetable garden. She was sick her whole life and killed herself 11 yrs. ago, a brother did the same 6 yrs. ago. My whole family has illnesses that can be traced back to the scam that Monsanto ran in the Midwest. I escaped Minnesota at 3, but have little doubt that the odd illnesses of my siblings, the history of suicides in my extended as well as my own family, can be traced to the poisons that Monsanto has introduced worldwide. Truly these people have no soul and have infected the government of the US for decades.

There is no grain anywhere in the world that is not tainted anymore. If I'm not mistaken, most drugs are/were produced using NON GMO "natural" products. Are any of these drugs still effective?

What kind of world do these people envision leaving for their offspring? The Rumsfelds, the Cheneys, what good is money if you are dying? This is what I cannot wrap my mind around.

[truedelphi]

92. And sadly our new President has been a very good friend to Monsanto's interests. n/t

[peacebird]

8. buy heirloom and organic seeds to grow some of your own veggies

and then save the seeds to grow next year. It's fun and the food tastes tons better than the generic crap at the grocery store. If you can't grow you own thne buy organic non-GMO veggies whenever you can.

Monsanto is totally evil.

[Odin2005]

12. This Biotech major thinks Monsatan is SHIT.

Pure, evil unethical business practices that monopolizes biotechnological knowledge that should belong to all.

FUCK THEM!

[NeoConsSuck]

13. Monsanto seed business role revealed

Source: Yahoo

ST. LOUIS (AP) -- Confidential contracts detailing Monsanto Co.'s business practices reveal how the world's biggest seed developer is squeezing competitors, controlling smaller seed companies and protecting its dominance over the multibillion-dollar market for genetically altered crops, an Associated Press investigation has found.

With Monsanto's patented genes being inserted into roughly 95 percent of all soybeans and 80 percent of all corn grown in the U.S., the company also is using its wide reach to control the ability of new biotech firms to get wide distribution for their products, according to a review of several Monsanto licensing agreements and dozens of interviews with seed industry participants, agriculture and legal experts.

Declining competition in the seed business could lead to price hikes that ripple out to every family's dinner table. That's because the corn flakes you had for breakfast, soda you drank at lunch and beef stew you ate for dinner likely were produced from crops grown with Monsanto's patented genes.

Monsanto's methods are spelled out in a series of confidential commercial licensing agreements obtained by the AP. The contracts, as long as 30 pages, include basic terms for the selling of engineered crops resistant to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, along with shorter supplementary agreements that address new Monsanto traits or other contract amendments.


Read more: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/AP-IMPACT-Monsanto-seed-apf-4027376931.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=6&asset=&ccode=

[ixion]

14. Monsanto needs to be taken down a few notches... they are almost single-handedly

destroying agriculture in the US.

[Gman2]

15. You cowards are pathetic. Bill Gates has our back. The Iceland seed bank will save us all

after all the original crops having limited gene experience, succuumb to a disease. He made a seed bank in Iceland. It's OK, you cowards that will point out that Iceland will thaw, just like everywhere. They KNOW they threaten all human life.

THEY KNOW. It's just too damn profitable.

[winyanstaz]

16. someone needs to be arrested and that place shut down!~

I believe they are also involved with the chemtrails...

[Jackpine Radical]

21. No, not the chemtrails. I know what the chemtrails are.

That's just the government spraying andipsychotic medication over places like Utah & Idaho.

[rucky]

28. It's not working. n/t

[truedelphi]

25. It is so hard to know about the chemtrails

The media in Germany is more open on this issue, so that the citizens there are suing either their own government or else NATO for the chemtrail program.

On the one hand, we have the liberals in our government telling us not to drive our cars or belch, but the planes flying continually 24/7 all across the Northern hemisphere are doing more routine wasting of jet fuel than we car drivers can even imagine.

Ed Teller first proposed the chemtrail use for dispersing the particulates to shield us from the sun hitting us - but those who looked into what the actual program would involve figured out right away that the huge amount of jet fuel needed would offset any positive gains.

Anyway, if I could read and speak German I would know quite a bit more about this.

