The New Globalized World

In 1980, Supreme Court case Diamond v. Shakrabarty made way for the patenting of life forms based on their genetics. This led to a race in the monoculture hybrid seed industry, with the leaders being whoever had the highest yields compared to input costs. Farmers gladly signed purchase agreements requiring them to buy new seed every year because they were more profitable and the process of growing corn, wheat, and soybeans was greatly simplified.

The advent of genetic engineering also rocked the seed industry. By the close of the century, most conventional seed companies had been bought up by chemical companies, the top two being Monsanto and DuPont. Monsanto held the patent on the popular herbicide Roundup, as well as the Roundup resistant gene they inserted in their seeds. This enabled Monsanto to become the top genetically engineered seed producer in the world, as well as one of the top chemical companies. Today 90% of soybeans raised in the U.S. are Roundup Ready.

In June 2007, Monsanto bought out Delta & Pine Land Company. The Mississippi firm, along with the USDA, owned patent rights to the terminator gene. This gene renders crops sterile so seeds cannot be saved for planting the following season. The fact that there is no benefit to this technology other than maximizing profit is debated by no one.

In this country, multinational firms being closely intertwined with the government is nothing new and is not necessarily cause for concern. Both Monsanto and the government have verbally distanced themselves from talk of terminator gene implementation, while at the same time maintaining patent rights to it.

When the concept of cross-pollination is considered, these facts start commanding more attention. Monsanto's extensively documented litigation history offers a glimpse into their corporate culture. Monsanto and DuPont protect their market shares by using predatory contracts to prevent new firms from entering the market. This strategy is in fact, predatory and deleterious as first proven by Rasmussen, Ramseyer and Willey (1991) model. Still the US courts struggle with enforcing anti-trust laws, because of the difficulty of proving predatory and behavior.

I love my country, but that does not mean I agree with everything she does or could do. I am not trying to incite a moral backlash over something that has not even happened. The fate of billions who live in subsistence cultures rests on the benevolence of the powerful. My goal is to shed light on some possibilities that exist in this new globalized world, where leader firms are.