The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

the iron law of the patenting of life 221as waterhemp and ragweed. For example, a University of Delaware studyshowed that horsetail plants taken from RR soybean fields survived tentimes the recommended dose of Roundup. 53 In addition to those weeds alreadyidentified as Roundup-resistant, there is a whole list of glyphosatetolerantweeds, that is, not yet resistant but for which doses have to bemultiplied by three or four to get rid of them.The Dark Side of Biotechnology“Specific weed resistance can reduce a farm’s rentable value by 17 percent.”This was one of the conclusions of a 2002 report from Syngenta, a Swisscompany that was one of Monsanto’s principal competitors, sent to all itsagricultural customers. 54 Relying on a survey of American farmers, thechemical and biotech giant reported that 47 percent of them favored a returnto “crop and chemical rotation.” As Charles Benbrook noted in early2002, the decline in profitability was not the only “bad news” about what hecalled the “dark side” of biotechnology, which “scientists are now unravelingand farmers are just learning about.” 55First, contrary to what Monsanto has always claimed in its advertising, itis not true that “under comparable growing conditions, the yields for thesenew lines are expected to be equivalent to other top-yielding varieties.” 56“Unfortunately, we proved the opposite,” Roger Elmore, an agronomist, toldme. In 2001, he and colleagues at the University of Nebraska published astudy on the subject. 57 Now at the University of Iowa, near where I met himat his home in October 2006, he told me: “We conducted this study, for twoyears and in four different locations, because we had received informationfrom various states indicating that transgenic soybeans had lower yields thanrelated conventional varieties. Our results prove that yields decline by atleast 5 percent.”“How do you explain it?” I asked, scrutinizing his chart.“It’s what we call ‘yield drag.’ We had two hypotheses that might explainthe drag affecting the yield of transgenic plants: either it was due to the effectof Roundup on plant metabolism, or it was the result of genetic manipulation.To test the first hypothesis, we grew three groups of RR soybeansfrom the same strain, one of which was sprayed with Roundup, a secondwith ammonium sulfate, a product that stimulates the action of herbicides,