Monsanto Shows Its True Colors: Demands Royalties On Second-Generation Seeds From Struggling Farmers In Argentina
Don’t you just love that moment in a movie or television show when the shady guy, the sketchy one whom you have grown to love to hate over the course of the program finally is revealed to be the dirtbag he truly is for all to see?
There is little so satisfying as seeing people finally realize true depths of sliminess that a slimeball really will sink.
Such is the case currently unfolding in South America as Monsanto, everyone’s favorite slimeball company is attempting to extract royalty payments on its genetically modified soybean seeds, from farmers who not only didn’t buy seed directly from the company, but who also may have used second generation seed to grow their crops.
You know, the way farmers have done since farming began. And before that, how nature has done it since plants were a thing.
But that doesn’t allay the zeal of Monsatan’s lawyers. They flatly rejected Argentina’s Agricultural Minister Ricardo Buryaile’s request for a waiver on the royalties, saying the government needed more time to collect. Monsanto did however accept a reduction in their fee, from $15 per hectare to $9 per hectare for farmers that use Monsanto seeds but who do not purchase them directly from the company.
The company’s demands center around claims that Argentine farmers have benefited from its proprietary Intacta brand, which was developed to combat insects and reduce the need for additional pesticides. The corporation is demanding that farmers pay if they use Monsanto’s copyrighted products.
Which really gets right to the crux of the problem with Monsanto: not only is their entire business based on disrupting natural systems that have been in force for millions of years, not only do they insist on poisoning us and our land and water then blithely moving on to the next big thing (see: Monsanto, PCBs; and Monsanto, Agent Orange; and Monsanto, saccharin), now they are in a stealth attack on our food sources.
They intend to own not only the means to raise crops, but the actual seeds themselves. If they have their way, there will not be a single patch of land anywhere on the planet being used to grow food that isn’t tied to contracts with Monsanto, its proprietary seeds and chemical herbicides and pesticides. They foresee a future in which there will be no food without Monsanto taking a cut.
Indeed, the corporation has already tried to pressure shippers to act as inspectors, and conduct analyses of cargo to find out if their branded materials have had the royalties paid on them.
This dangerous system and the road it is heading down would seriously have to be considered the fever-dream product of a lunatic mind–were it not for the money involved. These guys will stop at nothing–that means we must also continue to fight, if we intend to have a future in which we can feed ourselves and our children without cutting a royalty check to some lawyer in a suit.
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http://sputniknews.com/latam/20160504/1039031568/monsanto-argentina-resolution.html