The Green Machine: Monsanto Co's Transgenic Products Tightens Their Control of Seed Market

Commercial hybrids were first developed in the 1930s, and were protected both by biology (hybrids don't breed "true") and by trade laws. In the 1980s, Supreme Court decisions permitting patents on DNA offered companies extra protection whether they genetically modified non-hybrid crops, like soybeans, or hybrids, like corn. Today, use of transgenic seeds is increasing exponentially, from 4 million acres planted in 1996 to 70 million acres in 1998. In 1997, sales of transgenic crops totaled $4 billion, and the worldwide market is projected to double by 2002. Monsanto, which has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in genomics R&D, insists that farmers who save and replant "self-reproducing" transgenic seeds are engaging in copyright infringement. The company requires U.S. farmers to sign a contract forbidding them to save seed; any farmers subsequently caught will have to pay royalties and have their farms inspected for five years.

The planting methods associated with monoculture biotech crops tend to increase susceptibility to weeds and the need for herbicide, which not only threatens the environment but can have the unintended effect of killing the crop plants. Monsanto, however, has turned this drawback of the green revolution into a distinct advantage. After a 12-year search, Monsanto found a bacterium containing a gene immune to the company's herbicide Roundup. By introducing this gene into its seeds, Monsanto created crops immune to its own herbicide, ensuring demand for both products. Today, Roundup and Roundup Ready seeds account for at least a fifth of Monsanto's $8.5 billion annual sales, and the market is growing: in 1996, only 1 million acres of Roundup Ready soy were planted; this year at least half of the U.S.'s 70-million-acre soybean crop will be Roundup Ready. To the price of each bag of soy, Monsanto adds a $6.50 "technology fee," which will earn the company almost $300 million in soy royalties next year--provided it keeps suing seed-saving farmers.

Monsanto likes to bill itself as the answer to farmers' problems and the solution to the world's food crisis. Although transgenic crop seeds can cost as much as $32 more per bag than old-fashioned varieties, U.S. farmers have proved willing customers as long as the seeds result in higher yields or reduce the need for expensive pesticides and fertilizers. Monsanto's Bollgard cotton, YieldGard corn, and NewLeaf potatoes are engineered to be insect-resistant. And this is only the first wave. In 1997 alone, there were 10,500 patent applications for biotechnology traits, and companies envision a bright future of customized plants that produce high-nutrient animal feed, colored cotton, drugs, and even plastics. Potatoes that contain a vaccine for hepatitis B already exist, while Monsanto dreams of drought-proof crops and high-starch potatoes that will absorb less oil while cooking.

Such dreams could turn into ecological nightmares. Notable biologists worry that the lack of crop diversity associated with corporate farming combined with transgenic advances could result in a reprise of the Irish potato famine or the U.S. corn blight of the 1970s. Monsanto calls such fears "fantasies," but some of its crops have already faced significant problems. In 1996, the company had to recall 60,000 bags of canola seeds that contained an unapproved gene. In 1998, Monsanto had to settle with Mississippi farmers whose Roundup Ready cotton crop suffered from deformed bolls and bolls that fell off early. A 1998 Nature study found that transgenic traits were 20 times more likely to "flow" to other plants by cross-pollination, which could result in the evolution of weeds that can resist herbicide. Similarly, bugs feeding on the insect-resistant corn, cotton, and potatoes--which Monsanto created by splicing a gene from a pest-killing bacterium (Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt, normally sprayed over crops) into seeds--could survive and breed progeny resistant to the pesticide, much like the multiantibiotic-resistant bacteria that plague hospitals. Swiss government researchers found that Bt crops killed beneficial insects when the toxin jumped the food chain--failing, for example, to kill the African cottonworm but killing the beneficial green lacewings that ate the cottonworms. Monsanto says the solution to these problems is "proper crop management." The EPA "requires" farmers to prevent resistance by leaving large insect refuges un-Bt-protected, but it expects Monsanto to prod them to do so "through grower agreements and education." An unenforceable, corporate-run compliance program seems unlikely to work. Farmers want to minimize crop loss to bugs, the Bt "advantage" for which they pay Monsanto up to $32 a bag. Barring stricter regulations, farmers have little incentive to set aside acreage, since they'll earn less and superbugs bred in their competitors' fields will migrate to their own.

Just as Monsanto's products lead to agricultural homogeneity, the company's policies encourage farmers to act in lockstep--the so-called level playing field referred to here. In 1996, when Monsanto hired five full-time inspectors to hunt down seed pirates, farmers and seed distributors lined up to turn in their competitors and former customers. "Farmers are being turned into criminals and rural communities are becoming corporate police states," noted Hope Shand of RAFI. "We call it bioserfdom." Thus far, Monsanto has investigated at least 500 farmers but won't disclose the amount of back royalties it has recovered, which it donates to agricultural college scholarship funds. Such generosity only goes to show that the real point of the investigations and their inherent legal fees (as well as an extensive ad campaign reminding farmers of the penalties outlined in this letter) is deterrence, not recouping losses.

