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GM Crop Producer Monsanto Using Data Analytics To Expand Its Footprint
Nerval's Lobster writes "Monsanto is more infamous for growing its genetically modified crops than its use of software, but a series of corporate acquisitions and a new emphasis on tech solutions has transformed it into a firm that acts more like an innovative IT vendor than an agribusiness giant. Jim McCarter (the Entrepreneur in Residence for Monsanto) recently detailed for an audience in St. Louis how the company's IT efforts are expanding. Monsanto's core projects generate huge amounts of bits, especially its genomic efforts, which are the focus of so much public attention. Other big data gobblers are the phenotypes of millions of DNA structures that describe the various biological properties of each plant, and the photographic imagery of crop fields. (All told, there are several tens of petabytes that need storage and analysis, a number that's doubling roughly every 16 months.) With all that tech muscle, the company has launched IT-based initiatives such as its FieldScripts software, which uses proprietary algorithms (fed with data from the FieldScripts Testing Network and Monsanto research) to recommend where to best plant corn hybrids. 'Just like Amazon has its recommendation engine for what book to buy, we will have our recommendations of what and how a grower should plant a particular crop,' said McCarter. 'All fields aren't uniform and shouldn't be planted uniformly either.' Despite its increasingly sophisticated use of data analytics in the name of greater crop yields, however, Monsanto faces pushback from various groups with an aversion to genetically modified food; a current ballot initiative in Washington State, for example, could result in genetically modified foods needing a label in order to go on sale here. The company has also inspired a 'March Against Monsanto,' which has been much in the news lately."
Why stick to a single crop and not rotate like days of old?
They've been running contests in this area on TopCoder since January: http://community.topcoder.com/longcontest/stats/?module=ViewOverview&rd=15024
Can you link to the peer-reviewed scholarly studies that make these claims?
so the company is using data analytics to determine where it should plant crops most efficiently? thats pretty cool. Chances are great theyve been using analytics heavily in their biosciences divisions for quite some time, considering output from computational modeling software is rarely terse.
this might seem naive, but wasnt this the grand plan for the future? a supercrop that never needs to worry about weeds or bugs? that grows tens of times larger than its regular counterpart? I have a legitimately difficult time bashing monsanto but ive followed lots of slashdot discussion on the matter and it seems to be a pretty common thread.
are they really targeting farmers for intentional litigation somehow? there are plenty of other corn seeds besides roundup ready for example that farmers could decide to plant, and the only evidence ive seen to date was some guy who went to the supreme court to challenge the fact that he knowingly saved proprietary seeds. solution: vote with dollars, dont buy proprietary monsanto seeds.
is GM food dangerous? i really cant find any scientific data on the subject...maybe thats because research hasnt been/is still being conducted, but so far i havent seen a public crisis that indicates GM is a bad thing, other than a tentative link to colony collapse disorder.
does monsanto have a history of using analytics for some nefarious purpose? Other than creating superplants i cant think of any.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Would you prefer the crops that use nuclear physicists to create random mutations using radiation? Because a lot of the food you eat came about through THAT process.
I know that programmers don't really have an ethics requirement like traditional engineers, but do we really need one in order to skip working for a company that stands a good chance of (possibly unintentionally) killing off our whole species? Everything I read about Monsanto points to them being a strong contender for the Famine version of the end of civilization. This corporation is way more evil than Microsoft or the RIAA.
So Monsanto is trying to (possibly intentionally) start an extinction-grade famine, by providing products to allow farmers to grow more food with less energy, on less land? Damn, they are so evil that their evil plots are actually amazingly un-evil ones!
That's a huge false equivalency. Non-GM foods that come through random mutation via evolution have been tested... over millions of years tested. There is plenty of time to weed out the harmful.
Just because Monsanto invests in IT as a competitive advantage doesn't mean they're not acting like an Agricultural bully. It may be great for stockholders, but they're threatening the entire world's food supply by modifying plant DNA so that one year's crop cannot be used to plant next year's crop. That's not playing GOD, that's playing Shiva, the god of destruction.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
That's a huge false equivalency. Non-GM foods that come through random mutation via evolution have been tested... over millions of years tested. There is plenty of time to weed out the harmful.
And you misunderstand the OP; radiation or other mutagens *have* been used to create food crops that are on dinner tables around the world, this process has been going on for some 80 years. These are not labeled as GM... Before that, single-generation mutations (highly selective breeding) has been in use for hundreds of years, resulting in untested (by your standards) food going into the mouths of just about everyone in a developed/developing country for the past 300 years. Modern GM does go a far bit beyond either of those techniques because of the ability to switch many genes at once, for a particular purpose, but don't fool yourself into thinking that this is the first time modern man has eaten "new to planet earth" food.
