Comments on: Monsanto: The Seed Monopoly That Caused Genetically Modified Food To Start Showing Up On Nearly Every Dinner Table In The United States

By: BigBluntHolder

BigBluntHolder — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 06:53:37 +0000

Now a days you don’t know what to believe on this topic people just have so much to say.

By: Joseph Abraham

Joseph Abraham — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 03:06:04 +0000

This article is terrible. I am Southern California farmer and distributor. The consumers need to stop blaming Corporations for selling them products and stop buying the products of the Corporations. Consumers control Corporations.
Besides, in all my years in agriculture, I have not seen the negative effects of the seed. If you re-read the article, there are no definitive health problems brought up, just broad conjectures.
Is this article really claiming that Monsanto is wrongly accusing and litigating people for stealing seeds? If you don’t buy Monsanto, then keep your records of the seeds you do buy. If you reseed your current crops, keep an invoice from the re-seeder. If you reseed yourself, keep the invoice for the reseeding equipment. Any of the above mentioned evidence would quickly dismiss any trial, and would bring in some great revenue for a counter-trial.

By: Tonie Hielscher

Tonie Hielscher — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 16:28:30 +0000

you may not know that you are being poisoned….but what about the livestock they are feeding w/the GMO food…corn, which puts weight on the livestock..get into the tissues of the meat.Then they sell the meat to the consumers…then you’re eating it…they don’t know why all the people are having all sorts of cancer these days….just saying…it’s hard to know now a days what you’re eating….

By: moby doug

moby doug — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 17:35:23 +0000

Click here: Monsanto GMO Ignites Big Seed War : NPR

Monsanto is already busy imposing its 2nd phase monopoly, Roundup 2, on farmers, because the patent on Roundup 1 expires 2014….. The Roundup monopoly also dominates the US cotton seed market. Monsanto FORCES farmers to buy its seeds every year. They no longer have the option of using seeds from their previous crops.

(correction to my preceding statement: I meant Roundup, not “Topkick.”)

By: moby doug

moby doug — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 17:24:54 +0000

Skipperohawaii nailed it: MikoMann is CLEARLY a mouthpiece for Monsanto. Anyone in the United States who farms corn or soybean can tell you that Monsanto has the country’s seed usage in a monopoly death grip. Pretending otherwise is absurd. Of course U.S. politicians and judges will never do anything about this monopoly: they are OWNED by Monsanto. Monsanto not only has an economic monopoly, its Topkick brand is also propagating a seed mono-culture……wiping out the use of other varieties of, for example, corn and soybeans. So what happens if, in a few years, a ferocious virus rips through the Monsanto seed brands and farmers have no other seed varieties to plant? Agri-catastrophe, that’s what. And Monsanto HAS aggressively used monopoly tactics against hundreds of thousands of U.S. farmers. The company is so ferocious and dominating it makes Gates’ Microsoft monopoly and Rockefeller’s old Standard Oil monopoly look tame by comparison…..

By: Skipperohawaii

Skipperohawaii — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 16:41:40 +0000

To MikoMann; Spoken like a true company man. How long have you worked for Monsanto? Are you afraid they’ll fire you if you tell the truth?

By: Alexandra

Alexandra — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 03:08:12 +0000

Even if we set aside all above comments, critical ethical issues can be raised in regards to Monsanto (as with many other large corporations). I’ll outline two examples.
1) Percy Schmeiser owned an organic canola farm in Saskatchewan, Canada. Monsanto trespassed, sampled his crop, and found its patented product present – likely brought in through wind and birds from neighboring farms using the patented seed. Monsanto sued, and only won once the case escalated to the Supreme Court. This raises huge ethical questions regarding Monsanto – as well as that of judiciary bodies, granted authority by the people.
2) This exampled is in relation to “terminator” seeds + genetic contamination. Monsanto is a corporation; corporations need to bring in more and more revenue yearly to keep their shareholders. These seeds are genetically engineered to produce crops whose seeds cannot be replanted the following year, therefore forcing farmers through exclusivity contracts to purchase seeds again for the following harvest. Through pollen movement in the first generation (as noted in the Percy case), these seeds spread to other farms (lower yields the following year); “genetic seed sterilization would secure a much stronger monopoly than patents — instead of suing farmers for saving seed, companies are trying to make it biologically impossible for farmers to re-use harvested seed.”

note on Syngenta: while it’s a Swiss based agri-giant, Switzerland continues upholding its GM ban.

