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Monsanto Executive Wins World Food Prize
sfcrazy writes "A top Monsanto executive has won the prestigious World Food Prize. Secretary of State John Kerry announced the award where Robert T. Fraley, the executive vice president and CTO of Monsanto, won the prize along with two other scientists from Belgium and the US. The award was given for devising a method to insert genes from another organism into plant cells, which could produce new genetic lines with highly favorable traits."
They are trying to say that Monsanto is injecting more plant SALES by making the food artificial. I'm sure.
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
Would you like a tasty serving of irony with your patented GM beans?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Last week, Monsanto's leak of genetically modified wheat polluted countless acres of US wheat leading to countries around the world banning the import of all US wheat. Today, Monsanto wins the World Food Prize!
Good job Monsanto. Thank goodness no media outlets carried that story. Oh. Except Reuters. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/31/us-wheat-korea-idUSBRE94U0KW20130531
Winning an award for poisoning people and contaminating innocent neighbor farmers' fields.
Here's one that's a little less slanted:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/monsanto-executive-is-among-world-food-prize-winners.html
Also, Robert Fraley holds a National Medal of Technology, awarded by Clinton in 1999.
Hey, if Obama can win the Nobel Peace Prize for expanding our wars and the war powers assumed by his office, why shouldn't a company that that profiteers on regulatory agriculture monopolies get the World Food Prize? I understand The Pope is being considered for an equally prestigious anthropology prize.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
It is Monsanto. "Sell" isn't exactly wrong.
By the by, who is in the running for the World Feeding Hungry People Prize this year?
Hitler and Satan. It was close this year.
That's like saying Hitler won the fucking nobel peace prize.
The biggest danger to the human race right now is not terrorists or asteroids. It's Monsanto. These money hungry whores are destroying our food resources and replacing them with engineered replacements without realizing the full long-term impacts on both our health and the planet's.
My wife goes to those, she brings home a lot of tomato plants and flowers and plants them in the yard. ;-)
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
What injecting more plant scales?
There appears coincidentally to be a connection between the Nobel and this so-called World Food Prize. The Nobel awards were started by the man who invented dynamite. The Food Prize, according to the NY Times, "was started in 1987 by Norman E. Borlaug, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for bringing about the Green Revolution, which vastly increased grain output, and who thought there should be a Nobel Prize for agriculture". One may well argue that dynamite contributed to world peace in the same way the Green Revolution, with its focus on massive crop monocultures, contributed to global food production.
A Monsanto executive winning this award shouldn't be surprising, even without the allegations of financial "compensation". The Green Revolution was all about increasing the supply of food, never mind the quality, or the ecological or social side effects. At who knows what cost, there's no question Monsanto technology helps increase food output.
Can != should. What happens when these plants pollenate other plants? Is there going to be any ecological impacts? Monsanto is playing a dangerous game. As of August, Monsanto has $3,000,000,000 US in cash. This is such a farce. There is plenty of food to go around. It is a distribution problem. With their insane lawsuits, lobbying, and self terminating plants, they are part of the problem. Lets not forgot about that recent case where we found out it is apparently not ok for journalists to investigate the animal side of the food industry. This whole food business is corrupt to the core. Feeding people healthy food is a political problem, not an economic or supply problem. Now they get an award for fucking or food economy and risking environmental/ecological problems? This bullshit is tiring.
I agree that global control is a stretch, but their US market share is near monopoly.
They're just as "too big to fail" as the big investment companies except unlike last time, you can't eat money. That deserves a prize? They deserve to be split up, have all their lawyers disbarred forever, and all their ridiculous "patents" invalidated. THAT would be a benefit to global food.
Let's give an award to an employee of a company that's basically polluting the agricultural gene pool! Boo on Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland, and their ilk!
Giving a Monsanto exec a food award is like giving a freedom award to an NSA employee.
They told me if I voted for Romney, we'd see a regime increasingly in bed with multi-national companies unethically exploiting the world's food supply... and they were right!
I'd have to agree. There were only three sentences in the summary. The error wasn't exactly hard to spot, given that the sentence in question was both grammatically and factually incorrect.
