Monsanto is a $58 billion multinational Pesticide-'n-Frankenfood corporation that has moved on from selling Agent Orange to its new business of patenting actual seed genomes and then suing farmers who try to grow crops without paying the Monsanto corporation. Who could be opposed to such a thing. Only the elites, clearly.
Nobody really knows what sort of social and environmental consequences might result from the widespread use of genetically engineered Monsanto seeds that are resistant to Monsanto pesticides. I mean, what kind of weirdo would question whether that system has a downside? Latte-swilling, Mark Bittman-worshipping elitists, according to Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant:
“There is this strange kind of reverse elitism: If I’m going to do this [meaning "not bombard the world with genetically modified seeds and pesticides and also destroy any farmer who attempts to buck the system"], then everything else shouldn’t exist,” Grant said at Monsanto’s St. Louis headquarters yesterday. “There is space in the supermarket shelf for all of us.”...
“And the sad piece of this is, it ends up either or,” Grant said. “So you get conventional agriculture or broad scale or however you define it, and organic. I think we’re going to look back on this period and say, How on earth did that ever become the fight that it became.”
Alternately, we might look back on this period and say "Yes, May of 2013 is the date to which we need to send our Terminators back in time in order to stop the Monsanto people from distributing their Frankenseeds which will eventually decimate life on earth." I know, I know— typical elitist reaction.
KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS STORY FOR THE BUSY EXECUTIVE: Only elitists care about small farmers; Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant (2012 compensation: $14.4 million) is the voice of the common man.
[Bloomberg. Photo: AP]