V. PHENOMENA ANALYSIS/ DISCUSSION
1. Who is Monsanto? And What is GMOs?
Monsanto was one of 37 main manufacturers of dioxin-contaminated Agent Orange used in America – Vietnam war over the period from 1965 to 1969. Mosanto is believed to cause a thousands of deaths and a wide range of health effects due to Agent Orange exposure (i.e. estimated 15,000 people in Quang Tri province exposed to Agent Orange). From 2004-2007, the Agent Orange affected Vietnamese had filed lawsuits against Monsanto and other manufactures in France and USA for many times but repeatedly failed. No financial support has been made to Agent Orange victims (Hellegers, 2015).
Nowadays, Monsanto has transformed to agriculture business so as to, as they declared, “find sustainable
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This is an attractive market place to any agriculture company, including Monsanto. One of the most salient characteristics of Vietnamese farmers is the fact that they are so dependent on their government. Specifically, when I interviewed Ms. Son Phan – a farmer in Hung Yen Province, Vietnam, she said “We often rely on the introduction of Vietnam National University of Agriculture to decide which type of seeds will be cultivated in the next crop”. Moreover, they have little access to multi-dimensional sources of information due to their lack of time and knowledge. Instead, they are more familiar with formal public media, such as television, radio or newspaper, etc. Also according to Ms. Son, they have never heard about GM seeds, Monsanto or any social movements against Monsanto in the world. They also hardly have any clue about Monsanto’s bad reputation and its crime in Vietnamese war.
3. How has Monsanto been managing stakeholders using co-optation techniques to easily enter Vietnamese agricultural market?
The mechanism behind co-optation process in Monsanto phenomena could be analysed in details following Coy and Hedeen‘s model stage as below:
a.
Monsanto positions itself as a relatively new agricultural company having formed in 2002, and focused on supporting local farmers around the world. They also promote themselves as a guardian of the environment with a mission “to produce more food while conserving more” (Monsanto.com). Today’s Monsanto conglomerate also promotes itself as the “New Merchants,” a leading research company in the field of agriculture-crop production, as well as a strong supporter of public and private research through its grant, donations and University scholarship programs.
The farmers then give their products to the manufacturers, who represent the bottleneck of the food system (21). “The ten largest companies control half of the world’s seed supply. …Ten firms control 90% of the nearly $38.6 billion pesticide markets (111-112).” Monsanto, being one of the ten companies that controls the world’s seed supply, is a company that has patents on all of its seeds and products. It produces genetically modified crops that are resistant to its own pesticides and herbicides, so that when a pesticide or herbicide is sprayed and it destroys all plants, the Monsanto seed survives because of its resistance. The reason that Monsanto is able to stay in business is because of the economic benefit it poses for the farmers. They are able to produce their crops at a much higher yield because they are losing less of their crops to pests. This higher yield results in lower costs for the consumers as well (Planes). As discussed
Monsanto is a known name in America correlated with the farming industry, but most people do not even scratch the surface in researching the company. The name appears in colleges and in many articles. Monsanto is an international corporation based out of the United States of America. They are accredited with most of the genetically modified crops in the country today. In 1996, Round Up Ready soybeans were introduced to the farming community. (Brown) This was main introduction of GMOs into agriculture. By 2003, Monsanto already
According to Natural Society, people like Hugh Grant, and Bill Gates who own millions of shares in Monsanto stock are not the real owners of Monsanto. The main owners of Monsanto are institutions. The leading institution for Monsanto is a company is called the Vanguard group. Vanguard owns 3 trillion dollars in investments in different companies like Monsanto. Additionally, they own such companies as Bank of America, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, and others. Employees of Monsanto seem to be interested in agriculture. Most of the employees are scientist, and agricultural experts. Employees enjoy working with farmers, and enjoy generating new ideas. Every project that is worked on inspires innovation allowing Monsanto, to stay on the cutting edge,
Ethical issues remain relevant aspects for businesses operation and competitiveness. The elements aforesaid ensure that every firm has what it takes to connect well with the community to provide consistent market and productive relationship with other stakeholders. Monsanto Company that was in a tussle with the community over the production of the genetically modified products that seemed detrimental to the society responded by creating awareness to the people about the need for sustainable farming practices (Carroll, 2015). The company notified farmers that the world population was increasingly going up thus a need for sustainable agricultural practices. The company
Monsanto and other companies profit at the expense of hard working farmers across by disallowing seed saving and enforcing their patents with private investigators.