Nonsense. The idea that Monsanto has a monopoly is flat out wrong.
There are several major crops where Monsanto has a lot of competition, and others where Monsanto doesn't even offer products. Corn, which is Monsanto's biggest product has a 40% market share.
In only soybeans could you say they have a monopoly. And the first generation patent that gives Monsanto the edge in this market expires in 2014.
http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Pages/roundup-ready-patent-expiration.aspx
It is Monsanto. "Sell" isn't exactly wrong.
True dat.
The award was given for devising a method to insert genes from another organism into plant sell, which could produce new genetic lines with highly favorable traits.
What's missing is the next bit, which should be something like this: "And then ream everyone in court who tries to keep some seed and use it to replant. Also, investigate, harass, litigate and otherwise bully Monsanto even suspects of using some of their "Genetic Property". Also, lobby for legislation which requires food aid from the US to be GMO crops and any seed giving to developing nations through US aid to be their property, so they can come knockin' later when that country's farmers prosper a bit and the native seed banks are all but extinct."
Well done them.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Those "highly favorable traits" are resistance to the herbicides that Monsanto also sells. For every USA acre sown with their GMO corn they can be sure of selling an appropriate amount of Round Up to treat that acreage at least a couple of times.
The foreign markets will be more lucrative, though. Many countries in South America, Africa, and elsewhere do not have the regulatory mechanisms to assure that no more than a certain amount of Round Up is applied, and that it is only applied when the weather is good for keeping it on the cultivated fields. That means that Monsanto will be able to sell much more Round Up per acre to these foreign users, who can splash it around like holy water. If the morning's dose gets washed into the streams by the afternoon's rains, what the heck, it doesn't cost that much to just spray the fields again the next day.
Of course the ecosystem does not have the genes to protect itself from Round Up. But since the effects of poisoning it will not show up until after the fatter end of year bonuses to the Monsanto's executives, there is no reason for this company not to push their GMO products AND their wonderful herbicides.
There is a whiff of corruption about the USA State Department now. I am really surprised and disappointed that John Kerry is involved in this. I thought he had more sense.
Will
I just knew that this would be a nerd s&^%storm over the proper speling (sic) of cell.
The wonders of spell check. Anyone care to debate "Pubic Policy"?
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
It's all about selling more Round Up. Since the GMO plants are resistant to it. That it involves plant sales is only a logistical device; the strategy is to get everyone everywhere to put Round Up on all their acreage.
Later on, Monsanto will buy the rights to the Miracle Grow trade name. And develop a line of chemicals that can be sprayed on all the ecosystems to help them recover from the mysterious global ecosystem diseases.
Monsanto Round Up, and Monsanto Miracle Grow. The stuff our surviving grandkids will be able to rely on to help them get to the 22nd century.
Will
Monsanto doesn't "sell" any more then Microsoft does. They lease out their "IP". They are working on "embracing and extending" the world food supply. Currently the natural plants and the bees feel a bit like Word Perfect. Farmers downwind are getting introduced to SCO like tactics, only the courts and congress are backing Monsanto.
No, that is a DRM measure and correcting it would constitute a DMCA violation ;)
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
If you look at the website of the World Food Prize org, you will find :-
The World Food Prize sincerely thanks the following sponsors for supporting its annual programs: ...
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation DuPont Pioneer John Deere Foundation
The Mathile Institute for the Advancement of Human Nutrition Monsanto DuPont Pioneer
Ruan Transportation Management Systems Claudia and Paul Schickler....
So, Monsanto is one of the sponsors of WFP. A pretty important one too, as shown by this link which used to exist on the Monsanto website.
The World Food Prize Foundation on Friday accepted a $5 million contribution from Monsanto Company to ensure the continuation of the annual World Food Prize International Symposium -- now known as the "Borlaug Dialogue." The funds support a renewed fundraising campaign to transform the historic Des Moines Public Library building into a public museum to honor Dr. Norman Borlaug and the work of the World Food Prize Laureates.