Between 1996 and 1997, Monsanto's sales of agricultural products increased 22 percent, largely due to a boom in Roundup sales, especially in the U.S., Brazil, and Argentina. Monsanto attributes this increase to several factors, only one of which is the advent of Roundup Ready seeds. Company studies show that Roundup Ready crops require less herbicide, because farmers can wait to see where weeds develop before spraying. But given the magic bullet of herbicide-resistance, farmers might instead spray more liberally, eliminating weeds that they might otherwise tolerate for fear of damaging their crops. In any case, Roundup Ready seeds are critical to Monsanto's long-term herbicide sales. The patents protecting glyphosate (Roundup's active ingredient) expired in various countries in 1991 and will expire in the U.S. in 2000. No patent? No problem! Monsanto requires farmers using Roundup Ready seeds and a glyphosate-based herbicide to sign a contract promising to use only Roundup. Last June, Monsanto sued to stop a rival company, Zeneca, from testing Touchdown, a glyphosate-based herbicide it is developing, on Roundup Ready soybeans. Zeneca's countersuit claims restraint of trade.

Not on the attached map: the 48 Superfund sites where the EPA named Monsanto a "potential responsible party." Monsanto once manufactured virtually all the world's PCBs--as well as Agent Orange. But these days, "life sciences" are more profitable than chemical weapons, so, in 1997, Monsanto spun off its chemical division and has, since 1996, spent $6 billion acquiring seed companies like Cargill International Seed ($1.4 billion) and DeKalb Genetics ($2.3 billion). Rival DuPont followed suit by spinning off its petroleum division, Conoco, and forming a $1.7 billion "research alliance" with Pioneer Hi-Bred International, the world's largest seed company. One of the goals of these mergers is the acquisition of germplasm, the patented parent seed from which hybrids are bred. Prices are often exorbitant. The world's largest agrochemical company, Aventis, recently bought Plant Genetic Systems, a Dutch company with sales of $30 million, for $730 million, the $700 million difference due to PGS's patents on strains of corn and wheat.

Monsanto's headquarters is in St. Louis, but the real locus of its power is in Washington, D.C., where a revolving door exists between Monsanto's 42 lobbyists and U.S. regulatory agencies. In 1992, when the FDA wrote its policy on transgenic foods, it ruled that consumer labeling and safety testing were unneeded unless the genetic modification altered the nutritional content or posed a known health risk. The policy was written by an FDA deputy commissioner who had worked for Monsanto for seven years, and who does so again. In 1994, when Monsanto introduced Bovine Growth Hormone, the FDA warned retailers not to label milk as being rBGH-free. Studies dispute whether there is a link between rBGH milk and cancer, but Dr. Samuel Epstein of the University of Illinois School of Public Health notes that "with the complicity of the FDA, the entire nation is currently being subjected to an experiment involving large-scale adulteration of an age-old dietary staple." Thirty transgenic foods used in thousands of products are now available but the FDA has done little to research their possible health effects. Last year, Monsanto (whose board includes former U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor) pressured the U.S. to threaten to cancel a trade agreement with New Zealand when the country said it would test and label transgenic food; direct pressure from Clinton, Gore, and four cabinet members also persuaded France to import Monsanto's corn. The U.S. plans to petition the World Trade Organization if Europe introduces a compulsory labeling system, saying it constitutes a non-tariff trade barrier. Monsanto hired Clinton pollster Stan Greenberg and launched a $1.6 million ad campaign entitled "Let the Harvest Begin" to convince Europeans that it will solve the world's food crisis. A U.N. African delegation called the ads "totally distorting and misleading," and The Ecologist devoted an issue to Monsanto. The magazine's British printer, however, shredded the print run, fearing that the notoriously litigious company would sue for libel.

As seed sales expand beyond U.S. borders, it will be impossible for Monsanto to guard its patents by making spot inspections of fields. So it has found the ultimate protection by moving to acquire Delta & Pine Land, which, along with the USDA, holds the U.S. patent on "Terminator Technology," a genetic alteration that causes seeds to die after a single season. If the deal goes through, Monsanto may patent Terminator in 77 countries to prevent poor farmers from breeding patented seeds. The U.N. African delegation says that "the only aim of its technology is to force farmers back to the Monsanto shop every year" and that it will "destroy an age-old practice of local seed saving that forms the basis of food security in our countries" and "undermine our capacity to feed ourselves." Thus far only India has banned the import of the "suicide seeds." U.S. Army War College strategists have discussed the possibility that Trojan horse technologies like Terminator could be developed so that plants could injure or kill themselves on demand--Kamikaze crops! But even if biogenetic warfare is not waged, biologists worry that were Terminator-type modifications to "flow," non-transgenic varieties of corn, soy, wheat, and rice could eventually become sterile, affording-companies like Monsanto the ultimate monopoly.