7 ms·

Why the Climate Corporation Sold Itself to Monsanto

42 points by kunle 13y ago

spiantino 13y ago
"From Galileo to Servetus to Mendel to Einstein. Revolutionary science has always incited visceral hatred on a mass scale." Okay I'm done here
- wavefunction 13y ago
  "Allow me to set your mind at ease with regards to potentially questionable judgement by comparing myself to some of the greatest thinkers of all-time." Honestly, I don't care what this guy does with his company, but it seems like a PR effort to salvage whatever reputation the Climate Company had built up before this acquisition by Monsanto.
  - milesskorpen 13y ago
    ... via a letter intended to be an internal communication? That seems a bit round-about.
    - wavefunction 13y ago
      I'm not claiming that this was some sort of nefarious plan. It seems like this sort of PR effort might be even more important internally than externally. Presumably there are some portion of employees that are also emotionally invested in the "grand mission" beyond just being a job and interesting work. In that situation, releasing the "internal communication" just a freebie.
  - jrkelly 13y ago
    To be fair - he was comparing Monsanto's technology to Mendel/Einstein, not himself. I think GMO crops can fairly be described as revolutionary tech.
- milesskorpen 13y ago
  The letter is internal and intended to pump the team up about the acquisition (at least, that's how I read it). No surprise there is hyperbolic language. I'm not sure that's a good reason to stop reading. Internal communications are always really interesting in that they provide some kind of window into the concerns of leadership — the line about family members ... or _recruiters_ ... reaching out to swipe people away from the "most evil company in the world" stood out to me.
- coldtea 13y ago
  You forgot Josef Mengele. I mean, talking about Monsanto and all, that would be a more apt analogy.
acqq 13y ago
So why is Monsanto genetically modifying plants? In their propaganda, they say "to be resistive." They don't say to what, or they mention everything but the main goal: to make their patented plants resistive to herbicides, the chemicals that kill all other plants, herbicides made by Monsanto: http://www.monsanto.com/products/pages/agricultural-herbicides.aspx http://www.monsanto.com/products/pages/agricultural-herbicid... Then they sell the farmers the seeds and the herbicides. Moreover, "More than 80% of US corn and more than 90% of soybeans planted each year are attributable to Monsanto and monopoly comes to mind." http://www.gmeducation.org/latest-news/p207220-the%20monsanto%20monopoly.html http://www.gmeducation.org/latest-news/p207220-the%20monsant... They also "control 95 percent of the market for insect and herbicide resistant cotton traits." http://www.triplepundit.com/2009/11/the-monopoly-named-monsanto/ http://www.triplepundit.com/2009/11/the-monopoly-named-monsa...
- bpodgursky 13y ago
  Bt-Corn is resistive to insects and has nothing to do with herbicides. The goal is to not require as many pesticides. Also, Roundup is no longer under patent protections (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundup_(herbicide) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundup_(herbicide)), so farmers can buy roundup from a variety of sources.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - acqq 13y ago
    Not being under patent protection makes glyphosate (originally patented for Roundup) even more present everywhere.
    - e12e 13y ago
      Not to mention why patent the pesticide if you can patent the seed that's resistant to the pesticide? Especially when your granted the ability to enforce that patent against "future generations".
  - 13y ago
climateanon 13y ago
I'm a climate corp. employee who's happy to answer questions. I'd prefer to remain anonymous, but would generally be cool with answering questions. Edit: I'll be back around tomorrow to answer questions.
- nowarninglabel 13y ago
  Do you see Friedberg as a visionary leader? Do you believe the work you are doing is changing the world for the better?
  - climateanon 13y ago
    > Do you see Friedberg as a visionary leader? No, not particularly honestly. He seems like a smart guy, a great salesman/CEO, and really really dedicated. I wouldn't say he has a visionary leader feel to be honest. He already made a good chunk of money w/Google. He's not in it for the money. > Do you believe the work you are doing is changing the world for the better? Yes, 40% of the world works in agriculture. In most of the world, bad weather can destroy your entire livelihood. If we can keep farmers from going bankrupt because of bad weather, I'd be okay with that being my life's work. I will likely get to directly improve the life of > a billion people, that's pretty amazing.
- twic 13y ago
  Were you unhappy about the acquisition by Monsanto before you read the letter, and did you feel differently having read it? If so, or not, why?
  - climateanon 13y ago
    A) Were you unhappy about the acquisition by Monsanto before you read the letter, Yes, and to some extent I still am unhappy about the acquisition. They have a pretty terrible reputation and that's definitely causes an impact. > and did you feel differently having read it? If so, or not, why? No, not really. All of the eng/product people went to Monsanto and got a chance to ask very blunt questions. There are definitely some things they do that I don't agree with (see their lobbying in seattle to oppose the anti-GMO labeling effort,) but overall I'm convinced that they're a vital part of the current food supply.
Glyptodon 13y ago
Whelp, I predict he will come to regret is decision. Either that or this is just a PR farce and it wasn't really about climate idealism to being with. Any company based around 'owning' biological progeny into subsequent generations on the basis of parents' genetics is too offensive and bile inducing to have a good side... If the company is successful I sure can't imagine this turning out any other way than Monsanto holding farmers hostage over the climate and weather just like they do now over seeds.
- jrkelly 13y ago
