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Comment by ABCLAW | Hacker News Reader

Not supporting Monsanto's business model isn't the same thing as not 'listen[ing] to scientists'.

The issues with blanket application of Glysophate combined with roundup resistant crops are real; application volumes have ballooned and we still don't have a scientific consensus on it's effects on humans. Ignoring, in the immediate, the potential health effects of the molecule, it is also a driving force in the expansion of monoculture techniques rather than more sustainable polycultures.

Monocultural key foodcrops are a long-tail risk to food security. The Irish potato famine, the lightning quick elimination of the Gros Michel clones, etc.

I won't get into the myriad legal issues surrounding Roundup, terminator seeds, etc. but they aren't theoretical either.

This isn't to say there's no benefit from Glyphosate application. It's to say opposition towards it is not driven by scientific illiteracy. Quite the opposite.

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I was in the fertilizer business for twenty plus years. I went from Roundup's original introduction in the seventies to the beginnings of Roundup Ready seed. I kept a book in my office (as an EPA requirement) that allowed any employee or customer to view the safety of each chemical.

Roundup was way safer to humans than the cocktail of other herbicides that it replaced. It felt like considerable progress at the time although we all knew it would lead to Roundup resistant weeds in time.

From the beginning there was a small but loud opposition to GMO seeds. Some scientist, usually in Europe, would produce a report that Roundup causes cancer or such. Six different Midwestern universities would try to duplicate the research, fail and then publish exactly where the original researcher made a mistake.

I don't claim to be a scientist but as an interested observer I think that's how the scientific process should work. Now they've switched battlefields to the courts and gained several early victories. I predict they will be overturned on appeal.

I agree with you on monocultural crops. I think rotation should be encouraged but I'm not exactly sure how to do it. What I don't want to see is the government telling farmers what they can plant. They could provide financial incentives however if they can convince the taxpayers it's worth the price.

There's evidence Monsanto influenced the science behind the safety (or not) of Roundup [1], and even tried to manipulate public opinion of it online. [2]

> According to the court documents, Monsanto started the aptly-named ‘Let Nothing Go’ campaign, which plaintiffs’ attorneys in the Roundup litigation believe is part of the agrochemical giant’s tort defense strategy to work furiously outside the courtroom producing carefully-timed “literature” and regulatory decisions that could sway the court.

> The ‘Let Nothing Go’ campaign is designed to leave nothing posted on the internet about Monsanto, its products and GMOs, unanswered. This even applies to social media comments.

> “Through a series of third parties, it employs individuals who appear to have no connection to the industry, who in turn post positive comments on news articles and Facebook posts, defending Monsanto, its chemicals, and GMOs,” according to a motion in the Roundup MDL. But the idea that Monsanto paid internet trolls to disagree with negative comments about the company on social media is just the tip of the iceberg.

[2] https://www.baumhedlundlaw.com/blog/2017/may/monsanto-paid-i...

> An academic involved in writing research funded by Monsanto, John Acquavella, a former Monsanto employee, appeared to express discomfort with the process, writing in a 2015 email to a Monsanto executive, “I can’t be part of deceptive authorship on a presentation or publication.” He also said of the way the company was trying to present the authorship: “We call that ghost writing and it is unethical.”

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/01/business/monsantos-sway-o...

> They could provide financial incentives however if they can convince the taxpayers it's worth the price.

Or financial disincentives. Like an outright tax or removal of existing subsidies.

That does not play a role in their decision. They are rotating to other subsidized crops as well. If their was a profitable 'other' crop, they would grow it. Commodities are tough

https://thinkingagriculture.io/what-silicon-valley-doesnt-un...

> Not supporting Monsanto's business model isn't the same thing as not 'listen[ing] to scientists'.

Monsanto is dead. Its assets were sold off to other players in the industry.

Further, the patents that brought disdain to the Monsanto of the past expired years ago. The business model that centred around those specific patents has not been a business model for quite some time. Even before those patents expired, it was not their business model anymore as the technology moved forward and those patents were no longer all that relevant.

> it is also a driving force in the expansion of monoculture techniques rather than more sustainable polycultures.

Yet, when I travel through the rural parts of the world, I see endless rows of rusted out row crop equipment that are older than the invention of Glyphosate itself. I am not convinced your timeline really fits.

> Monocultural key foodcrops are a long-tail risk to food security. The Irish potato famine

Another good example. The famine took place 129 years before Glyphosate was sold for agriculture use. Not to mention that it took another 22 years after that before the first roundup resistant crop made it to market.

"No scientific consensus" is often conspiracy-speak for "no proven harm".

If the critics never accept scientific evidence that there's no harm, they get to keep being critics. Just by using weasel words like that.

We have scientific consensus on roundup. We have scientific consensus on vaccines as well. In both cases there are a few who ignore the evidence for political reasons and have found a way to play the media (follow the money - in most cases the big players are making a lot of money from something helped by the attack)

> Monocultural key foodcrops are a long-tail risk to food security. Not really, there are many different varieties of corn, many different crops (wheat, rycorn, soy etc). And the problem you speak of actually hasn't much to do with monoculture

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