Congratulations to Cloudant for signing a big deal. Why work with a company as...ethically ambiguous as Monsanto? I would love to hear how your team decided to accept this deal, and I hope more than dollar signs crossed your minds.
Personally, I would start a startup (if I ever have the guts) for freedom. How could dealing with Monsanto differ from wearing golden handcuffs?
There's nothing ethically ambiguous about Monsanto. You'd be hard-pressed to name an organization of any ilk that's actively perpetrating more devastating evil.
Actually, I think Monsanto is quintessentially ethically ambiguous. Their cutthroat business tactics (including excessive litigation and political lobbying) must be weighed against their technological achievements that have had an enormous role in the "green revolution" increases in agricultural productivity allowing the human population to grow while malnourishment rates shrank. They are also partially responsible for the advent of LED lighting and they have financed the research of a future Nobel laureate.
"Their technological achievements that have had an enormous role in the 'green revolution' increases in agricultural productivity allowing the human population to grow while malnourishment rates shrank."
The problem is we now have a food system that is:
- reliant on genetic monocultures
- quickly depleting our non-renewable water supplies
- heavily reliant on oil
- causing massive algal blooms and hypoxic zones
- destroying the thickness of the soil
- depleting the soil of micronutrients
- killing the mycorrhizae
The way we're going there is a very real possibility of 1 billion plus people dying in the next fifty years as part of a massive human dieback because of our current Monsanto-style food production.
Not to mention the fact that even today our food is largely devoid of any taste or real nutritional content, and is causing epidemic levels of obesity, diabetes, cancer, etc.
I'm sympathetic to this critique, although I think you've overstated it -- the risk of a 1 billion plus die-off is unlikely, and the distribution of tasty and nutritional food is likely better today than ever before. I would add, as well, the myriad of problems relating to rampant antibiotic use in food production. The fact is, however, that engaging with technology has risks and benefits, and disengagement often carries very serious tolls. This is true of a number of aspects of modern life and food is perhaps the most visibly ugly. None of this should preclude specific criticisms of Monsanto and its behavior, but it is nonetheless overly simplistic to portray the company as being singularly evil.
That's some high quality propaganda you are spewing out there.
Tell me, since you obviously know so much about the worlds current problem with food.
Why is it that food production has gone up, yet the number of starving and hungry individuals throughout the world hasn't changed significantly?
The answer is there isn't a food abundance problem, there is a food availability problem. People don't grow crops and just give them away to the poor; the fact that monsanto has created genetically engineered foods that do things such as resist pesticides, so that large quantities of pesticides can be dumped onto crops without killing them, thus creating, "more food" because less is lost to pests, doesn't get any more food into the belly of starving people around the world.
In fact, the abundance of things like cheap corn around the world is one of the very reasons continents like africa can't ever seem to get on their feet; why would someone buy local african corn that's more expensive than cheaply grown american corn? Undercutting local economies with cheap food has not "feed the world" and does more damage than good.
Monsanto hasn't done a damn thing to allow, "the human population to grow while malnourishment shrinks", that's total absolute garbage.
I'd recommend you ask for more money from your monsanto employers, and if you don't work for them, maybe do some actual research into the company you are defending instead of spewing bullshit that looks like it's been copy pasted from a monsanto PR brochure.
Patenting genetics is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard of, and you call this ambiguous? You are a fool.
> Why is it that food production has gone up, yet the number of starving and hungry individuals throughout the world hasn't changed significantly?
Care to back that up with evidence?
The Global hunger index (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Hunger_Index), indicates that hunger has decreased over the past 20 years. Out of the 30 countries with the most hunger, only 3 have more hunger now than 20 years ago. Every country on that list has had hunger decrease of stay still, with the majority of them seeing less hunger.
That may be true but I also do not believe that the improvements in the last 20 years have had anything to do with food production. As Sen argued way back in 1981 the cause of hunger and famine is political, not due to a lack of ability to grow food. Somalia this year is case and point.
The green revolution (as led by Norman Borlaug not Monsanto) may be able to take credit for some of the advances during the 60s and 70s but any advances due to Monsanto in recent years cannot be made up for by their completely unjust business practices as others have mentioned.
I am also disappointed in hearing that a YC company is going this direction.
> advances due to Monsanto in recent years cannot be made up for by their completely unjust business practices as others have mentioned.
people deal with monsanto voluntarily. nobody is making you buy their seeds. the fact that so many do suggest that their advances in gmos are indeed worth the cost.
