Veritasium video about Monsanto.
Oh, were back to this? Feel like it’s been a decade since this was all in the spotlight. Haven’t watched it yet, but has anything changed, or is it the same stuff as before? I actually was wondering not too long ago what happened to them because, at least for me, I didn’t hear anything about them for years now.
The only thing that’s changes is the generation of the viewership
It’s another of those things future generations and/or aliens will be baffled by:
- “Wait, so not only did they say people can own land, but also a copyright to the stuff that grows on it? And it wasn’t even owned by the people using it but by some distant entity called ‘corporation’? How did they survive?”
- “Not very well, for a time. Thankfully that’s all behind us now, but there was a price to be paid.”
- Cue a fleet of spaceships leaving a planet in smoldering ruin.
The thing that annoys me about this, is the BS Monsanto is pulling puts GMO in a bad light. Humans have been genetically manipulating crops and animals for thousands of years. But in the past it was a messy, slow and imprecise process. These days we have the tools to quickly and precisely adjust what we need to adjust. This is and has been critical for supporting the number of people alive today. Faster growing crops, with better yields, more resistance to diseases and climate change. GMO is absolutely a tool that we need and should continue to use.
But these days so many people believe that when a crop or animal has been genetically modified, it’s somehow less healthy to eat. There has been a real wave of people who listen to social media about what is healthy and what is not. Blaming things that are perfectly fine, neutral or even good for you, on a precieved poor health. In reality we (especially in rich countries) are healthier than ever. These people look to things like ‘organic’ or weird diets such as Paleolithic (but instead of berries and nuts they eat like a cows worth of meat each day) to improve their lives. Companies that used to use chemicals created by mixing some precursors in a clean reactor, are switching over to organic sources. This might sound like a good thing, but I’ve seen them genetically modify insect that already create the chemical they need in their shells to create lots of that chemical. The insects get bred, boiled and filtered and the chemical is extracted. This leads to a less pure product, with more contaminants, a larger cost, a bigger impact on the environment and more bio-industry. And it’s often a chemical that’s very common and has been in use for over 50 years with zero impact on health.
Well you might say, let people do their own thing, it’s a free country right? Yes, but also no. People having weird diets or listening to Facebook to put olive oil on a dry patch of skin is fine. But it’s a slippery slope. These people are losing their faith in science and truth, but instead rely on whatever people say on social media. A place where more and more scammers are active, saying whatever just to get clicks, get sponsors or actively scam people out of their money. This slope then extends into something like homeopathic medicine and nature healing. Which has convinced people in the past that needed real medicine to instead opt for the “natural” option. People have died because of this.
In the past I was still in the camp of let the people chose, who am I to say what is the truth for other people? I don’t have all the answers, if they want to do something stupid, that’s on them. I also do stupid stuff all the time, just in other ways, should I be disallowed from living my life as I want to? But then the pandemic happened and the people listening to social media instead of science and government started to shout we shouldn’t be in lock down, we shouldn’t use masks, we shouldn’t vaccinate. So my view changed, it’s so easy for people to trust what’s being said on social media. Foreign actors abuse social media to influence the people, destabilize countries and impact elections. Scammers convince people of nonsense, just to get a few bucks. I’m not sure what the solution is, but I have started to believe we actively need a solution.
Seeing a large company like Monsanto abuse GMO in the ways they do pisses me off. We do not need to feed the fire against using tools like this. We desperately need those tools if we want to continue to exist in the numbers we are today. They should be made an example of and their abuse should be stopped.
I read a column recently in my local paper by a farmer whom I know.
He argued persuasively that the problem with GMO crops is not that they have been genetically modified, but that the modification is often to allow them to resist high concentrations of pesticides. So the food that you are getting has been exposed to massively higher amounts of toxic chemicals.
Makes sense to me.
I’m not sure what my skepticism is based on exactly, but I know exactly who fueled it. Companies like Monsanto would happily poison everyone of us if it meant a short term profit.
No, wait. They DO happily poison us. Fuck them.
I have seen plants sold in shops with warnings that you can’t propagate them. Dunno why because it was so easy to do.
I’ve seen that, but I always assumed they meant you couldn’t take a cutting from a plant in the store without buying the whole plant, which, I feel like that’s fair. Trying to prevent people from propagating their own plants after they’ve paid for them is asinine though.
Pirate bay for plants.
You wouldn’t download a plant
It’s like the start of a movie having a disclaimer about “You wouldn’t download a car!!!”
Pirate the seeds. And seed them for others.
The farmers caught replanting seeds time and time again have been shown to intentionally skirt the rules.