When you look up the WFP website , you will find that "The World Food Prize is sponsored by businessman and philanthropist John Ruan and is located in Des Moines, Iowa."
Not in itself damning, until you realise that :-
Monsanto has more facilities in Iowa than in any other state in the country
Monsanto has made substantial investments in Iowa
Monsanto actively lobbies to change laws in Iowa
I think its fair to say that Monsanto has a lot of influence in Iowa.
I question the integrity of this "prize".
so let me get this straight, a guy was given a food prize for making food less food-like?
They're using their grammar skills there.
it's more like Dr. Frankenstein winning the Nobel prize in medicine.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Monsanto is developing drought resistant rice through selective breeding, which will compete with 4 or 5 other drought resistant strains of rice already developed in other countries. There are no stories about Monsanto doing any drought resistant GM rice. If it was happening, Monsanto would be blowing its horn about it. So parent post is factually wrong on this one.
Monsanto has gained approval to market a drought resistant GMO corn. The only thing is, it is not any better than strains of drought resistant corn already on the market, developed at agricultural colleges to meet the specific conditions of various areas. The Monsanto GMO corn is not as good a solution as the strains that have been bred for each region. Monsanto's long term goal is to probably combine "Round Up Ready" GMO corn with GMO drought resistant corn and drive all other strains out of the market. That will ensure an increase in the flow of Round Up, which is one of Monsanto's biggest revenue streams. (What Round Up can do to a trout streams is something else again.)
There has been a noticeable increase in Bt resistant pests in areas where Monsanto GM Bt crops have been grown. Perhaps it should not be a surprise that not much research on this "aberration" is being funded.
Aren't you the little Monsanto fanboi. But your post does provide a convenient place to air some of the other problems that are associated with Monsanto's exploitive business practices.
Will
And then ream everyone in court who tries to keep some seed and use it to replant.
There's always the option of not buying them and going with open pollinated seed. If you get sued for violating a contract you signed, then that is on you. And before you bring up the inevitable claim of suing for cross pollination, wrong.
lobby for legislation which requires food aid from the US to be GMO crops
That's new on me. Point me to that specific legislation, because that sounds an awful lot like a load of made up bullshit that someone pulled out of the usual place. Yeah, for some crops like corn and soy, most of the aid is genetically engineered, because most of the crop is genetically engineered. This isn't a conspiracy; it's just how supply chains work.
Today : Microsoft listened to customers and removed the "always connected" feature from the XBox, US House wants sustained presence on moon and Mars, Microsoft starts $100k security bug bounty program, Monsanto CTO wins World Food Prize...
April's fool... check.
International Joke dat... check.
Carnaval... check.
SYSTEM FAILURE.
Yes, the principle ingredient in Roundup went off-patent more than 10 years ago. Monsanto holds patents on the mechanisms, processes, and specific formulations used to produce the various Roundup poisons. I understand that Monsanto says about half of its revenues come from Roundup and associated products (I think that includes the Roundup Ready seeds, too.)
The literature Monsanto provides on using Roundup on Roundup Ready fields is specific to Monsanto products. That is, you plant with Roundup Ready corn, then you can either buy the right type of Roundup to use on that field or you can try to figure out what concentrations, surfactants, other additives you could use if you buy your poison from one of Monsanto's competitors. In some cases the use of specific Roundup poisons is apparently specified in the licensing contract on the seed (the same contract that states that the farmer cannot harvest seed for another year's crop from his Roundup Ready fields).
Will
You realize glyphosate is off-patent now, right?
You realize that Monsanto themselves still produces more than half of all glyphosphate anyway, right?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The day someone returns life to a dead organism, they have damn well earned a Nobel prize.
No, the summary is complete; no one gets awards for that. Watch your scope creep!
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
I think it would be more like giving a health prize to a pharmaceutical company for vaccine manufacturing. Sure, despite the public controversy concerning whether or not they cause autism, it would be true that the company has produced good things that have combated disease, although giving it to a corporate suit is still kind of bullshit. That's how I feel about it. Even if their seeds are helping people (for example, this just popped up in the news), giving the prize to executives doesn't seem right. Perhaps individual scientists or teams, but corporate executives? I don't like it.
