Amid world wide food shortages Monsanto wants to reassert its position in the global food chain.
/twilightearth.com | During a U.N. food summit in Rome last year, Monsanto announced ambitious goals to double yields on corn and soy by 2030. In a world with only so many food acres, the trend is being able to increase the yield of crops per acre. This is often accomplished by genetically modifying the seeds that Monsantos owns and patents.
Most of these seeds are created so that after planting, the resulting crops do not seed. This ensures that farmers have no more seeds to plant the following year, and are forced to buy again from Monsanto.
Now, the company is saying that they plan on doubling their profits by 2012, and as part of it’s marketing strategy, the company said it will also distribute seeds to African farmers “royalty-free.” Chief Executive Hugh Grant, said “Satisfying the demand curve is a great business opportunity.”
In other words, Monsanto plans to feed them for free the first year so they will have to come back for more.
Part of the problem though, is that Monsanto’s corn, isn’t meant to be eaten off the cob. Its most common use, as with soy, is to produce animal feed. So doubling yields is most likely to benefit affluent meat-eaters but is of little use to the malnourished.
Monsanto critics worry that the company will use its financial heft to pry open new markets in Africa and Asia for patented, transgenic crops.
“They are trying to exploit the food crisis as a means to win acceptance for their products,” says Bill Freese, a policy analyst at the Center for Food Safety, a Washington group that opposes GMOs. Pat Roy Mooney, executive director of Ottawa-based ETC Group, which monitors global agriculture policy, says the fear is that Monsanto “will use its muscle power to force governments—often fragile ones—to do what they want.”
As if having a monopoly on the worlds food supply isn’t enough, The New York Times reported: “Bioengineered crops seem to have a way of turning up where they are not wanted, through cross-pollination, intermingling of seed or other routes. StarLink corn, approved for animal feed but not for human consumption, ended up in taco shells and other groceries in 2000, prompting big recalls. Tiny amounts of corn engineered to produce a pharmaceutical got into 500,000 bushels of Nebraska soybeans. And engineered genes have apparently been detected in traditional varieties of corn growing in Mexico, the ancestral home of the crop and site of its greatest diversity, though the findings are disputed.”
Monsontos tendency toward “Frankenfood” or GMO foods is bad enough, but when they start to manipulate third world countries that have a serious problem with starvation, buy using that starvation as a business tool to leverage profits, that’s where we need to step in and say “enough is enough.”
Some will say that they are providing a service and that they should be paid for that service. That is how business works. I understand business. But I also understand that a company who is willing to endanger the health of the people who eat it’s food, force farmers to buy seeds from only them, sue farmers whose fields have become contaminated by their product, and leverage profits on the backs of the hungry, should be stopped.
What do you think?