The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

the iron law of the patenting of life 223ple, scientists in Georgia were contacted by soybean producers complainingthat the stems of their plants were splitting for unknown reasons, leading toextremely low yields. Their study revealed that transgenic soybeans produce20 percent more lignin than conventional soybeans, which, at higher thannormal temperatures, made the stems exceptionally fragile. 61An Economic Disaster“There’s profit in your fields. Unleash it with Asgrow Roundup Ready soybeans.”This ad published by a Monsanto subsidiary in a farm magazine inJanuary 2002 did not convince the Soil Association, which wrote in Seeds ofDoubt: “The evidence we have gathered demonstrates that GM food cropsare far from a success story. In complete contrast to the impression given bythe biotechnology industry, it is clear that they have not realised most of theclaimed benefits and have been a practical and economic disaster.”Monsanto was quick to reply to this stinging indictment that one could expectnothing less from one of the principal European organizations for the promotionof organic farming. But this assessment was also that of researcherswho had taken the trouble to consider all aspects of transgenic agriculture todetermine whether, from a strictly economic point of view, the effort paidoff. Michael Duffy, a University of Iowa economist, for example, conducteda study in cooperation with the National Agricultural Statistical Service ofUSDA. He went through the accounts of the state’s farmers item by item,comparing production costs and revenues for RR soybeans (108 fields) andconventional soybeans (64 fields) in the 2000 harvest. The result was beyondquestion: if all factors of production were taken into account (cost of seeds,herbicide use, yield, fuel costs, fertilizer, and so on), producers of transgenicsoybeans lost $8.87 per acre compared to $0.02 for producers of conventionalsoybeans. 62 It should be noted that this study was conducted in the midst of aprice war on herbicides that had lowered costs and at a time when weeds werenot Roundup resistant. Michael Duffy also compared earnings from Bt cornand conventional corn and came to a similar conclusion: $28.28 loss per acrefor the former and $25.02 loss for the latter.One might be surprised that farmers lost money in producing in all cases.This was precisely another drawback of GMOs, which had produced a collapseof American exports to Europe and a resulting price decline. Under