Monsanto has various stakeholder groups all across the globe. The key stakeholders are: members of the global financial community; farmers and other agricultural organizations; Monsanto employees; animal feed producers and distributors; insect/pest control organizations; federal, state and local agricultural, regulatory and environmental agencies; and the list goes on and on (Beyond the Rows, 2012). Monsanto states that their main goals is to provide stakeholders with better information regarding all of their activities and that they are committed to making meaningful strides to report on environmental sustainability performance throughout the world (Beyond the Rows, 2012).
It doesn’t help that Monsanto also has power in politics, one of the Monsanto chiefs for food safety, Michael Taylor was actually appointed by Barrack Obama himself. Barrack Obama also appointed his Supreme Court judge: Elena Kagan, who happens to be the chief defender of Monsanto and GMO’s. Whether Republican or Democratic, Monsanto wields a strong power within politics that helps give them an edge in keeping their company going. (Obama). There are good aspects of Monsanto, like the efficiency of cheap seeds, and crops that can withstand the harsh behaviors of weathers, and the ability the crops have to survive a longer time. But not even the cheapest crops can cover up Monsanto’s long history of evil, from polluting the environment with PCB’s, the chemical Agent Orange, and the weed killer “Round-Up Ready”, to Monopolizing itself to being the owner of 90% of the seed industry and shutting down small
Monsanto Company is the world’s largest seed company. They specialize in genetic manipulation of organisms.
Monsanto is a Saint Louis Chemical manufacturer that is a major player in the weed killing business. Monsanto has quite a portentous past. They developed and produced the notorious defoliant "Agent Orange" used in the Vietnam War, they invented the controversial recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH), and they were the inventors and world’s main producer of
Additionally, big business controls the farmers by capitalizing on widely used commodities. For example, the company Monsanto which is based in St. Louis, Missouri protects its dominance over the genetically modified crops such as the soy bean with the use of a patent law. Because of this, Monsanto’s patented genes “account for 95 percent of all soy beans and 80 percent of all corn grown in the U.S.,” (Associated Press). Although genetically modifying the soy bean crop has made it more readily available and more sustainable, this comes at a high price to farmers. Monsanto continues to raise their prices, which forces farmers to accrue even more debt, and there is no sign of the rise in the seed prices stopping. Since a lot of the farmers are under contract with Monsanto, there is nothing they can do about this unethical policy in fear of losing their job.
1 am not surprised of the outcome of your meeting with Mr. Smythe-Jones (CFO). However, I cannot answer your request until I heard from local management. As it was agreed on the last meeting, we were precluded ,from doing any work without first getting approval from management at the headquarters and we were instructed by local management from doing anything until they finalized what was required from us. It appears to me to be a Catch 22 game! 1 believe we (your Firm and ours) should not fall in the game of passing the ball to someone else before getting a clear understanding of what is going on. We have had several meetings with local management where the issue has been raised and were responded that other priorities were established by the headquarters (on my end I thought they tell you everything they have been instructed of locally, unfortunately it does not seem to be the case). In my opinion it looks very easy that you accept from management at the headquarters to hold us accountable from something we are not responsible for, and this does not mean I do not understand the pressure you are receiving on your end. However, we are not the enemy. 1 am not sending copy of this message to our client because I believe that internal issues have to be
The objective of this report is to analyze the differences in Monsanto’s experiences in the United States and Europe and the reasons of opposition in Europe, despite that, why Monsanto pushed ahead so hard.
Monsanto is a company that some people may not be explicitly familiar with on a first name basis. However, the work that the company has done over the last century, with a larger emphasis on its most recent ventures, have been deeply engrained in our lives, our food, and our economy. Monsanto has those who advocate on their behalf in addition to their naysayers. While Monsanto has made huge strides in terms of biotechnology over the last couple of decades, their accomplishments, and the relevant methods, have not been free of criticism and controversy. In order to analyze Monsanto’s corporate environment, it is important to first explore their Strengths, Weaknesses,
Big businesses have a major influence towards American agriculture. Large capital investments have contributed to the success of American agriculture. Monsanto is the world’s leading agricultural biotechnology company that has used fundamentally changed the way many