Countless farmers have had their crops destroyed and their yields reduced as a part of this damaging practice. This time, however, they are able to fight back. According to these farmers, they had no choice but to buy the seeds from Monsanto, which understood that drifting dicamba could drive competitors out of the market.
Their claim rings true when considering farmers who stick to traditional crops and how much destruction they have faced. Dicamba-use is heavily contested and controversial. The future of the company may lie in seeds, but the seeds of the company lie in chemicals.
Monsanto was founded in by John Francis Queeny, a tough, cigar-smoking Irishman with a sixth-grade education. A buyer for a wholesale drug company, Queeny had an idea. So he went into business for himself on the side. Queeny was convinced there was money to be made manufacturing a substance called saccharin, an artificial sweetener then imported from Germany.
Louis waterfront. With borrowed equipment and secondhand machines, he began producing saccharin for the U. The young company faced other challenges.
Questions arose about the safety of saccharin, and the U. Department of Agriculture even tried to ban it. His persistence and the loyalty of one steady customer kept the company afloat. That steady customer was a new company in Georgia named Coca-Cola. Monsanto added more and more products—vanillin, caffeine, and drugs used as sedatives and laxatives.
In , Monsanto began making aspirin, and soon became the largest maker worldwide. During World War I, cut off from imported European chemicals, Monsanto was forced to manufacture its own, and its position as a leading force in the chemical industry was assured. After Queeny was diagnosed with cancer, in the late s, his only son, Edgar, became president. Where the father had been a classic entrepreneur, Edgar Monsanto Queeny was an empire builder with a grand vision.
Under Edgar Queeny and his successors, Monsanto extended its reach into a phenomenal number of products: plastics, resins, rubber goods, fuel additives, artificial caffeine, industrial fluids, vinyl siding, dishwasher detergent, anti-freeze, fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides. Its safety glass protects the U. Constitution and the Mona Lisa. Its synthetic fibers are the basis of Astroturf. During the s, the company shifted more and more resources into biotechnology.
In it created a molecular-biology group for research in plant genetics. The next year, Monsanto scientists hit gold: they became the first to genetically modify a plant cell. Louis, developed one genetically modified product after another—cotton, soybeans, corn, canola. From the start, G. Monsanto has sought to portray G. In its list of corporate milestones, all but a handful are from the recent era.
One of the benefits of doing this, as the company does not point out, was to channel the bulk of the growing backlog of chemical lawsuits and liabilities onto Solutia, keeping the Monsanto brand pure.
For many years Monsanto produced two of the most toxic substances ever known— polychlorinated biphenyls, better known as PCBs, and dioxin. Monsanto no longer produces either, but the places where it did are still struggling with the aftermath, and probably always will be. Twelve miles downriver from Charleston, West Virginia, is the town of Nitro, where Monsanto operated a chemical plant from to A by-product of the process was the creation of a chemical that would later be known as dioxin.
The name dioxin refers to a group of highly toxic chemicals that have been linked to heart disease, liver disease, human reproductive disorders, and developmental problems. Even in small amounts, dioxin persists in the environment and accumulates in the body. In the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a branch of the World Health Organization, classified the most powerful form of dioxin as a substance that causes cancer in humans.
In the U. The noise from the release was a scream so loud that it drowned out the emergency steam whistle for five minutes. A plume of vapor and white smoke drifted across the plant and out over town. Within days, workers experienced skin eruptions. Many were soon diagnosed with chloracne, a condition similar to common acne but more severe, longer lasting, and potentially disfiguring.
Others felt intense pains in their legs, chest, and trunk. Court records indicate that plant workers became ill. In the meantime, the Nitro plant continued to produce herbicides, rubber products, and other chemicals.
In the s, the factory manufactured Agent Orange, the powerful herbicide which the U. In several former Nitro employees filed lawsuits in federal court, charging that Monsanto had knowingly exposed them to chemicals that caused long-term health problems, including cancer and heart disease.
They alleged that Monsanto knew that many chemicals used at Nitro were potentially harmful, but had kept that information from them. Monsanto stopped producing dioxin in Nitro in , but the toxic chemical can still be found well beyond the Nitro plant site. Repeated studies have found elevated levels of dioxin in nearby rivers, streams, and fish.
