Seed Money: Monsanto’s Past and Our Food Future
Monsanto manufactured DDT, a powerful insecticide that fought bug-borne diseases but with devastating human and environmental costs. Monsanto manufactured Agent Orange, an herbicide used to destroy jungles where the Vietcong operated, leaving humans (including U.S. veterans) with cancer. And then came the weed killer Roundup, dangerous to people but less so to weeds that developed immunity in an arms race between nature and the chemical giant. After Monsanto developed Roundup-resistant seeds because spray from the herbicide crossed into neighboring farm fields, ruining their crops, farmers were forced to buy those seeds. And on it goes.
Ohio State University environmental lecturer Bartow J. Elmore’s Seed Money is a fair-minded indictment of Monsanto. Many of its chemists believed they were solving the problem of world hunger by increasing crop yields. However, the downside of Monsanto’s products was evident early on and the company—like the tobacco industry—recruited tame scientists to cast doubt on the alarming forecasts of cancer and environmental catastrophe.
Ironies abound. In 2014 Monsanto signed a deal with the Vietnamese government in Ho Chi Minh City to purchase genetically modified seeds—the ceremony was just blocks away from the Agent Orange Museum with its graphic reminders of how the company’s chemicals devastated the country during the war. Founded in the early 20th century to free America from dependence on German chemical firms, Monsanto was purchased in 2018 by German giant Bayer.
