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.

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 ???