Never thought I’d see Monsanto shilling on Lemmy.
Sorry to interrupt your circle jerk.
The reality is farmers could use their own seeds. They don’t because Monsanto saves them money and updates the seeds year to year to optimize with changing conditions.
The “Oh your seeds fertilized mine and I can’t do anything about it” is bullshit.
Frankly fresh inexpensive and healthy meals are available at rock bottom prices in the state for over 85% of the population. Our local grocery stores would make kings and sultans enraged with jealousy. I have little issue with the American and Western food chain. Monsanto whether you like it or not contributes heavily to it’s success.
Imagine how much cheaper food would be if Monsanto wasn’t constantly hitting farmers over the head with a legal club
Good luck finding any government willing to subsidize the cost of creating high yield seeds 🤷♂️
They’ve already subsidized basically every other aspect of farming, I like our chances
No, there is no question of Monsanto’s greed here. This what capitalism does, it incentivizes greed over sustainability.
Rather than requiring farmers to dump saved seeds and purchase new patented seeds each year, they could use a licensing system with a fair royalty on crop yields so that farmers do not have to take on the massive administrative burden of ensuring Monsanto seeds/crops don’t mix with non Monsanto ones (because if they don’t do this, they’ll get sued into oblivion). Those that have a license can use saved seeds from the prior year.
This is the corporation that said Round Up was “safer than table salt” and “practically nontoxic” to mammals, birds and fish. The International Agency for Research on Cancer recognizes Round Up as a probable human carcinogen at sufficiently high exposures.
Monsanto also supplied the US government with Agent Orange during the Vietnam war which, as we all know, caused countless cases of cancer among US war veterans and the people of Vietnam.
Fuck Monsanto.
But Bill Nye said Monsanto was the best so ???
There’s nothing wrong with genetically modifying foods. The problem is the exploitative legal contracts that they come with.
You don’t even need GMO to create a crop that is covered via patent.
https://mnhardy.umn.edu/apples/licensing
The University of Minnesota has a large apple breeding system to create new varieties that it sells licenses to. The university funds the development by selling licenses on the trees.
We need FOSS seeds rather than proprietary ones.
We need to abandon the patent system entirely.
This actually exists. I don’t have the specifics, but people have started collecting non-copyrighted seeds a long time and iirc also added some sort of licensing to it so MegaCorp cannot just suck it up later.
That’s just traditional seed saving practices. They’ve essentially Public Domain. There’s some small farms creating their own “artisan” varieties. Some times they’re true breeding and the seeds can be harvested for replanting. Sometimes they’re hybrids and simply can’t be saved like that for technical reasons. The farms doing artisan stuff sometimes ask for a small donation if you do seed saving so they can put food on their table, but it’s an honor system thing.
I don’t think that it’s unreasonable to expect to recoup the millions you spent on R&D for developing a new crop.
Yes, the length of ownership should be much shorter, but until the world governments collapse, technological advancements cost money and resources.
If you remove the ability to recoup R&D costs before addressing the need for private r&d at all, you’re going to stifle innovation.
This isn’t an endorsement for the current system, but these processes will continue to exist until the current system is replaced.
Of r&d came from any sort of university program or study at the facilities by any graduate or undergrads we already paid for the r&d more than likely it’s like when the government sold means and military vehicles vans gear to local cops we already paid once for it the first time and we are getting charged again
You can argue that until you’re blue in the face and it won’t mean shit.
While the system of government these drugs/crops are developed under is capitalist, we’re stuck with the same shit.
This is an instance of “don’t hate the player, hate the game.”
It’s totally reasonable to hate the players. The game can’t continue without players. Legality is NOT morality.
I will hate the game and the player, thank you very much. Even under this system, other choices could have been made that are neither illegal or financially nonviable, so Monsanto is very much responsible for the choices they did make. They’re not victims of the systems, they’re gleefully pursuing everything the system lets them get away with.
Of course, if you want things to change, it is indeed changes to law and government incentives that need to be pursued. But in order for that to happen, you need enough people to get upset about the current state of things, and for that you need concrete examples. And it doesn’t get more concrete than this.
Until the game changes to socialism, this is the reality of drug development.
Oh I’m aware of how Monsanto works.
I’ve been looking into this a little more and apparently Carey Gillam is buddy-buddy with RFK Jr. So I’m not sure how much I trust her.
Still, I had no idea Monsanto was responsible for Agent Orange. Learning that was enough to make watching this video worth it. Still, as with any other topic, you’ll want to look for multiple resources.
The whole Monsanto bullshit is something I’ve been looking into for a long time my man. They are an evil company.
No disagreements here.