Residents have sued to seek damages from Monsanto and Solutia. Earlier this year, a West Virginia judge merged those lawsuits into a class-action suit. Five hundred miles to the south, the people of Anniston, Alabama, know all about what the people of Nitro are going through. One of the wonder chemicals of the 20th century, PCBs were exceptionally versatile and fire-resistant, and became central to many American industries as lubricants, hydraulic fluids, and sealants. But PCBs are toxic.
A member of a family of chemicals that mimic hormones, PCBs have been linked to damage in the liver and in the neurological, immune, endocrine, and reproductive systems. The Environmental Protection Agency E.
Today, 37 years after PCB production ceased in Anniston, and after tons of contaminated soil have been removed to try to reclaim the site, the area around the old Monsanto plant remains one of the most polluted spots in the U.
People in Anniston find themselves in this fix today largely because of the way Monsanto disposed of PCB waste for decades. Excess PCBs were dumped in a nearby open-pit landfill or allowed to flow off the property with storm water. Some waste was poured directly into Snow Creek, which runs alongside the plant and empties into a larger stream, Choccolocco Creek. PCBs also turned up in private lawns after the company invited Anniston residents to use soil from the plant for their lawns, according to The Anniston Star.
So for decades the people of Anniston breathed air, planted gardens, drank from wells, fished in rivers, and swam in creeks contaminated with PCBs—without knowing anything about the danger. Studies by health authorities consistently found elevated levels of PCBs in houses, yards, streams, fields, fish, and other wildlife—and in people. In , Monsanto and Solutia entered into a consent decree with the E. Scores of houses and small businesses were to be razed, tons of contaminated soil dug up and carted off, and streambeds scooped of toxic residue.
The cleanup is under way, and it will take years, but some doubt it will ever be completed—the job is massive. Once PCB is absorbed into human tissue, there it forever remains. In recent years, residents near the village of Groesfaen, in southern Wales, have noticed vile odors emanating from an old quarry outside the village.
As it turns out, Monsanto had dumped thousands of tons of waste from its nearby PCB plant into the quarry. British authorities are struggling to decide what to do with what they have now identified as among the most contaminated places in Britain.
What had Monsanto known—or what should it have known—about the potential dangers of the chemicals it was manufacturing? The evidence that Monsanto refused to face questions about their toxicity is quite clear.
In the company tried to sell the navy a hydraulic fluid for its submarines called Pydraul , which contained PCBs. Taylor, currently the deputy commissioner of the Office of Foods. However, between that position and his current FDA position, Mr.
During his … Read more ». Because of the sympathy, in the article by Anderson, concerning Monsanto, I am no longer interested in, what should be called, Naive Modern Farmer.
Too bad, for a while there I thought I found a gem of information! They poisoned our world, killed directly or indirectly millions of people and species of insects, fish, mammals. Tried to limit our use of seeds. Got to be kidding about how they tried to save themselves They are still there and still killing millions. I have no problem with GMOs, golden rice is awesome and saved millions of people from blindness and other health problems caused by vitamin A deficiency.
But that case of the one farmer being sued that was mentioned in the article was NOT an isolated case. The Million Gardens Movement doesn't just help you grow a garden, we're also bringing gardens to kids across the country — and you can help.
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By Lessley Anderson on March 4, Lessley Anderson. Everyone seems to think that Monsanto is the face of evil. But why? In , Greenpeace activists held a letter to Monsanto's China CEO and a bowl of rice to protest in the lobby of a building where Monsanto has its office in Beijing.
It's not just the U. Scenes from a protest, outside the Monsanto annual shareholder meeting in Creve Coeur, Missouri. Sign up for your Modern Farmer Weekly Newsletter. Notify of. Most Voted Newest Oldest. Inline Feedbacks. View Replies 3. Bart Schairer. View Replies 5. Catherine Warriner. View Replies 1. Penny fox. View Replies 2. Judy O. Load More Comments. How Does Aeroponics Work? Brian Barth. Explore Modern Farmer. We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits.
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