  Seed companies have been 'owning biological progeny' since the invention of hybrid seeds in the 1920s.
  - Glyptodon 13y ago
    With hybrid seeds you don't need arbitrary patent ownership to necessitate a producer, you naturally need companies operating in a near-perfect-competition situation to produce the seed as successive generations become genetically erratic and no longer cleanly express the 'hybrid vigor' if you attempt to reuse the seed. In fact much of these kinds of researches and developments originated in public/land grant universities and were part of a the ROI of public research and were successfully spread and marketed without single entity IP ownership (specialized hybridizing just isn't patentable). So your comment and claim is pretty much completely false.
    - jrkelly 13y ago
      I might not be following you, but it sounded like you were worried about farmers losing the right to save seeds due to Monsanto patents. Seed saving largely ended with hybrid seeds in the 20s. Is there something else you were trying to say?
      - twic 13y ago
        To be clear: it ended for maize, because that's the only crop routinely grown with hybrid seeds. Seed saving is still done for everything else.
lingben 13y ago
Now be honest, how many here wouldn't dance on the grave of their morality, just like Friedberg, for the sweet sum of $1 billion? Be honest.
- jrkelly 13y ago
  There is more complexity to the GMO / Monsanto issue than Food, Inc (and sadly the HN demographic) give credit. If you'd like to dig deeper there has been very balanced, good faith reporting from Nathanael Johnson on the topic: http://grist.org/author/nathanael-johnson/ http://grist.org/author/nathanael-johnson/
  - lingben 13y ago
    Let's not conflate the two issues here: 1) GMO or anti-GMO 2) the question of Monsanto's evilness (which has really nothing to do with the science of GMO's but their heavy-handed tactics and lobbying). Personally, I am on the side of the scientific consensus when it comes to GMO. But that doesn't mean that that gets Monsanto off the hook for being one of the vilest organizations on the planet right now.
rurounijones 13y ago
The problem with his letter (and those against Monsanto) is that it is a huge corp with a long history. It (as far as 'it' can be applied, Ship of Theseus territory here.) has done terrible things that anyone can cherry pick to make it the most evil company in the world; but it does great things that people can cherry pick to make it seem great! So people arguing about The Climate Corporation joining Monsanto will never agree because they each have their picked samples and there is no "Evil formulae" for determining the overall evilness of a company. Having said that, the fact that he is being offered $1 Billion before knowing about the company does make one wonder how much research he did into the dark sides of Monsanto of if he avoided / rationalized it to support his bias, even if subconciously. He comes out overall positive it is easy for people to accuse him of not researching the bad things.
e12e 13y ago
"In addition to “reading your emails” [when google introduced gmail, and funded it with ad-sense], Google was accused of storing all your email for the Federal government to read, and Google now CONTROLED ALL YOUR INFORMATION." Well, thankfully, that never happened!
- climateanon 13y ago
  I definitely LOL'ed at that. David's has been working pretty hard on the acquisition the last few months and may not have been watching the news lately... On the other hand, that should be proof that no marketing/PR person touched the email, I guess?
ScottBurson 13y ago
I found this remarkably unpersuasive -- one irrelevant factoid after another. Tellingly, the word "glyphosate" does not appear in it. And the part about the Monsanto Protection Act -- yes, I know that's not its official title -- is just a gem: protecting [farmers] from emerging state propositions that aren’t based on science or research ... because we've assumed the conclusion, that there couldn't be objections to GMOs that are based on science or research. I understand that GMOs have to be evaluated individually -- GMO technology per se is not necessarily dangerous. That said, I think there's sufficient evidence of the toxicity of glyphosate -- and that it remains in food grown with it -- that I strongly prefer not to eat such foods. Also -- we're talking about our food supply. Doesn't it stand to reason that the burden of proof should be on those who claim the resulting foods are safe, rather than on those who claim they are dangerous?
- twic 13y ago
  Indeed. I have absolutely no idea why this is on HN. The man's rant gives absolutely no impression that he understands the criticism of Monsanto - it's just 2655 words of absolute meaninglessness. I particularly liked the bit where he said "but people called Google evil!". Yeah. Yeah, they did, dude. Still do.
- HowardMei 13y ago
  Is it true the Monsanto's approach is threatening the genetic diversity [1] as @e12e mentioned? If it's true, we're going to rely on a much smaller gene pool for food production in next decades, which will cause severe genetic information loss and more vulnerability to new crop diseases. Another potato famine disaster but in global scale? Do we have any measure to protect the gene pool? Do we need something like Gene Tax to curb the genetic convergence? I've no idea how Carbon Tax helps solving the global warming issue, but it seems a good idea to invest some money to protect those 'useless' genes and make all reserved natural seeds open for public access. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_diversity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_diversity
  - BUGHUNTER 13y ago
