Monsanto's Cruel, and Dangerous, Monopolization on American Farming (2008)

SlightlyLeftPad

Where does Monsanto stand now? It’s been many years since HackerNews was AstroTurfed by them.

KennyBlanken

I can't wait for all the usual Monsanto fanboys to start popping up with comments that show how wildly ignorant they are, with comments like "we need this tech to feed everyone!" 1)Hunger is entirely artificial and is a problem of US farm bill policy and trade policy (not to mention using food to produce fuel that provides less energy than the energy required to grow it.) We pay farmers to grow and then till the food into the ground. Or to ship it to a warehouse where it rots. Massive amounts of food are thrown away by supermarkets. The list goes on. 2)European farmers, who cannot use Roundup or a large swath of other pesticides and herbicides, *have greater per-acre productivity.

tptacek

These stories have all basically been debunked. Monsanto did sue farmers. But they did so in cases where they had evidence that those farmers were not only planting IP-encumbered seeds, but also spraying them with Roundup . You can't do that accidentally: if your seeds aren't genetically modified, Roundup kills your crop.

nativeit

This brings back some memories. I was an admin for “Millions Against Monsanto”, a group on the still-nascent Facebook. I ultimately left because the org was overtaken by conspiracy theorists who couldn’t stop yelling about aspartame and antivax nonsense long enough to focus on the very real, and very alarming, actions of Monsanto. At this point in time it was still not considered “normal” to patent biological materials. I’m a bit more pragmatic, since I’ve grown past my college idealism, but I still don’t believe seeds should be considered patentable.