{"id":515,"date":"2010-01-08T13:56:19","date_gmt":"2010-01-08T18:56:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/2010\/01\/forbes-all-monsanto-needs-is-better-pr.html"},"modified":"2010-01-08T13:56:19","modified_gmt":"2010-01-08T18:56:19","slug":"forbes-all-monsanto-needs-is-better-pr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/2010\/01\/forbes-all-monsanto-needs-is-better-pr.html","title":{"rendered":"Forbes: All Monsanto needs is Better PR"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/a>\nForbes notes Monsanto has engineered a soybean with Omega-3 fatty acids:\n
\nMonsanto needs crowd-pleasers like this to get past its image problems. In economic terms, the company is a winner. It has created many billions of dollars of value for the world with seeds genetically engineered to ward off insects or make a crop immune to herbicides: Witness the vast numbers of farmers who prefer its seeds to competing products, and the resulting $44 billion market value of the company. In its fiscal 2009 Monsanto sold $7.3 billion of seeds and seed genes, versus $4 billion for second-place DuPont ( DD – news – people ) and its Pioneer Hi-Bred unit. Monsanto, of St. Louis, netted $2.1 billion on revenue of $11.7 billion for fiscal 2009 (ended Aug. 31). Its sales have increased at an annualized 18% clip over five years; its annualized return on capital in the period has been 12%. Those accomplishments earn it the designation as FORBES’ Company of the Year.\n

\n—\nThe Planet Versus Monsanto<\/a>,\nRobert Langreth and Matthew Herper, 12.31.09, 04:40 PM EST\nForbes Magazine dated January 18, 2010\n<\/blockquote>\nWhy, sure, making lots of money is not just good thing, it’s the only thing!\nCertainly more valuable than any associated detriments<\/a>.\nDetriments such as human birth defects studied in France<\/a>,\nand Argentina<\/a>,\nin addition to birth defects, diseases, and mass die-offs in amphibians, birds, and insects.\nThose detriments are just economic externalities.\n

\nHey, monoculture<\/a> is a sign of success, according to Forbes:\n\n\n

\nFarmers complain about Monsanto’s prices, but they still buy the seeds. Ninety percent of the U.S. soybean crop and 80% of the corn crop and cotton crop are grown with seeds containing Monsanto’s technology. Other countries are also growing Monsanto’s biotech crops, including India, with 20 million acres of cotton; Brazil, with 35 million acres of soybeans; and Argentina, with 43 million acres of soybeans. (Brazil once blocked genetically modified plants, but farmers planted the crops anyway, and it eventually legalized them.) Packaged foods with corn syrup or soybean oil likely contain the fruits of Monsanto’s gene-modified agriculture.\n<\/blockquote>\nNevermind farmers buy Monsanto’s seeds because they think they have no choice,\nbecause \nMonsanto is putting other seed producers out of business.<\/a>\nSo Monsanto takes advantage of its monopoly to jack up seed prices 42% in one year<\/a>.\n

\nBesides, Monsanto tells us Roundup is “biodegradable” and “left the soil clean.”\nWho’re you going to believe? Forbe’s Company of the Year or the French Supreme Court,\nwhich found Monsanto guilty of lying about that.<\/a>\nMaybe Monsanto will get the French to rewrite like they did Fox News about RGBH.<\/a>\n

\nAfter all, as Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant points out:\n

\n“There is bigger demand for food than ever. There is no new farmland.”\n<\/blockquote>\nNevermind that Organic Farming yields are often better than with agrochemicals<\/a>.\nYou can’t patent manure!\nOh, wait, I shouldn’t give Monsanto any ideas….\n

\n\n<\/a><\/a>\nThere’s some possibility of antitrust action against Monsanto.<\/a>\nAnd\n\nif U.S. health insurers can no longer kick people off when they get sick,\nsuddenly insurers will have incentive to stop big agribusiness from making\npeople sick in the first place.<\/a>\nIt’s Monsanto’s seeds that produce most of the corn that is made into High Fructose Corn Syrup (HCFS) that makes U.S. people obese; so obese\n\nthere are as many obese as health weight people in the U.S. today.<\/a>\nThat wouldn’t happen without massive federal subsidies to agribusiness.\nWhat Congress giveth Congress can taketh away if an even bigger lobby wants it to.\n

\nMeanwhile, at least one type of farmer is defeating Monsanto’s pesticides.\nCoca farmers in Bolivia have developed Boliviana negra, which is resistant to Roundup.<\/a>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Forbes notes Monsanto has engineered a soybean with Omega-3 fatty acids: Monsanto needs crowd-pleasers like this to get past its image problems. In economic terms, the company is a winner. It has created many billions of dollars of value for the world with seeds genetically engineered to ward off insects or make a crop immune […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[8,40,42],"tags":[239,1711,93,1133,1710,1624,15,899,179,2767],"class_list":["post-515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agrochemicals","category-economy","category-food-and-drink","tag-birth-defects","tag-boliviana-negra","tag-corn-2","tag-forbes","tag-health-insurers","tag-hugh-grant","tag-monsanto","tag-omega-3","tag-roundup","tag-soybeans"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Gj0O-8j","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}