    This is exactly the biggest problem that comes with commercial GMO plants. GMO companies are massively buying smaller seed producers and are actively reducing the food genpool, they are clearly out to control the global seed market - from a business perspective this absolutely makes sense. For future generations this is a total catastrophe - reducing the available food genpool is is the maximal possible damage you could apply to the human kind. This is not a theoretical scenario - india has lost big parts of it´s genpool for many food plants since the indian government is pushing gmo company products. The results are a complete disaster today, but this is just a foretaste what will happen on a global scale in a few years. Especially Africa, now beeing invaded by mega-industrial agro-projects backed by hedgefonds, will be hurt massively in the coming years. Local seeds are of immeasurable value - it is conserved knowledge of hundreds, sometimes thousands of years that is deleted forever, when a variety disappears. This are not "failed experiments of nature" that vanish not able to survive the test of life - instead we are actively eradicating very good functioning and over a very long time optimized varieties, just because of some short-term experiment, that usually fails, and was only motivated by short-term profit-think. GMOs are not "evil" or "good" - it´s the extremely short-sighted and brutally enforced business-model that translates the totally stupid short-term profit-think into very destructive consequences for global biodiversity.
tluyben2 13y ago
What I have read (and granted, that's in main stream news) are two things 1) the unsure long term effect of the particular techniques Monsanto use 2) the forcing of farmers to use the products they make. For 2) there seem to be laws passed (in EU recently) for farmers to only allow Monsanto (and a handful of other vendors) their seeds; they cannot use their own seeds anymore. Is that correct? Because 1) is a choice (IF 2 is not true that is); for instance I grow my own vegetables and fruit year round with my own seeds (by now) so I don't particularly care about 1) unless it would jump to my plants. I'm not sure what the chance is of that as all my neighbors for miles and miles around use their own seeds. But if 2) is, even slightly, true then they should just boycot / eradicate this company and all Climate Corp employees should leave this instant imho. That's why I think it cannot be true or at least not the total truth; who would allow that to happen? So I guess it's a media-enhanced dark side which happens but is not common? I cannot really find objective info on that.
- DanBC 13y ago
  > 2) there seem to be laws passed (in EU recently) for farmers to only allow Monsanto (and a handful of other vendors) their seeds; they cannot use their own seeds anymore. I would love to see some references for this. I know that there is a list of seeds that can be used for commercial purposes. That means that people cannot sell "heritage seeds". One way to work around that is to set up a subscription club. Membership gets you a newsletter and membership of the club. And they send free heritage seeds every month. http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/hsl/ http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/hsl/ Until now the rules have been relaxed for amateur seeds so other places just sell the seed direct. http://www.realseeds.co.uk/ http://www.realseeds.co.uk/ Here's some information about the EU law, and about proposed changes to it. The source is obviously biased. http://www.realseeds.co.uk/seedlaw2.html http://www.realseeds.co.uk/seedlaw2.html
  - mcv 13y ago
    The big problem with charging money for the approval of all kinds of seeds, is that it makes large scale commercial seeds a lot more attractive than smaller scale "heritage" seeds, and that creates a drive towards monoculture. If you ask me, projects to preserve seed diversity should be subsidized, rather than being charges the same costs as big commercial seeds.
acd 13y ago
The same company which makes RoundUP tolerant seeds also suing farmers in the US if they use their own seeds not bought from Monsanto also made Agent Orange pesticide agent during the Vietnam war. http://www.ibtimes.com/monsanto-named-2013s-most-evil-corporation-new-poll-1300217 http://www.ibtimes.com/monsanto-named-2013s-most-evil-corpor...
- Gusfoo_2 13y ago
  > The same company which makes RoundUP tolerant seeds also suing farmers in the US if they use their own seeds not bought from Monsanto Yeah, that actually never happened and is a persistent urban myth.
webreac 13y ago
I am always surprised to see that the stance toward Monsanto is so different in US than in France. In France, we have quite often TV documentaries about ecology and monsanto. Almost everybody in France associates Monsanto with devil.
mcv 13y ago
The letter makes the same mistake it points out in Monsanto critics: lack of sources. Basically, his argument amounts to: "I'm a good and smart person. Trust me." But his misrepresentation of the Galileo situation doesn't instill much trust in me. It is true that a lot of companies get called "evil" when the reality is a lot more complex and nuanced, but that observation by itself doesn't automatically make Monsanto one of the good guys. It is interesting that Monsanto apparently got rid of their chemical arm. Does that mean they don't rely on the sale of Roundup anymore? The claim that we've been using genetic engineering for centuries is one I see a lot, and it's false. As he points out immediately after, we have not been introducing totally new genes that never existed before. We've been breeding existing organisms and selecting for existing traits. It is the fact that it's a much slower process that also makes it safer; we get to see the effects of this breeding on a small scale before they get introduced on a wide scale. Monsanto's GMOs on the other hand often have a lot of unintended and unexpected side effects once released into existing ecosystems. (Like pests developing resistance to pesticides because those pesticides are not permanently available.) I understands he wants to continue to believe he's a good person while still taking that billion dollars, but I need a bit more evidence before I'm willing to accept Monsanto as a positive influence.
BUGHUNTER 13y ago
To get knowledge about some basic facts please read at least http://earthopensource.org/index.php/reports/gmo-myths-and-truths http://earthopensource.org/index.php/reports/gmo-myths-and-t... if you want to understand better, take some time and dig into http://gmwatch.org http://gmwatch.org

