This isn't cool at all....
Massive seed corporation Monsanto -- through acquisitions and cut-throat business practices -- has cornered 90% of the soy, 65% of the corn, and 70% of the cotton market, and has a rapidly growing presence in the fruit and vegetable market, all without government anti-trust officials raising an eyebrow.
Not only that, but in order to be productive, the entire line of Monsanto's seeds all but require the use of Roundup herbicide, trapping all of their customers into buying it. And who owns Roundup? You guessed it, Monsanto.
Monsanto has, it seems, cornered the market on abusive monopolistic practices as well. In the middle of a recession, while farmers' incomes are dropping, Monsanto recently announced a 42% price hike on its most popular genetically modified seeds. When in many areas of the country distributors carry nothing but these seeds, this sure looks like evidence of a monopolist abusing its market position.
President Obama's antitrust chief Christine Varney has promised rigorous enforcement of antitrust law with a special focus on the agricultural sector. She should start with the worst of the worst, Monsanto.
Please guys, sign the petition to demand that Varney immediately open an investigation into Monsanto and its abusive business practices.
This is getting out of control.
Here is the link... http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/monsanto_antitrust/?r_by=5977-754743-iYb8Wgx&rc=confemail1
Thank you.
Dude! I dont want to go all Danno on this one! My Dad's second career was in Ag and my in-laws farm also. I've spent hours with my family discussing this and other practices.... You know who really get fucked are developing nations.
You know what one of the genetic modifications is? You cannot actually grow new crops from the 'seeds' grown by the Monsanto crops. Traditionally, developing nations farmers saved some of the previous years harvest to plant for next year - not anymore, need to buy new seed(and peripherals) each year!
I could go on for days about food industry practices.
Did you guys hear about the seed bank Norway created? You really think the reason was in case of a global catastrophy? nope
Monsanto is the devil. I dont understand how they get away with this and everything else they've done.
My wife works as a neuroscience researcher( md/ph.d) and one of the chemical substances they use to simulate brain cell decay in the lab, is the same Monsanto uses in their pesticides/gmo corn.
Now when monsanto was asked about the danger of using this chemical they said the stuff is safe and dissolves into harmless substances in a couple of days . The FDA or whoever wanted to see the results of this study, Monsanto declined. When independent labs wanted to research the effect of this pesticide and it's "shelf life" they got sued by Monsanto .
i dont wanna go all danno on you guys either but
This comapny is seriously f'ed up. and one of their lobbyist is actually on obama's team.
I dont want to stop either one of you from going Danno on this post. This is wild and out of control and I'm not sure if anybody in the general public is aware of this crap.
This is some seriously fvcked up shit.
Checkout "The Future of Food" for free at Hulu.com
http://www.hulu.com/watch/67878/the-future-of-food
This film is a few years old, but the information is still extremely relevant. A lot of great info about GMO food and partial information on how Monsanto was able to corner the ag market.
What the film doesn't talk about is how our Federal Government subsidizes large corporate factory farms that are customers of Monsanto. We also have an FDA that claims everything that Monsanto does is OK.. so anybody who attempts to counter claims regarding pesticides, etc, loses credibility. This is called "moral hazard". The biggest problem with the FDA and other similar government agencies is that it creates a moral hazard whereby they hold the monopoly on information related to the dangers of various products and people hold this information as generally true when it is not. In a free market, people would learn to trust certain companies that come out with this type of information without needing to rely on any particular company for that information. This helps ensure that these companies providing the information don't provide misinformation because eventually they will lose customers.
INSIDIOUS!!!!!
another movie to check out... 'The Informant" with Matt Damon. Based on the true story of an exec at ag giant Archer Daniels Midland who worked with the FBI regarding their illegal practices
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