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People are regularly making claims like "Monsanto has near monopoly on global food supply", apparently because activist web sites repeat such claims and people

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
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    Thanks for the diagram! Now I know what the farmers mean when they say they're getting it from both ends...
- saalweachter 10y ago
  Oh yeah, on this particular news story, it's definitely about Monsanto. Any sort of tampering with a regulatory body is a real black mark on them. When I say "Monsanto is a red herring", I mean that 90% of the time when people vilify Monsanto, they don't actually care about Monsanto. They're playing a shell game, "Monsanto is evil, therefore we should ban all GMO food crops." Hell, they barely care about glyphosate - they just don't like Roundup-Ready crops, because they're GMO. Realistically, Monsanto is a large (but not one of the largest) corporations, and some people who work there are trying to save the world, and some people who work there are trying to make all the money by any means necessary, and most of the people are somewhere in between, just working at a job. They've definitely done some things wrong, but they're no Uber.
  - fdupoo 10y ago
    I have to say that you seem to be uninformed about their practices. You do realize the implications of this very article that you are commenting on, right? Monsanto is no uber, is a misomer. Uber IS a Monsanto is a better characterization. Monsanto is obviously a very evil company. Look at this headline! They did the exaxt same thing with rGBH growth hormone.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> People are regularly making claims like "Monsanto has near monopoly on global food supply" Which is silly, Monsanto doesn't even sell food. What it does have is market power in the seed market for certain key global crops, and even more in the GM sector (e.g., 80%+ for GM corn, 90%+ for GM soy.) Monsanto's relationship to food is sort of like 1990s Microsoft's relation to computers.
- idiot_stick 10y ago
  >What it does have is market power in the seed market for certain key global crops, and even more in the GM sector (e.g., 80%+ for GM corn, 90%+ for GM soy. Fortunately, we don't need those seeds. They can try to patent and sue all they want; the people will prevail.
  - cat199 10y ago
    Though yes, I hope ultimately humanity will prevail - There are cases where farmers in adjacent plots were sued for using monsanto 'patented' plants without a licence because their crops cross-pollenated with Monsanto ones - further, if I recall correctly, Monsanto was illegally stealing crop samples or using some other form of shady tricks to perform the analysis required to determine the plants contained the 'patented' genes.. Also, much like bacterial resistance in other areas, if the monsanto GMO crops facillitate mutation such that their 'patented' genes are essentially required for a crop to be viable, over the long run, the argument that we 'dont need' the seeds becomes moot..
    - stereo 10y ago
      These lawsuits are a myth. See myth number 2: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/10/18/163034053/top-five-myths-of-genetically-modified-seeds-busted http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/10/18/163034053/top...
    - jcranmer 10y ago
      The closest case I recall is that some seed banks were mixing the Monsanto's seeds with other seeds (in a seed vault) and trying to argue that the resulting seed didn't need a license from Monsanto. Probably the main case that comes up is the Schmeiser case, where Schmeiser claims that his roundup-ready canola came from cross-pollination from a neighbor's field. Schmeiser's account does include the fact that he specifically tested the canola in question and found it to be resistant to Roundup--and subsequently used that in later crops. The court concluded that he had to know that at least some of his crop had the GMO canola, and that his deliberate use of it in the subsequent year constituted infringement.

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
- jessaustin 10y ago
  Thanks for the diagram! Now I know what the farmers mean when they say they're getting it from both ends...
saalweachter 10y ago
Oh yeah, on this particular news story, it's definitely about Monsanto. Any sort of tampering with a regulatory body is a real black mark on them. When I say "Monsanto is a red herring", I mean that 90% of the time when people vilify Monsanto, they don't actually care about Monsanto. They're playing a shell game, "Monsanto is evil, therefore we should ban all GMO food crops." Hell, they barely care about glyphosate - they just don't like Roundup-Ready crops, because they're GMO. Realistically, Monsanto is a large (but not one of the largest) corporations, and some people who work there are trying to save the world, and some people who work there are trying to make all the money by any means necessary, and most of the people are somewhere in between, just working at a job. They've definitely done some things wrong, but they're no Uber.
- fdupoo 10y ago
  I have to say that you seem to be uninformed about their practices. You do realize the implications of this very article that you are commenting on, right? Monsanto is no uber, is a misomer. Uber IS a Monsanto is a better characterization. Monsanto is obviously a very evil company. Look at this headline! They did the exaxt same thing with rGBH growth hormone.

dragonwriter 10y ago

> People are regularly making claims like "Monsanto has near monopoly on global food supply" Which is silly, Monsanto doesn't even sell food. What it does have is market power in the seed market for certain key global crops, and even more in the GM sector (e.g., 80%+ for GM corn, 90%+ for GM soy.) Monsanto's relationship to food is sort of like 1990s Microsoft's relation to computers.

idiot_stick 10y ago
>What it does have is market power in the seed market for certain key global crops, and even more in the GM sector (e.g., 80%+ for GM corn, 90%+ for GM soy. Fortunately, we don't need those seeds. They can try to patent and sue all they want; the people will prevail.
- cat199 10y ago
  Though yes, I hope ultimately humanity will prevail - There are cases where farmers in adjacent plots were sued for using monsanto 'patented' plants without a licence because their crops cross-pollenated with Monsanto ones - further, if I recall correctly, Monsanto was illegally stealing crop samples or using some other form of shady tricks to perform the analysis required to determine the plants contained the 'patented' genes.. Also, much like bacterial resistance in other areas, if the monsanto GMO crops facillitate mutation such that their 'patented' genes are essentially required for a crop to be viable, over the long run, the argument that we 'dont need' the seeds becomes moot..
  - stereo 10y ago
    These lawsuits are a myth. See myth number 2: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/10/18/163034053/top-five-myths-of-genetically-modified-seeds-busted http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/10/18/163034053/top...
  - jcranmer 10y ago
    The closest case I recall is that some seed banks were mixing the Monsanto's seeds with other seeds (in a seed vault) and trying to argue that the resulting seed didn't need a license from Monsanto. Probably the main case that comes up is the Schmeiser case, where Schmeiser claims that his roundup-ready canola came from cross-pollination from a neighbor's field. Schmeiser's account does include the fact that he specifically tested the canola in question and found it to be resistant to Roundup--and subsequently used that in later crops. The court concluded that he had to know that at least some of his crop had the GMO canola, and that his deliberate use of it in the subsequent year constituted infringement.