42 points by kunle 13y ago

"From Galileo to Servetus to Mendel to Einstein. Revolutionary science has always incited visceral hatred on a mass scale." Okay I'm done here

wavefunction 13y ago
"Allow me to set your mind at ease with regards to potentially questionable judgement by comparing myself to some of the greatest thinkers of all-time." Honestly, I don't care what this guy does with his company, but it seems like a PR effort to salvage whatever reputation the Climate Company had built up before this acquisition by Monsanto.
- milesskorpen 13y ago
  ... via a letter intended to be an internal communication? That seems a bit round-about.
  - wavefunction 13y ago
    I'm not claiming that this was some sort of nefarious plan. It seems like this sort of PR effort might be even more important internally than externally. Presumably there are some portion of employees that are also emotionally invested in the "grand mission" beyond just being a job and interesting work. In that situation, releasing the "internal communication" just a freebie.
- jrkelly 13y ago
  To be fair - he was comparing Monsanto's technology to Mendel/Einstein, not himself. I think GMO crops can fairly be described as revolutionary tech.
milesskorpen 13y ago
The letter is internal and intended to pump the team up about the acquisition (at least, that's how I read it). No surprise there is hyperbolic language. I'm not sure that's a good reason to stop reading. Internal communications are always really interesting in that they provide some kind of window into the concerns of leadership — the line about family members ... or _recruiters_ ... reaching out to swipe people away from the "most evil company in the world" stood out to me.
coldtea 13y ago
You forgot Josef Mengele. I mean, talking about Monsanto and all, that would be a more apt analogy.

acqq 13y ago

So why is Monsanto genetically modifying plants? In their propaganda, they say "to be resistive." They don't say to what, or they mention everything but the main goal: to make their patented plants resistive to herbicides, the chemicals that kill all other plants, herbicides made by Monsanto: http://www.monsanto.com/products/pages/agricultural-herbicides.aspx http://www.monsanto.com/products/pages/agricultural-herbicid... Then they sell the farmers the seeds and the herbicides. Moreover, "More than 80% of US corn and more than 90% of soybeans planted each year are attributable to Monsanto and monopoly comes to mind." http://www.gmeducation.org/latest-news/p207220-the%20monsanto%20monopoly.html http://www.gmeducation.org/latest-news/p207220-the%20monsant... They also "control 95 percent of the market for insect and herbicide resistant cotton traits." http://www.triplepundit.com/2009/11/the-monopoly-named-monsanto/ http://www.triplepundit.com/2009/11/the-monopoly-named-monsa...

