6 ms·

Got some examples of high-karma, pro-Monsanto accounts? You don't have to be a sock-puppet to gain karma, nor have high-karma to be qualified as a sock-puppet,

by mmjaa 10y ago

Got some examples of high-karma, pro-Monsanto accounts? You don't have to be a sock-puppet to gain karma, nor have high-karma to be qualified as a sock-puppet, but you certainly can be, karma regardless.. (Plus, there's an easy solution to your supposition: Monsanto pays its people to establish reputation that can be utilised to forward Monsanto's positions...) Seriously though, who are you referring to? I'd be quite interested to know who the potential Monsanto sock-puppets are on HN.

saalweachter 10y ago
I've historically defended glyphosate as a miracle herbicide on HN. At the end of the day, Monsanto is just a red herring. Besides just not being that significant - money-wise - in the food industry, glyphosate and the first generation glyphosate-resistant soybeans are no longer under patent. You can buy non-Roundup glyphosate and non-Roundup soybeans that do the same thing for a fraction of the price.
- rch 10y ago
  But the point is to not buy or use them at all.
  - pkaye 10y ago
    What should we use instead for the times when a weed killer is necessary?
    - elif 10y ago
      in japan, they put plastic bags on fruit on the vine/branch, but in the US that would require far more exploited immigrants, so that's not perfect either.
      - mohaine 10y ago
        How does a plastic bag on fruit help kill weeds that are a completely separate plant?
        petre 10y ago
        The crops you want grow trough holes in the plastic lining, the weeds don't get a chance to see the light since they're under the "bag".
        elif 10y ago
        sorry, it's an alternative to pesticides, not herbicides. I was confused. However, i've used plastic sheeting in my garden to keep the soil warm and incidentally block light from weeds.
    - fdupoo 10y ago
      There are plenty of agricultural techniques that work better than the current system. The current system has low productivity per acre. It is very input intensive, inefficient, and is subject to volatile price swings. It's only advantage is that it's highly mechanized, so you get economy of scale with high output per worker and per asset, but that mechanization in it's current form is a system that destroys arability(soil health) over time. So your returns over time degrade, but input costs are on a 40 year uptrend... It's a broken system. There are food systems that are more labor intensive (less return per human and per asset) but you can produce more food more predictably at lower margins for the producers and higher prices for consumers, but the with more stable input and end-user costs. The three added (and in my opinion most important) side-effects of this system are higher quality food, more jobs, and IMPROVED fertility over time. These new systems use science as well. They were developed by ecologists, systems theorists, and soil microbiologists. Credentials: (i'm the first son of a 6th generation land-owning family in the Mississippi Delta region of Arkansas.)
    - rch 10y ago
      It really depends on the weeds and the situation. I've used citrus-based formulas around the house, but you might check out Holistic Management (Allan Savory, 2016) for advice applicable to agriculture.
      - pkaye 10y ago
        Do you have a brand name and an MSDS on one of those citrus based formulas? Just because something is natural doesn't mean it is safe.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  > Monsanto is just a red herring Can you clarify this at all? My primary objection here isn't to glyphosate, which appears to be in the same fuzzy territory as other chemicals (e.g. food additives) which are legal in Europe/America but banned in America/Europe. The thing I'm deeply upset by is the rather clear evidence that Monsanto worked with the EPA to prevent a planned review and create misleading evidence of safety. Even of glyphosate is 100% safe that's still frightening regulatory capture with ugly implications for other products, and in that Monsanto isn't a red herring.
