Should Monsanto Be Able To Patent Seeds

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

When seed farmers sign a contract with Monsanto, they are required to use their engineered seeds. Monsanto sues the farmer if they do not use the seeds that they require them to use. The regulations of these companies cause

The issue of genetically modified foods, is Farmers can't harvest seeds. Fundamentally, farming is a simple process: plant seeds, grow crops, harvest crops, and gather seeds from the plants for the next season. Sadly, GMO companies like Monsanto take this last step away from farmers and raise expenses even futher by forcing the farmers to continually buy the premium-priced GM eeds every growing season. In fact, as was shiwn in the Bowman v. Monsanto court case, it is illegal in the US for someone growing a Monsanto crop to harvest the seeds and use them later. The Nowman case went all the way to the unanimously found guilty of patent infringement after he purchased and used second generation Monsanto seeds.

Monsanto and other companies profit at the expense of hard working farmers across by disallowing seed saving and enforcing their patents with private investigators.

A direct quote said by Joel Salatin, the owner of Polyface Farms, states,”If we put glass walls on all the mega-processing facilities, we would have a different food system in this country.” This is a famous quote from the informational and eye opening movie Food Inc. The documentary was created to help change America’s views on the way they eat and how their food is produced. The American Society deserves to know the truth about how their food is being produced.

Companies like Monsanto's should not be able to patent seeds because due to this we have been losing so many varieties of vegetables and fruits.According to The Future Of Foods, only 2% of the USA’s population is a farmer. Due to this it leaves us with 98% of us as non-farmers, because of this labor on vegetables and fruits have grown tremendously.In the 1800's very little potatoes grew in Ireland this started great hunger and thousands of people died due to that.A similar thing happened in Spain but the outcome was very different, not that many people died. This happened because in Ireland there were only a few varieties of potatoes and due to this most of the potatoes that people used to eat were gone.In Spain the same thing happened but

The patenting of GMO corn and soybean seeds is quite a deceptive business move on Monsanto’s part because it appears to protect the seeds that farmers purchase, but in turn the patents really only look out for the company’s best interest. While Monsanto sues farmers and traps them in debt for using patented products, it pretends to be working for farmers’ welfare. This paper exposes Monsanto’s use of Genetically Modified Organisms exhibited in “Induced Nuisance: Holding Patent Owners Liable for GMO Cross-Contamination” to uncover the damaging environmental and economic effects their business practices have on privately owned farms. Monsanto’s use of gene patents is responsible for the destruction of many farms, the reduction in crop varieties, and the development of resistant weeds and pests all in the name of corporate expansion. This paper also reveals Monsanto’s role in the legalization and use of gene patents globally. Monsanto’s recklessness is being uncovered in this paper because their advantageous business practices exemplify greed and class

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

In the United States and Canada, Monsanto is spending millions of dollars for companies to remove the genetically modified organisms label and requested them to put ‘Natural’ on their products instead. One example of this is a big company, Kellogg’s. One of Kellogg’s brands, Kashi, was sued for falsely advertising their products as ‘all natural’ or with ‘nothing artificial’. Kashi paid five million to resolve what they had done. With more investigation, it was found that Kellogg’s paid the Grocery Manufacturers Association’s (GMA) $221,852 to oppose the genetically modified organisms labeling bill. The GMA was later sued for taking the money from the donors who funded them and found, “The GMA has contributed $7,222,500 to the campaign opposing

A company known as Monsanto has been terrorizing the farm land for many years. This company in all honesty cares nothing about the environment. When Monsanto first crawled out of the mud, they were strictly making chemicals. The chemicals that Monsanto has created wreaked havoc on the country side of the United States of America. Many towns are still cleaning up the mess from twenty years ago that Monsanto caused. Now Monsanto has G.M. seeds that will not be affected by pesticides. While this is a good idea, the way Monsanto goes about their transactions is terrifying for farmers. Monsanto hires people whom the farmers refer to them as seed police, or the mafia. They scare farmers into buying their seeds and they threaten to take everything from the farmers if they don’t settle with Monsanto. Monsanto has made farmers live in fear, scared that one day the “mafia” would come for them. It is completely messed

As parents, it is our job to look out for our children. Feeding them healthy, balanced meals is essential to their well being. But what if the products companies promote are not helping our children? What if they are hurting them? It turns out the brands we know and love may not have our best interests in mind when creating their products. Main brand companies use GMOs, genetically modified organisms, in their products. GMOs are created through a process called genetic engineering and in this process an organism’s genetic material is unnaturally modified through human intervention (Benson 2015). Well if companies are using them that must mean they aren’t hazardous… right? Unfortunately, that isn’t entirely true. According to Dick Benson, well over 60 countries world-wide have either banned the use of GMOs completely or have strict guidelines of when and how much they can be used. If so many countries have banned them then why are they being sold in the US?

This process of genetically modifying seeds is an atrocity to society. Until recently, when I began my journey to eating healthier, I wasn’t aware of this procedure; consequently, when purchasing groceries, I noticed the verbiage – GMO (genetically modified organism) free. I did not have a clue as to what the meaning of this term was and began educating myself in this process. After reading case 3 -- Monsanto Balances the Interest of Multiple Stakeholders (Ferrell & Hartline 2014), the best way Monsanto can fulfill its moral and environmental obligation would be to stop impeding on the natural process of growing food. According to (Ferrell & Hartline 2014), the FDA, which I do not trust, states there is no significant difference between a

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.

As Monsanto is fighting to gain seed control of the whole world of agriculture by spreading genetically-modified crops across the world (with the support of the U.S. government according to Wikileaks), there is far greater opposition from the rest of the world, where many countries are not only labeling GMOs but also banning their cultivation altogether.

We then discover that it has been legal to patent life since the 1980s, and learn about the company Monsanto’s round up resistant soybean that now makes up 90% of the soybean market. Monsanto