Actually, Monsanto also sells most "conventional"(non-GMO) seeds. It's very difficult not to deal with them, as they have a near-monopoly. If you're going to look for evil, look there.
no one is making you buy seeds at all. non-GMO seeds don't come with "no save" agreements. if you are a farmer, just do what farmers have done for thousands of years: get your seeds from this year's harvest.
Monsanto has received terribly negative press, this is true. Part of that negative press is due to public dislike of GMO foods in Europe. Part of that is due to their DRM-like technology that stops farmers from replanting seeds after one generation.
If you invented a new kind of seed which was significantly more productive but cost billions in R&D to develop, what business model would you use instead?
Put in other words, is the objection to agricultural biotechnology in general (like the Green Revolution) or to Monsanto's specific implementation, and if so what are the top flaws in their approach in your view?
No, those aren't really the major problems that people have with Monsanto. We should start by discussing their lawsuits against farmers because Monsanto grain blew onto their fields and move up from there.
The most famous such case (and probably the one you're thinking of) is Monsanto Canada Inc. v. Schmeiser in which the farmer who was sued almost certainly saved and re-used seed, then lied about the accidental nature of the crop's presence on his farm.
To be fair: farmers weren't simply getting sued for having Roundup-ready crops; they were finding their fields populated with Roundup-ready plants, and then using Roundup on the field. There was an element of getting-something-for-nothing on the farmer's side, too.
I agree with your and dionidium's characterizations. My intent wasn't to paint a one-sided anti-Monsanto picture (although I think I ended up doing that, and alas can't edit my original post at this point), but rather to offer an alternative to temphn's characterization of the public's issues with Monsanto.
> The herbicide isn't what's interesting or valuable.
Headpalm.
You DO realize that the point of the gene is to SELL ROUNDUP, right? Not using RoundUp on "RoundUp Ready!" crops kind of defeats the entire purpose.
"Sales for Roundup and other glyphosate-based herbicides peaked at about $4 billion in 2008 when the product line generated record gross profit of nearly $2 billion.
Roundup-branded glyphosate, commercialized by Monsanto in 1976, is one of the few blockbuster molecules developed by industry since the early 1970s. Methyl-tert butyl ether (MTBE), invented by Arco Chemical in the 1960s and commercialized in 1979, is the only other molecule developed by industry since the 1970s to generate sales of more than $1 billion/year."
The licensing fees we're talking about farmers getting sued over are for the Roundup-ready crops, not the herbicide. The point of the Roundup-ready system is that it allows you to plant crops that aren't killed by Roundup. As someone else noted, you can buy Roundup itself at Wal-mart.
I think even a cursory read of the thread would have indicated to a good-faith commenter that I know the basics of the difference between Roundup and the Roundup-ready GMO product.
You're right about the seed currently being a bigger source of revenue and profit than RoundUp, because it's currently protected by patents whereas the herbicide patent expired in 2000, and now Monsanto is being undersold on generic glyphosate (without its special additives) by Chinese chemical producers who have been incentivized and subsidized by their government.
However, RoundUp seed patents begin expiring with soybeans first in 2014, and it looks like canola will follow a year or three later.
RoundUp (the herbicide) apparently accounts for 10% of Monsanto's revenue, but the corresponding seed will soon account for zero.
Monsanto's primary business model is essentially peddling genetic DRM, and their secondary business model involves suing people who weren't particularly interested in associating with them in the first place. They've also been involved in bribery and coercion scandals on multiple levels, and (speaking as a GMO advocate here) they're incredibly irresponsible with their technology. It's no surprise they're unpopular.
It's true that Monsanto has put a lot of money into R&D, and that they're occasionally misrepresented by extremists and farmers who want to give the appearance of being small businesses, but that hardly justifies most of what they've done. And if they're really in such a precarious position, attempting to achieve a "food monopoly" is even more irresponsible than it would be otherwise.
> If you invented a new kind of seed which was significantly more productive but cost billions in R&D to develop, what business model would you use instead?
If the new crop is more expensive because of IP regulations, it is NOT an improvement.
There's just no way to reconcile feeding the poor with making massive profits on patents.
It's also misleading to focus on the crop itself; soil management is a far bigger issue. If your crop produces more, it means it depletes the soil more. Topsoil depletion is a huge issue wherever there is intensive modern farming.
The goal with patents is to control the food supply, not increase it.
Personally, I would start a startup (if I ever have the guts) for freedom. How could dealing with Monsanto differ from wearing golden handcuffs?