Is Monsanto, a company constantly embroiled in controversies, an angel or a devil?
Monsanto's century - long journey is like a double - edged sword. On one side, it has cut through the dilemma of food production increase with technological innovation. On the other side, it has planted ecological and ethical hidden dangers due to capital expansion.
Among the many international companies well - known to the Chinese people, few are as notorious as "Monsanto Company", which has almost been universally condemned.
In the eyes of many, it is a devil company that destroys the ecological environment and endangers human health. Even though Monsanto has been acquired by Bayer, it is still deeply mired in the whirlpool of controversy.
In fact, as a leading global enterprise in the fields of seed industry and agricultural chemicals, Monsanto is an undeniable pioneer in modern agricultural technology, from saccharin, to PVCs, to the promotion of glyphosate and Roundup - resistant seeds.
So, is Monsanto an angel that increases food production or a devil that destroys the ecological environment?
The story may start with its controversial rise.
Monsanto's Rise and Early Controversies
In 1901, an American businessman named John Francis Queeny founded a chemical company called Monsanto in St. Louis.
It was named "Monsanto" because Queeny's wife's name was "Monsanto", and the start - up capital also came from his wife's generous sponsorship.
Queeny may not have anticipated that the company named after his wife's surname would cause such a huge controversy globally in the future.
In the early days of entrepreneurship, Queeny was completely a speculator, only thinking about how to make money quickly.
Noticing that Americans have a strong preference for sweet food, Queeny realized that the then - popular "saccharin" in the United States might be a good entry point.
Saccharin is an artificially synthesized sweetener, whose sweetness is 300 times that of sucrose. Since it is a chemical product, it means that high - value - added goods can be produced at a very low cost.
However, in the early 20th century, the saccharin market in the United States was almost monopolized by German companies, and they had already registered the patent rights.
To circumvent the patent restrictions of German companies on saccharin production, Monsanto adopted a controversial "patent circumvention" strategy.
To put it simply, when producing saccharin, Monsanto intentionally added certain substances while still maintaining its sweetness, thus bypassing the protection scope of existing patents and producing similar products without violating the rules.
Although this strategy brought huge economic benefits to Monsanto in the short term, it also planted an inescapable "original sin" for its future development.
By quickly monopolizing the saccharin market, Monsanto rapidly occupied the US market and thus earned its first pot of gold.
It is worth mentioning that the beverage giant Coca - Cola Company was one of Monsanto's important early customers, and still uses the brand's saccharin in Diet Coke to this day.
In 1905, Queeny added vanillin and coumarin, two food additives, to Monsanto's product line. These two additives were also produced and patented by Germany, and Monsanto also took advantage of the "patent circumvention" loophole.
However, in the first decade after Monsanto was established, its profit situation was not optimistic. Because the German companies that hated it deeply kept suppressing it through price wars.
It was not until 1917 when World War I broke out and the United States declared war on Germany that the supply of chemicals imported from Germany was interrupted. Monsanto unexpectedly became one of the few food additive companies in the US market, and thus became one of the largest chemical companies in the United States within just a few years.
In 1919, Monsanto acquired a Welsh chemical producer, which mainly produced aspirin and rubber catalysts, the most indispensable strategic materials in the war - torn era.
This important acquisition not only laid the foundation for Monsanto to become a chemical giant in the future but also marked the beginning of the company's overseas expansion.
During the subsequent World War II, Monsanto also became an important supplier to the US military because of its chemical products. Not only did its various chemical products become the main combat - readiness materials for the US military, but it also participated in the famous "Manhattan Project" in the United States, engaging in the research of radioactive compounds.
As analyzed in the book Seed Money: Monsanto’s Past and Our Food Future, Monsanto started with food additives such as saccharin and caffeine and gradually expanded in the field of daily - use chemicals. The two world wars were both opportunities and challenges for Monsanto.
Monsanto's Transformation and Controversies
For Monsanto, the war hindered its access to chemical raw materials and technologies from Europe to a certain extent. At the same time, it also forced Monsanto to turn its attention to the development of domestic raw materials in the United States. This transformation not only refined Monsanto's own chemical technology but also enabled it to achieve a "corner - overtaking" relative to the European petrochemical industry after World War II.
In pursuit of profit, Monsanto also continuously expanded its product range, with industrial chemicals as its characteristic, and the controversies in this field were the most prominent.