bpodgursky 13y ago
Bt-Corn is resistive to insects and has nothing to do with herbicides. The goal is to not require as many pesticides. Also, Roundup is no longer under patent protections (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundup_(herbicide) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundup_(herbicide)), so farmers can buy roundup from a variety of sources.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- acqq 13y ago
  Not being under patent protection makes glyphosate (originally patented for Roundup) even more present everywhere.
  - e12e 13y ago
    Not to mention why patent the pesticide if you can patent the seed that's resistant to the pesticide? Especially when your granted the ability to enforce that patent against "future generations".
- 13y ago

climateanon 13y ago

I'm a climate corp. employee who's happy to answer questions. I'd prefer to remain anonymous, but would generally be cool with answering questions. Edit: I'll be back around tomorrow to answer questions.

nowarninglabel 13y ago
Do you see Friedberg as a visionary leader? Do you believe the work you are doing is changing the world for the better?
- climateanon 13y ago
  > Do you see Friedberg as a visionary leader? No, not particularly honestly. He seems like a smart guy, a great salesman/CEO, and really really dedicated. I wouldn't say he has a visionary leader feel to be honest. He already made a good chunk of money w/Google. He's not in it for the money. > Do you believe the work you are doing is changing the world for the better? Yes, 40% of the world works in agriculture. In most of the world, bad weather can destroy your entire livelihood. If we can keep farmers from going bankrupt because of bad weather, I'd be okay with that being my life's work. I will likely get to directly improve the life of > a billion people, that's pretty amazing.
twic 13y ago
Were you unhappy about the acquisition by Monsanto before you read the letter, and did you feel differently having read it? If so, or not, why?
- climateanon 13y ago
  A) Were you unhappy about the acquisition by Monsanto before you read the letter, Yes, and to some extent I still am unhappy about the acquisition. They have a pretty terrible reputation and that's definitely causes an impact. > and did you feel differently having read it? If so, or not, why? No, not really. All of the eng/product people went to Monsanto and got a chance to ask very blunt questions. There are definitely some things they do that I don't agree with (see their lobbying in seattle to oppose the anti-GMO labeling effort,) but overall I'm convinced that they're a vital part of the current food supply.

Glyptodon 13y ago

Whelp, I predict he will come to regret is decision. Either that or this is just a PR farce and it wasn't really about climate idealism to being with. Any company based around 'owning' biological progeny into subsequent generations on the basis of parents' genetics is too offensive and bile inducing to have a good side... If the company is successful I sure can't imagine this turning out any other way than Monsanto holding farmers hostage over the climate and weather just like they do now over seeds.

jrkelly 13y ago
Seed companies have been 'owning biological progeny' since the invention of hybrid seeds in the 1920s.
- Glyptodon 13y ago
  With hybrid seeds you don't need arbitrary patent ownership to necessitate a producer, you naturally need companies operating in a near-perfect-competition situation to produce the seed as successive generations become genetically erratic and no longer cleanly express the 'hybrid vigor' if you attempt to reuse the seed. In fact much of these kinds of researches and developments originated in public/land grant universities and were part of a the ROI of public research and were successfully spread and marketed without single entity IP ownership (specialized hybridizing just isn't patentable). So your comment and claim is pretty much completely false.
  - jrkelly 13y ago
    I might not be following you, but it sounded like you were worried about farmers losing the right to save seeds due to Monsanto patents. Seed saving largely ended with hybrid seeds in the 20s. Is there something else you were trying to say?
    - twic 13y ago
      To be clear: it ended for maize, because that's the only crop routinely grown with hybrid seeds. Seed saving is still done for everything else.

lingben 13y ago

Now be honest, how many here wouldn't dance on the grave of their morality, just like Friedberg, for the sweet sum of $1 billion? Be honest.