As a side not, the Frankenstein thing is pretty silly. No one calls it Frankenstein when someone picks out a somatic mutant of a fruit tree and grafts it to another tree, no one calls it Frankenstein when you chemically double the chromosomes of a plant either to cross it with a non-doubled one to get a triploid or to produce a plant with homozygous alleles from a pollen cell, no one calls it Frankenstein when you cross two plants that can't produce viable offspring and then remove the embryo before it dies to culture it into a hybrid that could never exist in nature, no one calls it Frankenstein when you blast a culture of cells with radiation or apply mutagenic chemicals to create all sorts of random mutations, and no one calls it Frankenstein when you select random mutation after random mutation in the form of artificial selection, a process that has caused such great genetic shifts as to create corn from teosinte and broccoli, kale, kohlrabi, cabbage,and cauliflower (all the same species by the way) from wild mustard. Yet now this is Frankenstein? I mean, I suppose you could go the appeal to nature route and argue that everything else is just manipulating natural forces in a beneficial way, but of course, one could point to horizontal gene transfer and say the same of genetic engineering, not that the argument means much anyway.
It's no surprise at all, because it's been revealed that Monsanto has been using this same tactic for years to corrupt academic journals to ensure that no contrary research gets published.
Take a look at The Goodman Affair: Monsanto Targets the Heart of Science. It's enough to make you weep for the biomedical and horticultural sciences.
This is very likely to be why Monsanto shills so often dismiss contrary research with "It's not published in a top peer-reviewed journal." They known damn well that they control those "prestigious scientific journals" and nothing harmful to their interests will get published in them.
"Prestigious journals" my foot. They're only prestigious to those who aren't aware of the endemic corruption.
There is no such thing as bacon corn but there is such a thing as a lard nut that supposedly has a pork like taste. Maybe when human society finally gets its shit together with respect to agricultural biodiversity and starts developing and widely cultivating more of the usable species out there you might get a chance to try one.
The technology is great stuff. The real valid reason Europe and others complain goes back to the laws around these innovations - it really is innovation not round corners on a dumbed down interface.
Lets say the innovation results in a 20% increase in production. A farmer producing crops by traditional technology becomes a cash loss as prices decline. A farmer producing with the new technology does not own the seed and perhaps the product as they sign contracts to work for monsanto. The IP owner dictates what the cash crop worker does, how much they are paid and if they get to be viable next year.
That's markets, right? more efficient things come and less efficient things go. The measure of success of the market is the price we pay for food.
So we move to a contract mentality and family farms go away. You get short term goals with no concern about the productivity of the land from one generation to the next. Land does not work that way. You can do a decades worth of damage very quickly.
But what stake does Monsanto have in this game? So total productivity drops 30% due to short term corporate farming practices. It applies to farms moving back to traditional technology as well and Monsanto has a 20% advantage. Small farmers go away. Monsanto wins. We lose.
I have no fear of eating GMO agricultural products other than the damage it does to our future.
So when will they put everyone at that company in jail for monopolizing and tainting the natural order of the worlds food supply?
Do you have a non-biased not-crazy-person source?
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
You are 180 degrees off. What farmers (including here in the USA) do with insecticide/pesticide/herbicide is try to save money by spraying less than the amount the manufacturer says is appropriate. Additionally farmers aren't stupid, they know damn well what happens when you spray something on a field and it rains shortly afterwards: it's washed away taking their hard-earned money with it. Finally glyphosphate is low-moderate toxicity, has very low chronic toxicity, has very low or no reproductive, mutagenic, tetragenic, or carcinogenic effects, has low bioaccumulation, binds tightly to soil so it doesn't spread easily, and biodegrades rapidly. It's not perfect (nothing is) but it's pretty damn good.
Why yes! I do pesticide R&D and have international collaborators from the developing world, and no, I don't have any affiliation with Monsanto. Posting as AC because this thread badly needs moderators who know something about GMOs and farming and I have mod points.