For example, the polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) it launched in the last century is a chemical product with a multi - molecular structure. Due to its fire - resistance, stable chemical properties, and electrical insulation performance, it was widely used as a plasticizer, in paints, rubber and plastic products, pigments, carbonless copy paper, and other industrial applications, and was very popular around the world.
In the middle of the 20th century, researchers found that PCBs were carcinogenic and environmental pollutants. Due to their acid - resistance and heat - resistance, PCBs needed about 200 days of direct sunlight to be completely decomposed, so the harm to the environment was extremely serious.
To this day, although there are abundant fish resources in many lakes in the United States, due to PCB pollution, there are warning signs hanging by the lakes saying "It is not recommended to eat fish".
However, such a terrifying carcinogenic compound was not banned in the United States until the late 1970s. And before the ban, Monsanto had always been the world's main producer of PCBs for decades.
In fact, a document leaked from Monsanto in 2002 showed that before PCBs were banned, Monsanto's top management clearly knew the toxicity of PCBs but did nothing and allowed their production and sales.
The case of PCBs is just one of the early typical cases of Monsanto's extreme profit - seeking culture. However, Monsanto did not respond positively to such problems. Instead, it quietly carried out a strategic transformation, shifting its business focus to the agricultural field.
Unfortunately, in the agricultural field, Monsanto also triggered even greater social controversies.
If in the first half of the 20th century, Monsanto was mainly a company focusing on chemical products, then in the second half of the 20th century, Monsanto achieved a magnificent transformation and became a global giant in the agricultural field.
The key to this transformation lies in Monsanto's deep integration of glyphosate herbicide and genetic engineering technology.
In the 1970s, Monsanto launched a herbicide called "Roundup", whose main ingredient is glyphosate. As a highly effective herbicide, glyphosate has a remarkable weeding effect and relatively low toxicity compared with other herbicides, and quickly became popular among farmers.
In fact, Monsanto developed the relatively low - toxicity glyphosate herbicide because the herbicides and pesticides it launched earlier were notorious and controversial.
Before the end of World War II, in the face of the strong global demand for agricultural production, Monsanto developed its first herbicide, DDT, an organochlorine pesticide composed of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, which was first introduced in 1944. However, because DDT contains highly toxic components, it was banned worldwide less than 30 years after it was put on the market.
However, the powerful herbicides developed by Monsanto were regarded as poisons by farmers, but in the eyes of the US military at that time, they were perfect "tactical weapons".
Monsanto's "Agent Orange" Scandal and Genetic Engineering Transformation
During the Vietnam War, the US military was beaten by the Vietnamese guerrillas hiding in the dense jungles and had no way to fight back. To eradicate the vegetation where the Vietnamese were hiding, the US military jointly developed the notorious "Agent Orange" with Monsanto.
"Agent Orange" is a fast - acting herbicide mainly composed of dioxin and tetrachlorobenzene. After being sprayed, it can make the surrounding environment completely barren. But these two components are also carcinogenic substances. While weeding, they also made millions of Vietnamese people suffer from various serious diseases.
Throughout the Vietnam War, the US military sprayed 20 million gallons (about 75.7 million liters) of "Agent Orange" on Vietnam without any bottom - line, directly affecting nearly 5 million Vietnamese people.
To this day, due to the presence of toxic chemicals in the environment, countless Vietnamese children are born with birth defects, and one of the main companies that provided this terrible compound is Monsanto.
With the implementation of the bans on PCBs and several pesticides, and because such chemical products always led to lawsuits, Monsanto decided to completely shift the company's development focus from chemical production to agricultural biotechnology in the early 1980s.
Somewhat ironically, the target of Monsanto in the field of agricultural biotechnology was precisely its own glyphosate herbicide, "Roundup".
Because in the 1970s, the United States promoted "Roundup" as one of the main products of the "Green Revolution" in non - socialist developing countries, which was specifically used for field operations.
As the then - popular and best - selling glyphosate herbicide in the world, when sprayed on farmland, it could quickly kill weeds, but it often also killed the crops, leaving the surrounding area completely barren.
