Monsanto to Bloggers: Stop Picking On Us

by: Jill Richardson

Wed Jul 22, 2009 at 12:33:21 PM PDT

The majority of people who work in the biotech industry that I've met are incredibly well-meaning. They want to save the world and they are proud to be a part of an industry that they believe IS helping save the world. Additionally, they are polite and friendly, even when they disagree with me. I often laugh because I have nicer conversations with employees of Monsanto than I do with certain pro-GMO bloggers on DailyKos. And I respect the employees of Monsanto for their good intentions and willingness to engage in polite debate.

That said, I think it would be helpful if they could concede a few points as well:

1. With all new technologies, there is some risk. There's a risk to driving a car and there's a risk to introducing a new GMO. We don't avoid all risk but we look for "acceptable" risk. The disagreement here is whether GMOs are an acceptable risk. To Monsanto, the bar is probably much lower to the rest of us. After all, Monsanto benefits and the entire world takes the risk. Arguably, some farmers might benefit as well. But again, the entire world takes the risk. What level of risk is acceptable? And how much safety testing should be performed prior to a GMO product's introduction in order to understand that risk? Again, Monsanto has an incentive to do less safety testing than perhaps the rest of us would like so they can bring their products to market faster and with less costs.

2. The decisions over whether or not to legalize a Monsanto product like GMOs are a little bit lopsided in terms of political influence. Monsanto has former employees working in the government and they have one of the largest lobbying budgets in the entire U.S. Private citizens or organizations with concerns about GMOs cannot compete. Whether Monsanto's point of view is the correct one or not, it's an issue that there are two sides to the debate and one of them is heard much louder in D.C.

3. Consolidation is an issue in any industry. Period. Monsanto's not the bogeyman of consolidation - it's in good company. Other industries are highly consolidated, and Monsanto's not the only major player in the seed industry. They are one of a few major players in all seeds, and by far the largest producer of GMO seeds. It's a problem in terms of consolidation of power, but a problem specific to the seed industry is that it inherently reduces biodiversity.

The fact is that if 100 small companies each market 5 varieties of tomato seeds (for a total of 500 varieties, each with small market share), that's more biodiversity than if 1 of the companies buys up the other 99, at which point it probably would not be profitable to market and maintain 500 different types of tomato seeds. A much better business model is to pick the top sellers, brand them, market them, and drop the rest of the tomato varieties because they would probably cost more money than they would generate in profits.

Does Monsanto do anything good? A friend asked me this the other day. The problem is that they are a business and they must profit. A few businesses have found a way to profit from sustainable agriculture (testing soil, for example, or even providing healthy soil) but many inputs of sustainable agriculture are free: open pollinated seeds that one can save, manure, compost, rainfall, birds, bugs, bats, etc. How do you make money off of that? Monsanto's not necessarily out to wreck the world, they are out to make money. They are out to patent, market, and sell profitable products. They don't have the luxury of asking an open-ended question of "How do we best do agriculture?" They must limit their question to "How can we best profit from agriculture?" and that comes up with a much different and less sustainable answer.