  - ptaipale 10y ago
    People are regularly making claims like "Monsanto has near monopoly on global food supply", apparently because activist web sites repeat such claims and people start believing them when they hear them often enough. In reality, Monsanto is about 0.2 % of global food business. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12648388 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12648388
    - Bartweiss 10y ago
      Oh, fair enough. I was thinking about this article very specifically, where Monsanto is deeply tied to what looks like clear regulatory capture - a problem even at small scale. On Monstanto coverage writ large, I completely agree. The amount of excess attention and paranoia paid there is ridiculous, especially on topics where they have clear competitors like Archer Daniels Midland that people haven't even heard of.
      - dragonwriter 10y ago
        > On Monstanto coverage writ large, I completely agree. The amount of excess attention and paranoia paid there is ridiculous, especially on topics where they have clear competitors like Archer Daniels Midland that people haven't even heard of. ADM is predominantly a food processing company; they don't really compete with Monsanto, which is a seed and chemical company. They are basically dominant players in different stages of the food supply chain. (They both have some diversification so there is probably some competition but neither is a major player in the others main markets.) In essence: Monsanto -> Farmer -> ADM -> food packagers
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > the first generation glyphosate-resistant soybeans are no longer under patent. Sure, they've been off-patent for two years and been replaced with 2nd generation RoundUp Ready 2 Xtend soybeans, which have additional herbicide resistance and better yield (RoundUp Ready 1 apparently had a pretty significant yield-for-herbicide-resistance trade-off.) While you can get RoundUp Ready 1 off-patent beans for now (IIRC, there are regulatory issues that will become an issue in a couple years unless someone picks up the burden of doing that now that Monsanto has no commercial incentive to do so), but there's little market in commercial ag for them.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
logfromblammo 10y ago
As an old account with reasonably high karma, I would certainly be a sock-puppet for Monsanto if they paid me enough. Just putting it out there, guys. Reasonable rates for reasonable arguments. Rhetorical trickery will cost just a bit more. I am almost certainly not joking about this.
TeMPOraL 10y ago
I've been defending GMOs and Monsanto against the anti-GMO crowd so many times at various places over the Internet, that at some point as a joke, I actually sent a job application for "Junior Monsanto Troll" to the local Monsanto branch. After all, why should I do this for free? Sadly, they didn't reply.
ScottBurson 10y ago
Thomas Ptacek (tptacek) has been quite impatient and dismissive with me when I've expressed concerns about glyphosate. I don't know if that exactly makes him a "Monsanto sock-puppet", but I do think he's being too credulous toward the claims that glyphosate has been shown to be safe. The problem, as we see here, is when there's this much money involved, actually unbiased research gets to be very difficult to come by.
civilian 10y ago
I fit that bill, I've posted pro-GMO comments in the past. I have a B.S. in Biochemistry, which has led me to see GMOs more as a tool that can either be used poorly or used well. I swear I'm not a socket puppet! waves hand perfectly at the elbow
- fdupoo 10y ago
  But you have a domain bias. Monsanto is deeply involved in the learning side of academia as well.

