The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

204 the world according to monsanto“Sure,” he agreed, “but once a company has been able to isolate the geneand describe its function, it can get a patent.”The New Agricultural OrderI have already described how, as soon as Monsanto researchers had managedto cobble together the genetic cassette allowing the creation ofRoundup-resistant soybeans, the company filed a patent application and receivedthe patent without difficulty. The patent ran until 2004 in the UnitedStates. In June 1996, the European Patent Office in turn granted a patentto RR soybeans, which applies by extension to any plant variety into whichthe cassette can be inserted: “maize, wheat, rice, soybean, cotton, sugar beetrapeseed, canola, flax, sunflower, potato, tobacco, tomato, lucerne, poplar,pine, apple, and grape,” which tells a lot about the company’s plans.*Monsanto then had to find the means to enforce its intellectual propertyrights. One might think that the strategy of first selling user licenses to seeddealers and then acquiring the principal seed companies would amply secureits return on investment, but this was not the case. Monsanto’s realproblem was farmers themselves, who around the world still had the annoyinghabit of saving part of their crop to replant it (except for hybrids, whichdo not include autogamous plants such as soybeans and wheat). “In somecountries, farmers commonly save seed for planting the following year,” cautiouslynoted Monsanto’s 2005 Pledge Report, which the company has publishedperiodically since the creation of the “new Monsanto.” “When theseed contains a patented trait, such as the Roundup Ready trait, this traditionalpractice creates a dilemma for the seed company that developed thevariety.” 2 In the 10-K form that has to be sent to shareholders and filed withthe SEC every year, the language was more direct. Under the heading“Competition,” the company stated in 2005: “The global markets for ourproducts are highly competitive. ...In certain countries, we also competewith government-owned seed companies. Farmers who save seed from oneyear to the next also affect competitive conditions.”The company’s language seems to suggest that the practice of saving seedsexists only in distant and backward countries. This was so far from being the*Patent EP 546090, titled “Glyphosate tolerant 5-Enolpyruvylshikimate-3-Phosphate Synthases.”