jrkelly 13y ago
There is more complexity to the GMO / Monsanto issue than Food, Inc (and sadly the HN demographic) give credit. If you'd like to dig deeper there has been very balanced, good faith reporting from Nathanael Johnson on the topic: http://grist.org/author/nathanael-johnson/ http://grist.org/author/nathanael-johnson/
- lingben 13y ago
  Let's not conflate the two issues here: 1) GMO or anti-GMO 2) the question of Monsanto's evilness (which has really nothing to do with the science of GMO's but their heavy-handed tactics and lobbying). Personally, I am on the side of the scientific consensus when it comes to GMO. But that doesn't mean that that gets Monsanto off the hook for being one of the vilest organizations on the planet right now.

rurounijones 13y ago

The problem with his letter (and those against Monsanto) is that it is a huge corp with a long history. It (as far as 'it' can be applied, Ship of Theseus territory here.) has done terrible things that anyone can cherry pick to make it the most evil company in the world; but it does great things that people can cherry pick to make it seem great! So people arguing about The Climate Corporation joining Monsanto will never agree because they each have their picked samples and there is no "Evil formulae" for determining the overall evilness of a company. Having said that, the fact that he is being offered $1 Billion before knowing about the company does make one wonder how much research he did into the dark sides of Monsanto of if he avoided / rationalized it to support his bias, even if subconciously. He comes out overall positive it is easy for people to accuse him of not researching the bad things.

e12e 13y ago

"In addition to “reading your emails” [when google introduced gmail, and funded it with ad-sense], Google was accused of storing all your email for the Federal government to read, and Google now CONTROLED ALL YOUR INFORMATION." Well, thankfully, that never happened!

climateanon 13y ago
I definitely LOL'ed at that. David's has been working pretty hard on the acquisition the last few months and may not have been watching the news lately... On the other hand, that should be proof that no marketing/PR person touched the email, I guess?

ScottBurson 13y ago

I found this remarkably unpersuasive -- one irrelevant factoid after another. Tellingly, the word "glyphosate" does not appear in it. And the part about the Monsanto Protection Act -- yes, I know that's not its official title -- is just a gem: protecting [farmers] from emerging state propositions that aren’t based on science or research ... because we've assumed the conclusion, that there couldn't be objections to GMOs that are based on science or research. I understand that GMOs have to be evaluated individually -- GMO technology per se is not necessarily dangerous. That said, I think there's sufficient evidence of the toxicity of glyphosate -- and that it remains in food grown with it -- that I strongly prefer not to eat such foods. Also -- we're talking about our food supply. Doesn't it stand to reason that the burden of proof should be on those who claim the resulting foods are safe, rather than on those who claim they are dangerous?

twic 13y ago
Indeed. I have absolutely no idea why this is on HN. The man's rant gives absolutely no impression that he understands the criticism of Monsanto - it's just 2655 words of absolute meaninglessness. I particularly liked the bit where he said "but people called Google evil!". Yeah. Yeah, they did, dude. Still do.
HowardMei 13y ago
Is it true the Monsanto's approach is threatening the genetic diversity [1] as @e12e mentioned? If it's true, we're going to rely on a much smaller gene pool for food production in next decades, which will cause severe genetic information loss and more vulnerability to new crop diseases. Another potato famine disaster but in global scale? Do we have any measure to protect the gene pool? Do we need something like Gene Tax to curb the genetic convergence? I've no idea how Carbon Tax helps solving the global warming issue, but it seems a good idea to invest some money to protect those 'useless' genes and make all reserved natural seeds open for public access. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_diversity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_diversity
- BUGHUNTER 13y ago
  This is exactly the biggest problem that comes with commercial GMO plants. GMO companies are massively buying smaller seed producers and are actively reducing the food genpool, they are clearly out to control the global seed market - from a business perspective this absolutely makes sense. For future generations this is a total catastrophe - reducing the available food genpool is is the maximal possible damage you could apply to the human kind. This is not a theoretical scenario - india has lost big parts of it´s genpool for many food plants since the indian government is pushing gmo company products. The results are a complete disaster today, but this is just a foretaste what will happen on a global scale in a few years. Especially Africa, now beeing invaded by mega-industrial agro-projects backed by hedgefonds, will be hurt massively in the coming years. Local seeds are of immeasurable value - it is conserved knowledge of hundreds, sometimes thousands of years that is deleted forever, when a variety disappears. This are not "failed experiments of nature" that vanish not able to survive the test of life - instead we are actively eradicating very good functioning and over a very long time optimized varieties, just because of some short-term experiment, that usually fails, and was only motivated by short-term profit-think. GMOs are not "evil" or "good" - it´s the extremely short-sighted and brutally enforced business-model that translates the totally stupid short-term profit-think into very destructive consequences for global biodiversity.

