
Why the Climate Corporation sold itself to Monsanto - yapcguy
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/11/why-the-climate-corporation-sold-itself-to-monsanto.html
======
zarriak
I really dislike his attack on Google, yes they are occasionally evil, but
they don't own the FCC like Monsanto owns the FDA.It doesn't matter how many
people you have in office as long as the head of the government body
established to regulate you is run by one of you former employees. Also, why
would Monsanto want to sue their consumers, their policies allow for such
small margins that the farmers are worth almost nothing.

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Daishiman
It seems odd to me that such an appeal to reason would have a prelude of
several paragraphs of emotional rhetoric, with no references to the science
that backs up his position.

It also strikes me as amazingly, incredibly naive, the idea that a small,
newly-acquired business unit would have any say in how the rest of the
corporation operates.

For so much rationality, the clear strawman of attacking anti-GMO positions as
purely anti-science is also striking; there are very well-reasoned arguments
that go beyond the genetic modifications, which instead talk about genetic IP,
food sovereignty, the atrociously excessive use of pesticides that GMO seeds
promote, and the destruction of traditional methods for preserving soil
quality in place of monocultures that devastate topsoil to the point of
complete dependence on Monsanto's products to keep the land productive.

~~~
sampo
> _the atrociously excessive use of pesticides that GMO seeds promote_

I would appreciate if you could provide a link or a reference for that claim?

~~~
Daishiman
Soy monoculture in Argentina has destroyed soil quality, and gliphosate-
resistant GMO seeds have motivated the large producers to spray
indiscriminately to maximize returns.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-
america-18997297](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-18997297)

[http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2013/10/21/photos-
argen...](http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2013/10/21/photos-argentina-
agrochemicals/6446/)

~~~
spikels
Neither of your links offer support for your statements. As the BBC article
notes glyphosate is considered one of the "most environmentally friendly" farm
chemicals by the World Health Organisation (glyphosate breakers down in water
unlike older herbicides). GMOs and Monsanto are not even mentioned in the BBC
article. Your second story is a photo essay with sad pictures but very little
actual information. It is much more likely if farm chemicals did cause any of
these illnesses it was older pesticides that are known to be much more
dangerous.

Do you have better evidence than this? If not why are you so sure you are
correct?

~~~
Daishiman
A paper examining residual glyphosate on soybean crops with well-researched
references to the health impacts on crops and humans, as well as analysis of
additives to pesticides.

[http://www.testbiotech.de/sites/default/files/TBT_Background...](http://www.testbiotech.de/sites/default/files/TBT_Background_Glyphosate_Argentina_0.pdf)

Aside from the known biological effects, the simple reality is that there are
cancer cluster now where there weren't ten years ago, and the only variable
explaining them is the appeareance of glyphosate-resistant soya bean
plantations. This is enough for me to consider it a massive publich health
issue, which is not being publicized given the tremendous importance of
soybean in Argentine exports.

------
throwaway5752
Funny how the anti-Monsanto position is always caricatured as a liberal anti-
GMO person.

I think it is just as likely to be a libertarian person who finds their legal
pursuit of farmers who have (frequently accidentally) had their crops cross
pollinate with Monsanto patented breeds to be ethically distasteful.

~~~
rayiner
The way Monsanto's Round Up works is that the genetic modification is actually
resistance to a particular potent pesticide. Just having your crops cross-
pollinated isn't enough to help you, or to get Monsanto on your case. They sue
farmers who also try to take advantage of the situation by using the special
pesticide, which would kill non-cross pollinated plants.

Also, while its hard to pin down libertarianism, there is a lot of conflation
between libertarianism and anarchism online. There is nothing un-libertarian
about what Monsanto does. Classic libertarians believe in property rights and
contractual rights. Monsanto's legal actions largely rely on a web of
contracts. There is nothing about classic libertarianism that is inconsistent
with patents as property rights. Indeed, patents are a basically libertarian
response to the neoclassical economic problem of free riding. The libertarian
preference for addressing market failures is the creation of property rights.
In this context, its more consistent with classical libertarianism for
Monsanto to get property rights in its Round Up Ready seeds, and thus make the
money that bankrolls their billions of dollars in annual research, than for
say the government to spend that money to do basic research.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
That's really only "libertarianism" in the American tea party sense, and
fairly unique to the US. It's not that it is conflated with anarchism online,
it's that Americans have conflated it with laissez-faire capitalism offline.
The reason it seems different online is because you're seeing what the
majority of the world understands it to be.

[http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/noam-chomsky-kind-
an...](http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/noam-chomsky-kind-anarchism-i-
believe-and-whats-wrong-libertarians)

 _" Chomsky: Well what’s called libertarian in the United States, which is a
special U. S. phenomenon, it doesn’t really exist anywhere else — a little bit
in England — permits a very high level of authority and domination but in the
hands of private power: so private power should be unleashed to do whatever it
likes."_

Powerful patents being used to dominate individuals, whether through
infringement suits or through depriving them access to the market is about as
far from libertarianism as you can get. This becomes more intuitive when you
observe that the individual farmer has been put in a "damned if you do, damned
if you don't" scenario. He does not, in fact, have his economic liberty.

~~~
rayiner
Chomsky isn't saying that the U.S. has an atypical definition libertarianism,
but that libertarianism is not a popular ideology outside the U.S. There is
not some other set of beliefs the rest of the world recognizes as "true
libertarianism." Laissez-faire capitalism combined with a strong emphasis on
individuality and property rights is what characterizes libertarianism. Its
the beliefs of the neoclassical economic liberals minus the social contract
thinking many of them also had.