[winyanstaz]

43. I think it is Monsanto because....

they are the ones most involved with destroying the world's natural food supplies and messing around with the dna of both plants and animals so they can control the seed/food/etc of the world.
I believe they are spraying the chem trails for two reasons...one: to kill off natural plants (it would account for all the trees that are dying off between idaho and montana) as well as two: all the natural animal food. For example...wasting disease and mad cow disease all share a lot of the same symptoms...and both became well heard of in the last approx 15 years and less. I think there is a possibility they are related.
Cows and deer are wasting away and dying..and they both eat the grasses/plants. The heavy metals could account for a lot of the symptoms too...just like lead poisoning does to humans..so is this stuff doing to the herbivores.
Before I get flamed...I already admit this is only a suspicion and my own opinion. But it is something to think about.
Who else but the New World Order could afford to do this anyways? We have to follow the money.

[truedelphi]

57. I have thought about that as well.

The sprays leave an awful smell.

At least once every six weeks, I think someone is building a building near us and using a lot fo adhesives, but then I drive into town and the same smell is there as well.

The branches on the bushes around the house have a white dust on them, during the rainless months.

And the trees are all dying of some disease or other. Pines chewed up by pinebeetles, the oaks now affected by the sudden oak death syndrom that now has spread to other species including fruit trees (though the other species only have the tree die off partially - whereas with the oak it dies off totally.)

So maybe theythinkt hat they have some type of seed that wil replace everything when it is all gone.

But what the heck happens to us if they go bankrupt? After they have wiped out everything but the species whose seed they have developed and have as their property.

[truedelphi]

97. If you ever get any documentation about this pls

Feel free to PM me.

One thing I miss abt being in the Bay Area was the occassional Chemtrail programs that Santa Cruz would being to us. And they always had great documentation.

[begin_within]

17. Makes me hungry for

[pjt7]

19. Monsansto is a major corporate sponosor

of PBS Jim Lehrer New Hour

They should drop this criminal company.

[alfredo]

20. I inherited Monsanto stock. I got rid of it real fast.

[kestrel91316]

22. I recommend fighting them in the trenches by making donations to

Seed Savers, Native Seeds/Search, and other such organizations working tirelessly to preserve the genetic diversity and ongoing availability of thousands of varieties of rare and heirloom crops.

http://www.seedsavers.org/
http://www.nativeseeds.org/

[silverweb]

23. Excellent idea!

:thumbsup:

[winyanstaz]

59. good call....

Also by growing as much of our own food and some for others that we can in the space we each have.
Save your organic seeds and share them.

[DeSwiss]

68. Excellant!

- And thank you for those links!!!

[asdjrocky]

26. They find the very things we need to live and profit from them.

Health, food, heat, water. It's a damned good thing the idea never caught on for putting out fires or we'd be even more screwed.

[Truth2Tell]

37. It's been done.

And don't think it won't be back.

[asdjrocky]

38. Philadelphia burned because of privet fire fighters in the 18th century.

[Vidar]

30. Don't even break it up. Arrest the execs & bulldoze all the buildings.

[defendandprotect]

56. Agree . . . only criminals in government would allow Monsanto to stay in business --!!

[femrap]

31. Why can't there be some kind of

Class Action Suit or a Civil Suit against them???

[backwoodsbob]

35. class action suit for what?

[KittyWampus]

36. contaminating adjacent organic crops, for instance.

[Lorien]

50. During the past five years the government changed the legal definition

of "Organic" to mean damn near anything. That was another boon to Monsanto.

[KittyWampus]

74. It occurs to me that calling what cross pollination of GMO seeds with non-GMO crops does

is not LIKE rape, it actually is a form of rape.

[femrap]

46. monopolizing seeds and putting

seed businesses out of biz.....plus making people eat their crap of soybeans and corn.

Hell fucking Mother Nature.

[audas]

47. If someone had the cash -

there would easily be a case for Crime Against Humanity - it threatens the species.
Whats better - the publicity would shut them down for good.

[hippywife]

32. Here's hoping that

this whole thing ends up blowing up in their faces and they price themselves out of the market. Organic and heirloom seeds are the only way to plant to save the diversity of the food supply, and it's longevity.