No, the argument is that we'll end up with a global GMO monoculture, which will lack the variety to withstand some new pest or other threat, and then we'll have a global famine.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
They make better crops, increase productivity, reduce pesticide use, and now they even use IT to aid in their nefarious plans! Oh the horror if it!
when i saw the letters GM i thought what does General Motors have to do with crops? then i thought about General Mills. not everyone knows acronyms. had to read the fine article to see "genetically modified" = GM. not trolling, just saying.
Better data storage= less likely Monsanto causes the Zombie Wheat Apocalypse, again.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Non-GM foods that come through random mutation via evolution have been tested... over millions of years tested.
Except that evolution doesn't select for plants that are deliciously edible and nutritious. It selects for the opposite: plants that use poisons, bitter tastes, or other strategies to avoid being eaten.
The point is they should be.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Why is a GM crop more likely to become a monoculture than a non GM crop?
except it does, it often selects for attractiveness examples include; attracting birds and others to eat fruit thereby moving the seeds, bees to drink nectar to spread the pollen, or flies in the case of others , ants to live in and on a tree to defend it from other predators, and you can keep going. nature generally solves each problem in many different ways.
True for some plants but not others. Most plants with seeds (fruits, grains) need to be delicious and nutritious so their seeds get excreted some distance from the original plant so that they don't compete for light and nutrients. Only leafy plants (the tops of root vegetables like potatoes, spinach, etc.) tend to be bitter or poisonous.
Non-GM foods that come through random mutation via evolution have been tested... over millions of years tested.
Except that evolution doesn't select for plants that are deliciously edible and nutritious. It selects for the opposite: plants that use poisons, bitter tastes, or other strategies to avoid being eaten.
This is actually a misconception. The reason that many plants produce "deliciously edible and nutritious" fruit is that they use the animal eating the fruit to spread the seeds (critter eats fruit, goes somewhere, seeds leave the digestive system). This is where most of our food crops come from, and why we use them as food crops in the first place. Bitter and poisonous plants either use another method to spread their seeds, like having them blow away in the wind, or use the taste and poison to select which animal spreads it's seeds, like how the capsaicin in peppers is painful for a small mammal to eat, but does nothing to birds, meaning birds would eat the peppers, and spread their seeds farther than a small mammal could.
Everything I read about Monsanto points to them being a strong contender for the Famine version of the end of civilization.
See, it's just this kind of hyperbole that drove me out of the environmental movement for good. It got to be worse than a fucking religion. Every company was evil incarnate, every issue was the *end of the world*, every compromise or attempt at reason was deemed insufficient. Between the wild-eyed Chicken Littles and the misanthropes who seemed to secretly want all humans to commit suicide to save beautiful mother earth, I realized that this was one aspect of the left-wing that I didn't want to be a part of anymore.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Cross-pollination? (Or, rather, lack thereof?)
Ezekiel 23:20
TFA mentions that Washington state has a ballot initiative to label genetically engineered foods. Perhaps more importantly, Connecticut just passed a labeling law (http://grist.org/news/connecticut-will-label-gmos-if-you-do-too/).
The Connecticut bill includes a crucial requirement: the labeling requirement won’t actually go into effect until similar legislation is passed by at least four other states, one of which borders Connecticut.
Also note that 37 labeling proposals have been introduced in 21 states so far this year.
And you misunderstand the OP; radiation or other mutagens *have* been used to create food crops that are on dinner tables around the world, this process has been going on for some 80 years.
Uff, any citation on that? As far as I know, the only radiation treatment that has been put to some use in agriculture was to prolong the shelf life of the produce.
Ezekiel 23:20
Why is GM more or likely to cross-pollinate?
If my facebook feed is any indication, conservatives seem to hate Monsato more than liberals. I see tons more posts about Organic this-and-that and "natural herbal remedies" from my conservative friends. I assume it's their distrust of liberal scientific stuff and general yearning for the good-old-days. It's possible my friends are statistical outliers though.
Because of the unknown effects of fiddling with genetics in a wholesale fashion. You go from normal strain (Roundup kills it) to GMO strain (which laughs at roundup) in a single generation. Maybe you introduce an unanticipated new vulnerability to something else through the genetic fiddling, maybe not, but you have now cleared all the fields of every other strain, including those that might have had the ability quickly adapt to some new pest or blight.
Stop trolling. You may think your questions cast doubt, when in reality they show how little you actually know.
I admit I don't know, that is why I asked the question (shocking, I know). So instead of giving a non-answer like that, perhaps you could actually answer the question.
You are confusing conservative leading individuals with the conservative leaning political party which is typically the party of big business (only the scary big businesses as there is a different party for the other big businesses). Also when looking at agriculture related bills the split typically isn't along party lines but more along rural vs urban.