tluyben2 13y ago

What I have read (and granted, that's in main stream news) are two things 1) the unsure long term effect of the particular techniques Monsanto use 2) the forcing of farmers to use the products they make. For 2) there seem to be laws passed (in EU recently) for farmers to only allow Monsanto (and a handful of other vendors) their seeds; they cannot use their own seeds anymore. Is that correct? Because 1) is a choice (IF 2 is not true that is); for instance I grow my own vegetables and fruit year round with my own seeds (by now) so I don't particularly care about 1) unless it would jump to my plants. I'm not sure what the chance is of that as all my neighbors for miles and miles around use their own seeds. But if 2) is, even slightly, true then they should just boycot / eradicate this company and all Climate Corp employees should leave this instant imho. That's why I think it cannot be true or at least not the total truth; who would allow that to happen? So I guess it's a media-enhanced dark side which happens but is not common? I cannot really find objective info on that.

DanBC 13y ago
> 2) there seem to be laws passed (in EU recently) for farmers to only allow Monsanto (and a handful of other vendors) their seeds; they cannot use their own seeds anymore. I would love to see some references for this. I know that there is a list of seeds that can be used for commercial purposes. That means that people cannot sell "heritage seeds". One way to work around that is to set up a subscription club. Membership gets you a newsletter and membership of the club. And they send free heritage seeds every month. http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/hsl/ http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/hsl/ Until now the rules have been relaxed for amateur seeds so other places just sell the seed direct. http://www.realseeds.co.uk/ http://www.realseeds.co.uk/ Here's some information about the EU law, and about proposed changes to it. The source is obviously biased. http://www.realseeds.co.uk/seedlaw2.html http://www.realseeds.co.uk/seedlaw2.html
- mcv 13y ago
  The big problem with charging money for the approval of all kinds of seeds, is that it makes large scale commercial seeds a lot more attractive than smaller scale "heritage" seeds, and that creates a drive towards monoculture. If you ask me, projects to preserve seed diversity should be subsidized, rather than being charges the same costs as big commercial seeds.

acd 13y ago

The same company which makes RoundUP tolerant seeds also suing farmers in the US if they use their own seeds not bought from Monsanto also made Agent Orange pesticide agent during the Vietnam war. http://www.ibtimes.com/monsanto-named-2013s-most-evil-corporation-new-poll-1300217 http://www.ibtimes.com/monsanto-named-2013s-most-evil-corpor...

Gusfoo_2 13y ago
> The same company which makes RoundUP tolerant seeds also suing farmers in the US if they use their own seeds not bought from Monsanto Yeah, that actually never happened and is a persistent urban myth.

webreac 13y ago

I am always surprised to see that the stance toward Monsanto is so different in US than in France. In France, we have quite often TV documentaries about ecology and monsanto. Almost everybody in France associates Monsanto with devil.

mcv 13y ago

The letter makes the same mistake it points out in Monsanto critics: lack of sources. Basically, his argument amounts to: "I'm a good and smart person. Trust me." But his misrepresentation of the Galileo situation doesn't instill much trust in me. It is true that a lot of companies get called "evil" when the reality is a lot more complex and nuanced, but that observation by itself doesn't automatically make Monsanto one of the good guys. It is interesting that Monsanto apparently got rid of their chemical arm. Does that mean they don't rely on the sale of Roundup anymore? The claim that we've been using genetic engineering for centuries is one I see a lot, and it's false. As he points out immediately after, we have not been introducing totally new genes that never existed before. We've been breeding existing organisms and selecting for existing traits. It is the fact that it's a much slower process that also makes it safer; we get to see the effects of this breeding on a small scale before they get introduced on a wide scale. Monsanto's GMOs on the other hand often have a lot of unintended and unexpected side effects once released into existing ecosystems. (Like pests developing resistance to pesticides because those pesticides are not permanently available.) I understands he wants to continue to believe he's a good person while still taking that billion dollars, but I need a bit more evidence before I'm willing to accept Monsanto as a positive influence.

BUGHUNTER 13y ago

To get knowledge about some basic facts please read at least http://earthopensource.org/index.php/reports/gmo-myths-and-truths http://earthopensource.org/index.php/reports/gmo-myths-and-t... if you want to understand better, take some time and dig into http://gmwatch.org http://gmwatch.org