> First, the company had been selling Roundup for years without any problems. Second, and perhaps most important, the company's scientists had just spent more t

> First, the company had been selling Roundup for years without any problems. Second, and perhaps most important, the company's scientists had just spent more than a decade, and many millions of dollars, trying to create the Roundup-resistant plants that they desperately wanted -- soybeans and cotton and corn. It had been incredibly difficult. When I interviewed former Monsanto scientists for my book on biotech crops, one of them called it the company's "Manhattan Project." > Considering how hard it had been to create those crops, "the thinking was, it would be really difficult for weeds to become tolerant" to Roundup, says Rick Cole, who is now responsible for Monsanto's efforts to deal with the problem of resistant weeds. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/03/11/148290731/why-monsanto-thought-weeds-would-never-defeat-roundup https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/03/11/148290731/wh...