Regarding this herbicide that Monsanto claimed to be "low - toxic and harmless", although various authoritative institutions still argue about whether the glyphosate component is carcinogenic, more and more studies show that glyphosate may be associated with the occurrence of certain cancers. And long - term and large - scale use of glyphosate may also have a negative impact on the environment such as soil and water sources.
Therefore, considering Monsanto's early "misdeeds", many countries began to resist glyphosate herbicides one after another.
Normally, in this situation, scientific research enterprises would spare no effort to develop herbicides that are harmless to crops. However, Monsanto had a "unique idea". Instead of focusing on improving herbicides, it turned its attention to the crops themselves and was committed to researching genetically modified super - crops.
The so - called "genetic engineering technology" refers to artificially changing the genetic composition of organisms to make them have specific excellent traits.
In 1983, under the leadership of Robert Fraley, Monsanto's scientific research team discovered that a plant called "petunia" could resist the glyphosate herbicide.
Monsanto extracted the relevant genes from the petunia and introduced them into crops such as corn and soybeans, enabling these genetically modified crops to grow normally under the spraying of the glyphosate herbicide, while the surrounding weeds would be completely eliminated. After the successful development of this technology, it marked the birth of the world's earliest genetically engineered products.
What is disturbing is that the application of this technology also means that in an environment where Monsanto's glyphosate herbicide is used, any unmodified plants cannot survive, and only the genetically modified crops provided by Monsanto can survive.
So, in the past 30 years, a strange phenomenon has emerged in the global agricultural market: if you use Monsanto's seeds, you can spray glyphosate; and if you spray glyphosate, you must buy their seeds.
This strange business model of "holding a spear in one hand and a shield in the other" has, on the one hand, indeed improved the efficiency of global agricultural production. On the other hand, it has also brought huge profits to Monsanto, making its voice in the agricultural field increasingly stronger.
It is worth mentioning that this somewhat helpless phenomenon is precisely Monsanto's "Seed Empire" that has been planned for many years.
Monsanto's "Seed Empire"
Monsanto, armed with genetic weapons, never misses any opportunity to make money.
Since mastering genetic engineering technology, Monsanto first applied the genetically modified crop patents to soybean production.
In 1994, Monsanto's first batch of "Round - up Ready" soybeans with glyphosate resistance were approved by the US Department of Agriculture and allowed to be put on the market. In 1996, Monsanto began to sell glyphosate - resistant soybeans. At that time, only 2% of the soybeans in the United States were Monsanto's patented soybeans, but by 2008, more than 90% of the soybeans in the United States were its genetically modified soybeans.
You know, as one of the world's most important oil - bearing crops, the soybean meal after soybean oil extraction is a high - quality feed raw material, and it also has a wide range of applications in food processing and industrial use.
Therefore, the fluctuations in soybean production and price have a profound impact on the global agricultural economy and related industrial chains, and soybeans have always been one of the world's major futures.
In other words, controlling soybean cultivation is equivalent to indirectly controlling the world's most important agricultural and futures markets.
Monsanto's strategy for its "Seed Empire" has thus gradually unfolded, and it has long since "changed its appearance".
Due to the continuous lawsuits related to its early chemical product production, Monsanto transferred all its chemical business and related lawsuits to the newly established company, Solutia, in 1997. Later, as expected, Solutia went bankrupt, which might also be what Monsanto expected.
After getting rid of the historical burden, with its strong capital, Monsanto actively expanded in the global agricultural field.
In 2000, Monsanto merged with a pharmaceutical company called Pharmacia & Upjohn. Two years later, it split off the agricultural - related business of the group and established an independent new Monsanto Company, transforming into a pure agricultural biological breeding company.
In 2004, Monsanto established ASI (American Seed Holdings), mainly dealing in corn and soybeans, and acquired Channel Bio Company and its three seed brands. In 2005, it acquired Seminis, the world's leading vegetable and fruit seed company, for $1.4 billion. Its business covers more than 150 countries and has more than 3,500 varieties.
Through these two major acquisitions, Monsanto surpassed another industry giant, DuPont, and truly became the leading enterprise in the global genetically modified organism (GMO) field, and controlled the seed resources of major crops such as soybeans, corn, and wheat globally.
The ultimate goal of Monsanto's series of layouts is to control the global seed market in its own hands and obtain huge profits through monopolizing the seed industry market.
To promote genetically modified seeds, Monsanto has resorted to every possible means.