Monsanto's point of no return. When most of us think of Monsanto, we think of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, as they are most often called. It’s an understandable connection. After all, Monsanto dominates the genetically engineered crop space and as a result, when scientific debates over the safety of such crops in our food chain inevitably erupt, it is Monsanto that usually gets painted as the mad scientist behind the creation of these so-called frankenfoods.
But what if the potential health risks of GMOs were actually not the biggest concern when it comes to Monsanto and the handful of other mega-corporations that now dominate the seed industry? What if every day that we spend arguing over the environmental impact of GMO crops — not to say such discussions are not incredibly important — is actually playing into Monsanto’s larger plans for the food system?
Unfortunately, these questions are not part of some crazed, anti-corporate conspiracy theory. November showdown Industry consolidation According to U.S. The Flip-Side: What Bill Gates Doesn't Know About GMOs. Editor's note: This story was contributed by The Pesticide Action Network, an outside organization. If you assume that Bill Gates is so well informed about all his philanthropic targets that you take his word at face value, you would be in good company, but you might be terribly wrong.
Organizations well versed in the agricultural issues facing developing nations are saying his annual letter, released last week, is completely mistaken when it asserts that a lack of support for GMO crop development is responsible, in part, for allowing world hunger to endure. We interviewed Heather Pilatic, Ph.D., co-director of the Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA), to show us the other, important side of the story. TakePart: In the introduction to his letter, Bill Gates cites the Green Revolution of the 1960s and '70s, saying scientists created new seed varieties for rice, wheat, and maize, and that this resulted in increased crop yield and a decrease in extreme poverty around the world.
Corporationchart.png (PNG Image, 750 × 574 pixels) Biotech Giants Are Bankrolling a GMO Free-for-All. The so-called "Big Six" agrichemical companies—Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow Agrosciences, BASF, Bayer, and Pioneer (DuPont)—are sitting pretty. Together, they control nearly 70 percent of the global pesticide market, and essentially the entire market for genetically modified seeds. Prices of the crops they focus on—corn, soy, cotton, etc. —are soaring, pushed up by severe drought in key growing regions. Higher crop prices typically translate to increased pesticide sales as farmers have more money to spend on agrichemicals and more incentive to maximize yield. The companies operate globally—and have gained a stronghold in that emerging center of industrial agriculture, Brazil—but the biotech-friendly US is their profit center.
In a paper released in January, a team of Penn State scientists assessed the biotech-industry's strategy, and its conclusion was stark: First, crops with stacked herbicide resistance are likely to increase the severity of resistant weeds.