If these people have their way, they will systematically destroy the whole food supply. :mad:

[Canuckistanian]

33. Fuck Monsanto, I didn't even read the OP.

Now, I'll read the OP and say "Fuck Monsanto" again.

[Canuckistanian]

34. Fuck Monsanto. I was right.

That antitrust legal action can't come fast enough.

From now on, I deal only with our local organic farmers.

[era veteran]

39. You can see my compost piles from outer space

Grow, if able, as much as you can, donate extras to a food bank or anyone. Use heirloom seeds and encourage others to use them. Agri business was too powerful twenty years ago and exponentially has gotten more so. Monsanto needs to be investigated by the government. How much power should one corporation have when it conflicts with the common good?

[Lars77]

40. The global seed vault

When i heard Norway was spending millions to build a seed vault in the arctic i have to admit i really didnt understand, but after watching "The world according to Monsanto", i think it's a brilliant idea.

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

[winyanstaz]

60. We need more of those seed vaults...all around the planet..

and Monsanto...must be ended once and for all..(legally of course)

[applegrove]

41. I just saw Food Inc. and they talked about Monsanto's behaviour. Creepy especially

the part where they have 100 goons who travel the country trying to find people who are violating their patents and then attack said people (or anyone who gets in their way like a farmer who never bought of used monsanto seed but whose fields were contaminated by neighbours' seeds) forcing some of said people into protracted legal situations.

[bertman]

42. I just rented "Food, Inc." but haven't seen it yet. This Monsatan article is so infuriating.

Their tentacles are so deep into our government there's probably no way we'll ever get them out, but it's sure as hell worth a try. Of course, with Vilsack as Ag Sec it will be an uphill battle.

Isn't there a law against monopolies?? Or was I hearing things when I took civics many years ago?

Recommend. Thanks, Judi Lynn.

[Lars77]

45. Documentary on Monsanto here

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6262083407501596844&ei=8LklS4LLEoig2ALp7rnTBg&q=monsanto#

"The world according to Monsanto" a Canadian production, it's from 2008 as Food, Inc but i don't think it's the same movie.

[Xicano]

48. A must listen to audio lecture on this subject.

http://www.seedsofdeception.com/Multimedia/29.mp3

[WorseBeforeBetter]

51. "The Future of Food"

Depressing as hell.

[AzDar]

52. K & R

[defendandprotect]

55. War by Monsanto/Food by Monsanto -- Fascism . . .

THIS is yet more reason why monopoly is so wrong -- and why corporations are so wrong --

and why capitalism itself is so wrong --

No wonder we can't get out from this --

[elleng]

61. Trusts, then and now!

We all need someone with the cojones of Teddy Roosevelt again, but my bets are we won't find one (except RFK, JR!)

[DeSwiss]

69. K&R!!!

[defendandprotect]

70. Misplaced ---

[SpiralHawk]

72. Monsanto = Merchants of Mutation

I can just imagine the stories we will be reading in another generation or two about the Mutant Humans afflicted with Monsanto Syndrome...

[pleah]

73. K&R

[Javaman]

75. okay, fine, now what? will there be an anti-trust law suit?

I'm soooooooooooooooo holding my breath.

move along nothing to see here, just your food being taken over by corporations.

save your own seeds folks, in a few years, you will be very thankful that you did.

[ensho]

77. may Monsanto fall down and never get up again

bunch of scammers and criminals

[Zorra]

79. We have have to make terrorism by monopoly illegal right now.

Or these terrorists are going to terrorize everyone on the planet in the not too distant future.

[LeftHander]

80. Frankenslop with HFCS sauce...nt

[brentspeak]

81. Monsanto sues just about every family farmer still lucky enough to operate

A truly evil entity.

[bvar22]

84. Our little patch in The Woods is Monsanto Free.

No non-naturally occurring pesticides, fertilizers, herbicides, or GM crops allowed.

[onesmallrock]

87. Other countries

especially Europe are not having this gmo bullshit. They know it can and will destroy any and every species in same time zone eventually.

[Blue Owl]

88. It's like Scientology

for the food chain

[MisterP]

99. awww, that's unfair

to the people on L. Ron Hubbard Dr., Los Angeles...