The lobbying isn't much of a problem. Kids ask their parents for ponies by the millions every Christmas. The real problem is that our corrupt legislators grant these wishes, mostly because it's not their own money that they are giving away. You can't stop greedy industry from asking for feeding at the governmental trough; the only people who can stop the feeding is the legislators who actually hand out the money.
The solution is simple: vote for people who staunchly oppose agricultural subsidies, food aid, international "aid", and overzealous EPA monitoring. If they turn out to have completely lied about their positions once they get into office, vote them out of office and select the next candidate. That's the only way to "change the system". Whining and complaining about "big bad corporations and their lobbyists" as people do isn't going to accomplish anything other than diffuse responsibility away from the people who actually are at fault: our legislators and the voters who put them in Congress.
Monsanto's products aren't copyrighted, they are patented. Those patents expire after 20 years. Roundup-Ready is becoming generic next year, at which point you can use it freely (since Roundup has also become generic). And Monsanto has to innovate in order to compete with its own generic product.
What has made Microsoft so dangerous and threatened to monopolize the industry was the unreasonably long duration of copyrights. And as you may notice, Microsoft Windows is fading from significance as well.
This is when the committee shall drink and feast. A day's work. They will applaud themselves. It is now night and they will retire to their study. Not in their rightful place between the butcher and the con, but from their pedestal of penthouses that overlook the common lot of us. From there, they will survey the domain they've taken.
They are bored. No, not boredom. The feeling they feel is an implosion of nothingness. The feeling of purposelessness. A dry heave; heartless and undefined. As they return to their desk, they reach for their revolver. Tonight, below their precipice, another child's dreams are preserved. To bloom. One day, another day.
Glyphosate (Roundup) has long become generic, and many companies sell it.
Farmers have used herbicides since long before herbicide resistant crops. Roundup-Ready crops mean that farmers can get by with a single appiication and space their crops more closely. If anything, that reduces exposure of "the ecosystem" to herbicides that "it does not have the genes to protect itself from". So how is this worse?
Any good American demands it be well trimmed and maintained. Anyone else is a faithless muslim athiest commie fascist anarchist.
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
So why would farmers buy it if it's not "as good a solution"? This isn't like the drug business where doctors are tricked into spending more of other people's money. 5% less yield means 5% less revenue to the person who selects the crop.
Glyphosate is generic, so people can buy it from other companies. And farmers were using glyphosate (and other herbicides) long before GMO. If anything, they need to use less now to produce the same amount of food.
Pests will develop resistance to almost any pest control measure over time. That doesn't mean that everybody suddenly becomes an organic farmer, it means that we keep developing new pest control measures. That's no different from the constant arms race that any competing species in nature engage in, whether it's gazelle and lion or bt and bollworm.
So far, your objections are pointless. And "Roundup Ready" crops are going into the public domain starting next year. So at that point, you can forget all that Monsanto bashing, because then choosing those crops is really no different from choosing any other crop, GMO or not GMO. Who are you going to blame then for farmers choosing generic "Roundup Ready" crops?
Writing Mon$anto would have been to obvious, with NSA spying and all. The editors now have to find subtler ways of saying big corporate corporations are greedy.
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
You forgot corn. They have a 90s percentage of the corn market. What do you think most farmers in the US are growing?
There's always the option of not buying them and going with open pollinated seed.
Tell that to the farmers living in Iraq.
Ezekiel 23:20
Monsanto's litigation tactics remind me of the RIAA and its ilk. Both try desperately to stop easily duplication of their "IP", but in Monsanto's case they're fighting against the four and a half billion year old tactics of nature.
They can sue as many farmers as they like, their precious seeds will propagate out of their control eventually.
You shouldn't have posted as AC.
Gardeners have know for years that Round Up (glyphosphate) becomes innert almost as soon as it hits the ground. You only need to keep pets away for a couple of hours - it says that on the bottle too.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
Such policy only really applies to the time around Valentine's Day:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/20000-tons-of-pubic-hair-trimmed-in-preparation-fo,2909/
That's right, 20,000 tons...