Your characterization of the farmers plight isn't accurate. They are not in a
"damned if they don't" position. The roundup ready plants behave like ordinary
plants if you don't use roundup. They had no reason to either enter into
contracts with Monsanto or to use Monsanto's property by applying roundup,
other than to gain the benefit of Monsanto's invention. Once they do those
things, libertarianism says that Monsanto can dictate whatever terms it wants,
and furthermore that one of the few legitimate purposes of even a limited
government is providing courts for the enforcement of contractual and property
rights.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
You're quite wrong on that first point. He's discussed that very issue many
times. Here is another:

[http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2009/08/chomsky-on-
lib...](http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2009/08/chomsky-on-
libertarianism-and-its-meaning.html)

 _" The term "libertarian" has an idiosyncratic usage in the US and Canada,
reflecting, I suppose, the unusual power of business in these societies. In
the European tradition, "libertarian socialism" ("socialisme libertaire") was
the anti-state branch of the socialist movement: anarchism (in the European,
not the US sense).

I use the term in the traditional sense, not the US sense."_

The farmer is indeed damned if he doesn't. Monsanto crushes him because he
can't compete in the market. Did you not hear of the mass suicides among
farmers in India, where they took 95% of the seed market?

Monstanto has been very successful in executing the equivalent of "Embrace,
Extend, Extinguish" in the seed market, and now enjoy an 80% - 90% monopoly on
seeds depending on the crop. It's now difficult to purchase non-patent-
encumbered seeds even if you want to, and if you do so, you're at a severe
disadvantage.

 _Seeds_. Think about that for a moment. That small piece of biomatter, the
source of life, which grows into staple crops for feeding our planet. This and
all future generations of it are patent encumbered, and controlled by a large
corporation. To equate this with liberty is _hilarious_. Laissez-faire
capitalism leads only to tyranny, not liberty. Even Greenspan finally figured
this out. Too bad it took destroying nearly half of the global wealth for him
to do so.

~~~
rayiner
Chomsky is taking some liberty in characterizing the American definition as
"idiosyncratic." Libertarian socialists and Libertarian anarchists usually
identify themselves with the qualifier. Indeed, it's in your quote:
("socialisme libertaire"). That branch of libertarianism arose
contemporaneously with the leftist movements in the early 20th century:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism#Left-
libertarian...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism#Left-
libertarianism). American libertarianism has older roots, in the work of Locke
and Adam Smith. It's in the lineage of the beliefs of classical liberals. It's
largely an Anglo phenomenon, but that doesn't make the American usage of the
term "idiosyncratic."

> The farmer is indeed damned if he doesn't. Monsanto crushes him because he
> can't compete in the market.

So what? That's how the market works.

> It's now difficult to purchase non-patent-encumbered seeds even if you want
> to, and if you do so, you're at a severe disadvantage.

They're at a disadvantage because Monsanto's product is dramatically superior.
Within the framework of libertarianism (American libertarianism if you want to
quibble about that), there is nothing wrong with a superior competitor
crushing inferior competition.

------
NickSharp
Because Monsanto gave them a Billion dollars. Next question.

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jrochkind1
He never got to saying what he liked about Monsanto, or why it is good, or why
it's not evil.

He mostly says lots of people call lots of companies evil, it's not just
monstanto people call evil. Okay, sure. And then he says genetic engineering
isn't new, we've been doing it for thousands of years (umm.... okay, I guess
you can call that genetic engineering. But there wasn't any intellectual
property ownership in it, for one difference in social context.) And Monsanto
isn't as big a company as you might think, he says.

Okay, I'm still waiting for him to tell me what he likes about Monsanto, other
than that they are huge. But I guess that's it, why did they sell to monsanto?
Because monsanto had the money to pay, and the money to support their
continued work. Okay, fair enough, that's a pretty typical answer to "why did
you sell your company." Am i supposed to be impressed?

~~~
fit2rule
>He never got to saying what he liked about Monsanto, or why it is good, or
why it's not evil.

Money.

------
civilian
When commenting, be careful not to fall into Argumentum Ad Monsantum:

[http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/but-not-
simpler/2013/10/...](http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/but-not-
simpler/2013/10/16/argumentum-ad-monsantum-bill-maher-and-the-lure-of-a-
liberal-logical-fallacy/)

------
yapcguy
Given the bizarre letter, the CEO must have known that many of his employees
considered Monsanto the enemy. So it looks like the CEO was a sell-out and
took the easy money.

Data scientists, programmers and agricultural experts were hired to help build
systems and crunch numbers to help farmers make the best from their soil and
weather.

By contrast, Monsanto sell magic seeds, resistant to everything, guaranteed to
improve yield and profits for farmers... who needs weather analysis when you
have Monsanto?

Does anybody know how the employees feel about it? Is the company struggling
to retain employees? It seems they are aggressively hiring, but hard to know
if this is actual expansion or replacement hires.

~~~
fiatmoney
Even taking as a given that for any crop Monsanto has the best variety, you
still have the issue of what exactly to plant, in what proportions, for your
likely climate & soil conditions, equipment/water/fertilizer/labor & other
input costs, and market prices. That analysis is exactly what Monsanto will
provide you with now.

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state
Interesting to stand this up next to the Nest news from today. Is it the
market size that makes Nest worth 3x more than the Climate Corporation?

