Monsanto - Part II

Previously mentioned, the chemical giant Monsanto has created several varieties of genetically engineered -- transgenic -- crops and plans to introduce several if not dozens more that span all major cash crops. This is good business practice, as people will never stop having to be fed. Furthermore, the more of the market that Monsanto owns, the better a position it will be in to maximize its profits.

There are two significant mechanisms to consider. The first deals with the practices of Monsanto as a corporation. The second pertains to nature itself.

Monsanto must protect the profitability of its products. The company can't have people growing their transgenic crops without paying for them year in and year out. To control this, Monsanto requires farmers to sign a binding agreement against collecting seed -- seed that the plants naturally produce -- to secure and maximize annual sales. Of course the company can't be blamed, this is just good business practice. Monsanto, however takes the process a few steps farther.

In places such as India, Monsanto has bought up the majority of seed sellers to drive any possible competition out of existence, supplanting them with its own supply of seed at a significantly higher price. That there is so little natural seed further secures the capacity for Monsanto to maximize its market penetration.

The transgenic crops are, also, not guaranteed against diseases. When compared to non-transgene varieties, the Monsanto product is found to be susceptible to various kinds of plant cancers and infections. Cotton plants in India have been found to have a disease incidence rate notably higher than that measured in non-transgenic varieties. This may be the result of a misunderstanding of the manner in which the plant interacts with its environment, thus the transgene is doing more harm than good. Genetic engineering is, after all, only as smart as its engineers.

To further secure its bets against rivals, Monsanto has added nothing to its transgenic crops to prevent them from pollinating naturally-occurring varieties this tightening the grip of the Monsanto product and expanding its prevalence in all manners of growth. It is unclear whether or not Monsanto lays claim to crops pollinated and grown with their proprietary genes by accident. One thing is for certain, they do not lay claim to plants wherein natural mutations arise and shift the location of the transgenic strand of DNA producing monstrous results. Certainly, the crafty lawyers at Monsanto lay claim only to plants with an intact transgene and with the transgene in its engineered position.

The emergent properties of transgenic species remain under- or undocumented, as the capacity to engineer these species is new. Whether or not a spliced transgene will mutate to produce problematic traits is completely unknown and completely possible. Also possible, but much less likely, is the production of beneficent emergent qualities from mutations. This is less likely in transgenic, man-made, organisms because beneficent mutations themselves are rare. DNA alien to the organism that nature never saw fit to introduce is much more likely to create the conditions that are hallmark to other uncontrolled DNA insertions, most notably the inactivation or amplification of genes resulting in cancers. Organisms have usually developed the means to correct genetic errors, however, the insertion of a gene or genes from other species can supersede the cellular mechanism for such corrections.

Novel products, those that never existed before human ingenuity, have had a virtually perfect record of destructive environmental effects and persistence in the environment. This is a lesson that should have been learnt with petrochemistry. The pseudo-alchemy that is the petrochemicals industry has generated many things that have been warned against since antiquity as pursuits of magic. Should the chemists be burned at the stake as "wizards" the way witches were in days of old? Nope, they've got better lawyers, so we loyal subjects can't. Further, we must eat what they give us. This is in much the same manner that the petroleum and petrochemical industries tax generations not-yet-born with environmental sins of the present; non-biodegradable waste products, reliance on fossil-fuel energy, and pollution of the air, sea, and earth.

This is what will come of this situation, left unchecked: massive influence a corporate giant will buy up the rights to all crops. All farmers on all continents will have no option but to go to Monsanto for their seed. Seed collection, a practice from antiquity, from the beginning of agriculture itself, will be signed away as a quaint but unrealistic ideal given contemporary realities. RoundUp will never be made obsolete, as it is the institutional herbicide. The pollination process will spread transgenes into unexploited quarters. Monsanto will feed, thus control, the world.

Sounds unreasonable? Well, consider the current food shortage crises met by several countries, non-governmental organizations, and the United Nations Food Program. There is civil unrest in relatively stable countries because of rising food costs or simple food shortages. On the list of affected regions and countries: Bangladesh, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Egypt, Ethiopia, Haiti, India, Indonesia, Latin America, Mozambique, Pakistan, Myanmar, Philippines, Russia, Senegal, Somalia, North America, and Yemen.

Men with guns are beginning to take control of what remains, as has been done with oil supplies. The dire consequences of floods in Iowa are reverberating on corn and soy markets the world over. Further, the impact of lost corn grown for the purposes of ethanol extraction affects the "green fuel" movement. Food is the next resource to be deemed a matter of "national security" by nations around the world. This leaves only the most basic resource, water. If the Cochabamba Protests in Bolivia are any indication, a move to privatize water will be met with the fiercest public opposition.

Corporations, hardly stewards of the public good, are being given the keys to the survival of humanity. Bechtel was ousted from Cochabamba in 2000 when their IMF-mandated water privatization scheme failed. A response to claiming exclusive rights to food, whether by genetic engineering and economic influences or by brute force as exampled in Myanmar and elsewhere, must be as vehement as that of the Bolivians. However, such a response will not be seen until the needs of the influential are not being met. For now, it is only the weakest, the poorest, and the invisible that lead the charge. It is they that see the problems, act against them, and suffer our indifferent ability to feed corporate coffers in buying temporary solutions.