BlameBillCosby.com
If maybe you don't trust Greenpeace,
And who could blame you, when they start the article with a sort-of lie and an outright lie
In the crop department, Monsanto is well on their way to dictating what consumers will eat, what farmers will grow, and how much Monsanto will get paid for seeds. In some cases those seeds are designed not to reproduce sowable offspring. In others, a flock of lawyers stand ready to swoop down on farmers who illegally, or even unknowingly, end up with Monsanto's private property growing in their fields.
No, Monsanto is not developing terminator genes, they bought a company that had developed it for its other IP, and no, the Schmeiser case was about as long as you can get from "a farmer unknowingly [ending] up" with anything.
Really, if there are that many other sources, than why link to the one that does maximal damage to your credibility?
The day that happens you better have your guns ready.
And in other news, both Stalin and Hitler were posthumously jointly awarded the World Population Control Award.
First against the wall when the revolution comes
I've got some photographs, I'd like to show them to you. Though you don't know the girls You'll recognise the view..
Because we could explore space.
If you get sued for violating a contract you signed, then that is on you. And before you bring up the inevitable claim of suing for cross pollination, wrong.
From your NPR story:
That sounds exactly like what you said doesn't happen. Grow crops. Pick the ones with the best traits and replant them. Get sued.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
He didn't forget corn, it's right there in his second paragraph!
The problem is that you haven't accurately defined what you mean when you say "market share." If you go by acres planted, monsanto only provides 35% and like he said, that is by far their biggest seller.
So how do you two have such wildly different numbers? You are counting seeds with patented genes licensed by other companies from Monsanto as having been sold by Monsanto. Who is right? One thing is for certain, Monsanto is not going to achieve global dominance as long as they license their patents to competitors.
So why would farmers buy it if it's not "as good a solution"?
Because Monsanto can offer marketplace incentives that can offset the poorer crop economics of their seed.
Farmers that hedge against possible drought by planting a portion of their acreage in a lower yield drought resistant corn while putting the rest in Roundup Ready corn can benefit from bulk discounts if they buy all their seed from Monsanto. Monsanto can also offer other incentives to buying their seed over regionally developed alternatives, in the same way that Walmart can drive smaller, more specialized stores out of business. Regional seed producers are by nature too small to compete with a global producer like Monsanto, and the non-Monsanto strains of drought resistant corn will gradually disappear as those seed farmers turn to raising crops that have a broader market.
As discussed elsewhere in this thread, the Roundup herbicides are complex mixtures of glyphosphates with adjuvants that are sometimes more poisonous than the glyphosphates themselves. The farmer cannot buy a pure glyphosphate, a pure surfactant, and the various other agents and mix his own blend in a corner of the cow barn. He can only do limited research on the various pre-mixed combination products that he can find on the Internet. And he has limited time to spend on this research: he has to be out working his fields. So Monsanto's large advertising budget can carry the day.
Will
Your view of agriculture is about a century out of date. Farms today are largely big agribusinesses receiving large government subsidies.
Do you think farmers are dummies? There are journals, trade magazines, reviews, and lots of other sources of information. And any farmer who can't figure out what the right product is for his needs will go out of business.
So you are saying that Monsanto is evil because they give bulk discounts? How is the farmer worse off than if Monsanto didn't exist at all or didn't give discounts?
I think the bigger part you're missing is the following. Either Monsanto's products work or they don't. Either there are generic products that work better for less money or there aren't. Farmers that make the right choice will stay in business, and farmers that don't will go out of business. That's what is supposed to happen. You still haven't explained what's so horrible about Monsanto.
The information quotient in this thread is now bouncing on zero.
Thanks for playing.
Will
You have a very simplistic view of manufacture if you think Monsanto is using exactly the same equipment and processes as those they developed 40 years ago, and has never patented any part of their improved processing as they upgraded.
But then there have been other indications that your world is so much a simpler and happier place than the world I live in. I do not know how to make my fantasies as real as you have managed to do.
In any case, the information value of this thread has been exhausted. Thank you for playing.
Will
Or Barack Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize.
Oh wait.