Time to offend someone
Dude, have you even read the wiki page on them? There's a lot of fear-mongering from the people that fear anything to do with genetics, but Monsanto is your typical giant evil corporation. They're so big that regulatory capture is a problem. They've been caught red handed doing various nefarious stuff over the years. Honestly, any such corporation that large is bound to have bad eggs in them and the money is going to be too good. But hey, they really have brought some innovation and better living to the populace. There's a reason that they're profitable and it's not entirely because of who they're in bed with. Roundup ready crops are a lot easier to farm. My uncle loves the stuff.
But if there was EVER a corporation that deserved scrutiny, it's Monsanto.
"Hate speech"? It's more like spotting the trend.
OK, I understand that. But isn't that a farming practices problem, and not a GM problem? GM may have some hidden flaw, but the creation of a monoculture is because farmers did it, and not because of some inherent property of being GM, right?
And you misunderstand the OP; radiation or other mutagens *have* been used to create food crops that are on dinner tables around the world, this process has been going on for some 80 years.
Uff, any citation on that?
Sure. Here you go: Mutation Breeding. At the bottom of the page is a list of food crops produced using these techniques.
Depend on one crop as it is the best, highest yield, most nutritious, (mostly) disease hardy, works great.
Up to the point where a single pest can wipe out entire crops because that is the only species planted. Irish much?
This is why we have the doomsday seed bank.
I suppose that depends on how much genetic variety there is in in the GM crop.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
A "GM crop," taken generically, is not more likely to become a monoculture. However, the policies and intentions of the purveyors of GM crops are quite directly geared toward monocultures, both in the pursuit of the one-true-crop in contrast to a diversified genetic portfolio, and in the efforts to ensure that the seed for year N comes from the lab, rather than from breeding at N-1.
This is yet another mistaken correspondence between the technology and the industry. The technology itself entails rather little. Starting from GM, you could just as readily construct arguments for either an increase or a decrease in the likelihood of monocultures. The industry however, has constrained the application of the technology in such a way that monocultures are not just a likely outcome, but an engineered and intended one.
With a bit more luck, in a few years they'll decide to adopt an upside-down M (to commemorate the day they switched the flip) as their corporate logo -- and start focusing more on useful, future-proof research (such as involving XMs rather than GMs).
If you actually look at what they're doing, making plants roundup ready requires very little change to their genome. On the other hand, selective selection (the process used since time immemorial to modify plants to our liking) modifies the plant's entire genome.
I mean there's a tiny change that you're protesting, but you're just fine with big changes which have an even larger category of unknowns. I can already think of a number of weeds that are resistant to roundup, and that just occurred through natural selection. But a GM plant that does it with hardly any change at all is evil?
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
99% of the seed will be from clones of the 5-10 stock that actually took the genetic manipulation. This isn't very precise, very akin to shooting darts at a dartboard. Get a variation you like, clone in thousands of times. If the genes get into other stock through cross pollination that's a bonus but not a method used.
"Monsanto is more infamous for growing its genetically modified crops than its use of software, but a series of corporate acquisitions and a new emphasis on tech solutions has transformed it into a firm that acts more like an innovative IT vendor than an agribusiness giant."
The only 'innovation' Monsanto is borrowing from the IT sector is extorting revenue from farmers for growing crops from the farmers own seeds. Even if the seeds were contaminated by accident, such as by cross-pollination by a neighbouring farmers field. As such Monsanto are the Microsoft of Agribusiness.
"Monsanto is claiming rights not only to generation 1 seeds but every generation after that. You can't plant those generation 2 seeds for a crop without infringing the patent, they claim, even if you bought them from somebody else". link
AccountKiller
No, Monsanto isn't real popular here in WA state and yes many of us would like GM food labeled as such. Something other than the leading "8" in the PLU (price look up) number on the sticker [ JetCityOrange.com/plu-code/ ] I for one was one of many in the Seattle Monsanto march and as you can see in this video [ http://youtu.be/USSIqQBca4c ], we aren't talking about black-clad, window breaking, pseudo-anarchist kids raising hell. No, the crowd was full of families and regular folks who realize that there's no "do over" when it comes to f*cking with genetics. You screw it up, and you can't reel it back in.
Please enjoy and spread my latest documentary on the evil Monsanto. https://vimeo.com/67303345
Fascinating! I wasn't even aware of these efforts going on, although in retrospect, they make sense: If we're already using evolution to breed new varieties by speeding up the selection (i.e., by selecting merilessly), why not also speed up the generation of individuals to be selected? Brilliant.
Ezekiel 23:20
... leave already Monsanto ... nothing good comes from you. To hell with your IT, use it for something other than raping farmers and the public of their rights to choose.
A plant with a relatively homogeneous genome will be more susceptible to certain types, and less susceptible to others.
However, it only takes one very efficient killer to wipe the GM crops out. It may take several different ones to whack the more diverse crops.