

Why the Climate Corporation Sold Itself to Monsanto - kunle
http://m.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/11/why-the-climate-corporation-sold-itself-to-monsanto.html?mobify=0

======
acqq
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-
herbicid...](http://www.monsanto.com/products/pages/agricultural-
herbicides.aspx)

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%20monsant...](http://www.gmeducation.org/latest-
news/p207220-the%20monsanto%20monopoly.html)

They also "control 95 percent of the market for insect and herbicide resistant
cotton traits."

[http://www.triplepundit.com/2009/11/the-monopoly-named-
monsa...](http://www.triplepundit.com/2009/11/the-monopoly-named-monsanto/)

~~~
bpodgursky
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.

~~~
e12e
Also, accq stated (my emphasis):

> their patented _plants_

Levering patent law to deny farmers the right to manage their own seed corn is
akin to privatizing water tables or charging for oxygen. Sure, it's a great
business model, but it's also immoral, evil and hard to see as something that
brings us as a global collective to a better place.

From the letter:

> Humans have genetically engineered seeds for 11,000 years, primarily through
> seed breeding, where we “got rid of” the traits we didn’t want and
> introduced the traits we did.

That doesn't mean that it's a good idea to do so, without a lot of thought
towards the common good. We're down a few hundred species of corns that can be
used to make flour -- and among the problems resulting for that is that we
don't have as many hardy species that can grow in subarctic regions. Another
problem of this "natural" monoculture is vulnerability to insects, pests and
diseases.

GMO, in and of itself, isn't evil -- it may be dangerous (messing with
biotopes is a risky business) -- and leaving it up to a for-profit
multinational seems like an extraordinarily bad idea.

~~~
climateanon
Relatively recently, almost all of the corn grown in the US was about 3 from
one of 3 common "immortal" varieties (~40/50 years ago.) The amount of seed
diversity that have been introduced by this breeding is actually substantial,
Monsanto is more or less combing the earth for diverse varieties of corn.

~~~
e12e
> Relatively recently, almost all of the corn grown in the US was about > 3
> from one of 3 common "immortal" varieties (~40/50 years ago.)

I'm not sure what you're trying to say, I suspect a typo? (I gather the gist
is that there used to be roughly three species of grain in the US, in the past
50 years -- down from what was introduced with the colonization some four
hundred years ago (note, I'm not being snarky about the colonization, but
AFAIK there didn't "use" to be _any_ grain grown in most of what is the US
today (not sure about California (old Mexico))).

Note, I said corn in my original post (which I gather means the same in
Scottish English, as it does in the Norwegian (almost) homonym) -- I _meant_
grain.

> The amount of seed diversity that have been introduced by this breeding is
> actually substantial,

I thought Monsato generally sold Roundup. Are you saying they've increased the
variety of corn (or grain) that is grown in the US substantially (and how much
of that is patent encumbered)?

> Monsanto is more or less combing the earth for diverse varieties of corn.

Sure they are. And they patent it (which is a failing on so many governmental
and international levels I find it painful to think about -- I'm all for
cataloguing species and genes, but granting patent on something you literally
found -- that's even worse than software patents).

Now, if all they did was donate some to the world seed bank, and allow
everyone to share in their (non gmo) discoveries -- I'd have no problem. But
the idea that you might be committing a felony by planting a carrot you bought
at the market is revolting.

~~~
climateanon
Yep, that was supposed to be

Sorry, late night! That first line was supposed to say:

> Relatively recently, almost all of the corn grown in the US was _from_ about
> of 3 the common "immortal" varieties (~40/50 years ago.)

Not 3 types of grain, 3 types of corn. People have been aggressively breeding
seed for a long time. Monsanto has offices all over the world and tries to
bring the best varieties of corn and breed them into a number of different
high performing lines. I know Monsanto breeders feel like the genetic
diversity argument is a little silly because they think they introduce a lot
of genetic diversity.

>Sure they are. And they patent it (which is a failing on so many governmental
and international levels I find it painful to think about -- I'm all for
cataloguing species and genes, but granting patent on something you literally
found -- that's even worse than software patents).

Typically what's patented is the GMOs, not the corn that is bred traditionally
(which is where > 50% of Monsanto's R&D budget goes to.)

>Now, if all they did was donate some to the world seed bank, and allow
everyone to share in their (non gmo) discoveries -- I'd have no problem. But
the idea that you might be committing a felony by planting a carrot you bought
at the market is revolting.

I agree. To my knowledge, it's only been farmers who had an agreement with
Monsanto and violated that who have been sued. See the Schmeiser/Monsanto case
for an example.

~~~
Fishkins
What agreement did Schmeiser have with Monsanto? He never interacted with
Monsanto to get the seeds, right? He intentionally collected and replanted
them, but that didn't involve any interaction with Monsanto, either. I guess
he purchased roundup from them. Does that involve some agreement? Or are you
saying there was an implicit agreement because he chose to live in a country
with patent laws he should have known he was violating? It does seem what he
did was illegal given our patent system (regardless of whether it should be),
but your wording seems to imply more than that.

------
ScottBurson
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?

~~~
HowardMei
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
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.

------
spiantino
"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
"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
... via a letter intended to be an internal communication? That seems a bit
round-about.

~~~
wavefunction
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.

------
e12e
"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
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?

------
tluyben2
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
> 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
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.

------
climateanon
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.

~~~
twic
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
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
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.

~~~
climateanon
They apparently have a > 90% approval rating amongst US Farmers for what it's
worth. They're generally seen to be a solid investment by most farmers. This
is what I'm told from internal statistics, so if it's entirely possible it's a
bald face lie.

If you have statistics to the contrary I'd love to bring it up our company
meeting and get back to you, personally or here.

Disclosure: I'm a Climate Corp Employee.

~~~
Glyptodon
Hey, Kool-Aid has a 90% approval rating among Kool-Aid drinkers...

When water problems start becoming more widespread, problems with much of the
current system will be more obvious, so to be fair this is an amazing hedge
for Monsanto.

I'm also conflating to some extent high-yield strains with GM strains, but the
overlap is pretty huge so consider it minor.

~~~
climateanon
I've been told that a lot of their work on drought resistance is having good
preliminary impacts on reducing water consumption. They've also purchased us
at least in part because of the work we're doing on Climate Pro which is a
tool to provide agricultural management for things like irrigation.

But again, give me studies and specific questions and I'll have answers from
either the CEO or COO by Friday.

------
mcv
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.

------
lingben
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
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
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
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.

------
BUGHUNTER
To get knowledge about some basic facts please read at least

[http://earthopensource.org/index.php/reports/gmo-myths-
and-t...](http://earthopensource.org/index.php/reports/gmo-myths-and-truths)

if you want to understand better, take some time and dig into
[http://gmwatch.org](http://gmwatch.org)

------
webreac
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.

------
acd
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-
corpor...](http://www.ibtimes.com/monsanto-named-2013s-most-evil-corporation-
new-poll-1300217)

~~~
Gusfoo_2
> 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.

