The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

220 the world according to monsanto“misleading and dishonest.” 49 In a 2001 article, he had already noted that“total herbicide use on RR soybeans in 1998 was 30 percent or more greateron average than on conventional varieties in six states, including Iowa whereabout one-sixth of the nation’s soybeans are grown.” 50In his 2004 study, he observed that the quantity of herbicides sprayed onthe three principal crops in the United States (soybeans, corn, and cotton)had grown by 5 percent between 1996 and 2004, amounting to 138 millionadditional pounds. Whereas the quantity of herbicides used for conventionalcrops had continually decreased, the quantity of Roundup had gone inthe opposite direction, as Monsanto in fact congratulated itself for on its2006 10-K form: after noting that glyphosate sales accounted for $2.20 billionin revenues in 2006, compared to $2.05 billion in 2005, the companystated that “any further expansion of crops with our Roundup Ready traitsshould also incrementally increase sales of our Roundup products.”These results were the fruit of a strategy that had long been planned. Thecompany’s annual report for 1998 stated: “A key factor in volume growth forRoundup is a strategy based on price elasticity, with selective price reductionsfollowed by larger percentage volume increases.” When it was pointed out thatthis development was proof that GMOs do not reduce herbicide use, the companyreplied that it was to be expected that Roundup sales would increase becausethe surface planted in Roundup Ready crops was continually growing.Nine years after first being marketed, transgenic crops did cover nearly 125million acres in the United States, 73 percent of which were Roundup Ready(another 23 percent was Bt), but these areas had already been cultivated beforethe advent of GMOs, and hence sprayed with pesticides. 51In addition, according to Charles Benbrook, the end of Monsanto’s monopolyon glyphosate in 2000 produced a price war that brought the price ofRoundup down by at least 40 percent, although the company’s revenueswere not adversely affected. Finally, he writes, “reliance on a single herbicide,glyphosate, as the primary method for managing weeds on millions ofacres planted to HT varieties remains the primary factor that has led to theneed to apply more herbicides per acre to achieve the same level of weedcontrol.” 52 He noted that before the introduction of GMOs, scientists hadidentified only two glyphosate-resistant weeds—rigid ryegrass in Australia,South Africa, and the United States, and goosegrass in Malaysia—but thatthere were now six on American territory alone, led by horsetail, which hadbecome a veritable plague on the prairie, and Palmer pigweed varieties such