By: youguysaredumb

youguysaredumb — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 16:40:02 +0000

to givemeabreak… The GMO’s are making you sick but its a less of a rate than what happened back when we used other chemicals besides round up. i mean we had products that would kill you if you came in contact with it in the 70′s. and now we have round up. which is a salt. that only shows minute changes in the kidneys after 2 years of digesting it. so if you look at the difference from what they used back then to what they use now its refined and alot better

By: GiveMeABreak

GiveMeABreak — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 23:56:19 +0000

Even if all the things that MikoMann said was true, and I doubt it, the point point here is GMO food is making us sick. Now I don’t know about you but if I want to be poisoned; I could do it myself cause I certainly don’t need to pay year after year for them to do it slowly. You know how the “futuristic idea” of the 60′s Sci-Fi movies never turned out to be a good thing in the long run…well, here is a real life Sci-Fi and I don’t think it’s going to turn out any better.
Good call on the politicians. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them don’t have a hand in Monsanto.

By: Trademark

Trademark — Tue, 11 May 2010 23:45:17 +0000

You’re waiting for the politicians to do something about this? Try someone else. You’ll be waiting a while.

By: Erix

Erix — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:29:10 +0000

In response to MikoMann:

Thanks for giving a solid rebuttal on this article; it’s good to hear responses to this kind of thing.
You did not, however, counter a couple of the more alarming assertions of the original. While I can understand why a company should be able to patent its work, the patenting of plants is mind-boggling. The fact that the genes which are used to identify the Monsanto plants can be transferred by wind to neighboring farms makes it essentially an infectious patent. Farmers should be allowed to keep seeds from one season to the next if they wish, but now they can be sued out of existence simply because their upwind neighbor decided to use Monsanto seeds. I’m not aware of any other patentable item that will spread on its own like this. It’s akin to patenting a computer virus, then suing anyone who has a computer that is infected with it.

By: MikoMann

MikoMann — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 02:20:22 +0000

Not exactly a balanced article.

1. Monsanto doesn’t control 90% of seeds. For example the company Dupont which used to have a 60% of seed and now has about 35% share has about the same share as Monsanto.
2. The biggest complainer is Dupont since their products dont do as well as Monsanto’s and they have been losing out to Monsanto.
2. The reason why most the GM traits (mostly single or at most 3 genes) that are in GM corn and soybeans are from Monsanto is because they spend nearly $3 M a day researching and developing new traits and their competitors did not. Their main competitor hasn’t been able to develop its own traits. Its recent GAT trait has failed to be delivered on time.
3. Monsanto didn’t keep their traits to themselves. If they had they would have captured even more market share. Instead they shared them with other seed companies including their best competitor Dupont. Something Dupont has refused to do. So Monsanto has not been behaving like a monopoly.
4. The seed companies can add more traits but they can’t add a defective trait like Dupont’s GAt technology that Dupont finally admitted failed to work.
5. Your comment that food will be on every table is true – its been there for more than 13 years …funny how you only just noticed.
6. Every company has raised its seed prices and this usually happens as grain prices increase. That’s because the price of grain directly affacted teh cost to produce the seed and as grain prices increase farmers make more money and can afford to pay more for their seed. Fertlizer prices also increase with grain prices.
7. Whereas fertilizer prices (monsanto doesn’t sell fertilizer) increases in price but there is no added benefit that comes from with the higher price however Monsanto increases prices when they add benefits to their seed. So if the new trait saves or makes the farmer say $10 Monsanto charges less than $5 for the grower to get this value
8. Growers have always complained about prices but if they really cared they wouldn’t buy the seed and some of the 200 seed companies that don’t offer the GM traits would thrive but growers see the value and buy the GM seed.
9. In corn and cotton their GM traits si]uch as Bt corn and cotton also prevent the use of millions of lbs of chemical insecticides.
10. The US constitution includes patent protection and in exchange for sharing with the public their trade secret inventions if an inventor is granted a patent they are allowed a monopoly of that invention for 20 years after they file for the invention. After the patent expires anyone can develop their own products based on the invention. Anyone who steals and makes benefit out of invention without the approval of the inventor is subject to the law of the land.

These are just a few examples of how incorrect and inaccurate your article and teh one by the Associated press is. Go to look at the Monsanto web site to see a rebuttal…but why would you do that ???

By: Karen Pechacek

Karen Pechacek — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 15:35:25 +0000

I wonder what the Monsanto’s eat for dinner.

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