by mmjaa 10y ago

saalweachter 10y ago

I've historically defended glyphosate as a miracle herbicide on HN. At the end of the day, Monsanto is just a red herring. Besides just not being that significant - money-wise - in the food industry, glyphosate and the first generation glyphosate-resistant soybeans are no longer under patent. You can buy non-Roundup glyphosate and non-Roundup soybeans that do the same thing for a fraction of the price.

rch 10y ago
But the point is to not buy or use them at all.
- pkaye 10y ago
  What should we use instead for the times when a weed killer is necessary?
  - elif 10y ago
    in japan, they put plastic bags on fruit on the vine/branch, but in the US that would require far more exploited immigrants, so that's not perfect either.
    - mohaine 10y ago
      How does a plastic bag on fruit help kill weeds that are a completely separate plant?
      - petre 10y ago
        The crops you want grow trough holes in the plastic lining, the weeds don't get a chance to see the light since they're under the "bag".
      - elif 10y ago
        sorry, it's an alternative to pesticides, not herbicides. I was confused. However, i've used plastic sheeting in my garden to keep the soil warm and incidentally block light from weeds.
  - fdupoo 10y ago
    There are plenty of agricultural techniques that work better than the current system. The current system has low productivity per acre. It is very input intensive, inefficient, and is subject to volatile price swings. It's only advantage is that it's highly mechanized, so you get economy of scale with high output per worker and per asset, but that mechanization in it's current form is a system that destroys arability(soil health) over time. So your returns over time degrade, but input costs are on a 40 year uptrend... It's a broken system. There are food systems that are more labor intensive (less return per human and per asset) but you can produce more food more predictably at lower margins for the producers and higher prices for consumers, but the with more stable input and end-user costs. The three added (and in my opinion most important) side-effects of this system are higher quality food, more jobs, and IMPROVED fertility over time. These new systems use science as well. They were developed by ecologists, systems theorists, and soil microbiologists. Credentials: (i'm the first son of a 6th generation land-owning family in the Mississippi Delta region of Arkansas.)
  - rch 10y ago
    It really depends on the weeds and the situation. I've used citrus-based formulas around the house, but you might check out Holistic Management (Allan Savory, 2016) for advice applicable to agriculture.
    - pkaye 10y ago
      Do you have a brand name and an MSDS on one of those citrus based formulas? Just because something is natural doesn't mean it is safe.
Bartweiss 10y ago
> Monsanto is just a red herring Can you clarify this at all? My primary objection here isn't to glyphosate, which appears to be in the same fuzzy territory as other chemicals (e.g. food additives) which are legal in Europe/America but banned in America/Europe. The thing I'm deeply upset by is the rather clear evidence that Monsanto worked with the EPA to prevent a planned review and create misleading evidence of safety. Even of glyphosate is 100% safe that's still frightening regulatory capture with ugly implications for other products, and in that Monsanto isn't a red herring.
- ptaipale 10y ago
  People are regularly making claims like "Monsanto has near monopoly on global food supply", apparently because activist web sites repeat such claims and people start believing them when they hear them often enough. In reality, Monsanto is about 0.2 % of global food business. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12648388 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12648388
  - Bartweiss 10y ago
    Oh, fair enough. I was thinking about this article very specifically, where Monsanto is deeply tied to what looks like clear regulatory capture - a problem even at small scale. On Monstanto coverage writ large, I completely agree. The amount of excess attention and paranoia paid there is ridiculous, especially on topics where they have clear competitors like Archer Daniels Midland that people haven't even heard of.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      > On Monstanto coverage writ large, I completely agree. The amount of excess attention and paranoia paid there is ridiculous, especially on topics where they have clear competitors like Archer Daniels Midland that people haven't even heard of. ADM is predominantly a food processing company; they don't really compete with Monsanto, which is a seed and chemical company. They are basically dominant players in different stages of the food supply chain. (They both have some diversification so there is probably some competition but neither is a major player in the others main markets.) In essence: Monsanto -> Farmer -> ADM -> food packagers
dragonwriter 10y ago
> the first generation glyphosate-resistant soybeans are no longer under patent. Sure, they've been off-patent for two years and been replaced with 2nd generation RoundUp Ready 2 Xtend soybeans, which have additional herbicide resistance and better yield (RoundUp Ready 1 apparently had a pretty significant yield-for-herbicide-resistance trade-off.) While you can get RoundUp Ready 1 off-patent beans for now (IIRC, there are regulatory issues that will become an issue in a couple years unless someone picks up the burden of doing that now that Monsanto has no commercial incentive to do so), but there's little market in commercial ag for them.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

logfromblammo 10y ago

As an old account with reasonably high karma, I would certainly be a sock-puppet for Monsanto if they paid me enough. Just putting it out there, guys. Reasonable rates for reasonable arguments. Rhetorical trickery will cost just a bit more. I am almost certainly not joking about this.

TeMPOraL 10y ago

I've been defending GMOs and Monsanto against the anti-GMO crowd so many times at various places over the Internet, that at some point as a joke, I actually sent a job application for "Junior Monsanto Troll" to the local Monsanto branch. After all, why should I do this for free? Sadly, they didn't reply.

ScottBurson 10y ago

Thomas Ptacek (tptacek) has been quite impatient and dismissive with me when I've expressed concerns about glyphosate. I don't know if that exactly makes him a "Monsanto sock-puppet", but I do think he's being too credulous toward the claims that glyphosate has been shown to be safe. The problem, as we see here, is when there's this much money involved, actually unbiased research gets to be very difficult to come by.

civilian 10y ago

I fit that bill, I've posted pro-GMO comments in the past. I have a B.S. in Biochemistry, which has led me to see GMOs more as a tool that can either be used poorly or used well. I swear I'm not a socket puppet! waves hand perfectly at the elbow

fdupoo 10y ago
But you have a domain bias. Monsanto is deeply involved in the learning side of academia as well.