Food, Inc. Page #7
That's how corn
was developed
from a useless grass
for the most part
to the extremely
productive plant it is today.
The idea that any corporation
could own a food crop
is a very new idea.
It wasn't until the 1980s
And that opened
the floodgates--
efforts to patent the most valuable
parts of life,
which is to say the crops
on which we depend.
Monsanto is a chemical company.
They produced DDT,
Agent Orange in Vietnam,
and then they developed
about genetically-engineered soybeans
that could resist
the application of Roundup.
When the Roundup was
sprayed over top of it,
it killed
every weed out there
except for this
Roundup Ready soybean.
I can remember
when the first prohibition
against seed saving
came into being.
Most farmers were just
absolutely disgusted
with the whole concept.
It's been interesting
over the course
of 11 years
to watch us go
from utter contempt
for the notion
that we can't save
our own seed
to acceptance.
What happens if a farmer
saves the seeds?
Well, you know,
really there's
only one company involved
in this now
and that's Monsanto.
Monsanto is...
They've got a team
of private investigators
that kind of roam
the country
and they've got
a little 1-800 hotline
they take calls on.
If they get a call
and somebody alleges
they'll send an investigator out
to look into the matter.
If you save your own seed,
you're gonna get a call
from somebody
from Monsanto.
Two men drove in my driveway
at 7:
00,presented
a black card to me
and they never told me
that they were from Monsanto.
They said that they had
had a surveillance team,
caught me
cleaning beans.
I found it necessary to get up
at 3:
00 and 4:00in the morning
before the investigators are
on the road following me.
They were--
I'm gonna say maybe ex-military
or ex-police.
They were large
and they were intimidating.
I don't know whether they had
their surveillance team
or whether it was my neighbor that
turned me in. I don't know.
Now as I turned to walk in the house,
one of them said--
I could hear in the back--
"He's guilty."
It's a real ingenious device
designed back in the 1800s,
and Monsanto's gonna
close all of them out.
So how many seed cleaners
are out there
in the country
do you think?
In the state of Indiana,
there may be six.
Maybe.
I'm not aware of--
- How many there used to be?
- Oh my golly. Every county had three.
Have they all been
put out of business?
There's nobody left.
When Monsanto soybeans
first came on the market,
I just never
really switched over.
I was getting
pretty good yield
with the conventional
soybeans I'd been using,
so I thought "Well,
I'll just stay where I'm at."
My neighbors
all around me are all GMOs.
If the pollen goes in,
if the seed moves in,
I am still held
accountable.
When you genetically
modify a crop, you own it.
We've never had this
in agriculture.
Used to be that your
land-grant universities,
they developed what
The vast majority
of the plant breeding
was actually done
Monsanto is very much like Microsoft.
The same way Microsoft owns
the intellectual property
behind most computers
in America,
they set out to own
the intellectual property
behind most of the food
in America.
a thing of the past.
There virtually are
There's only like four or five varieties
that I can actually plant.
Now I have some
of the last soybeans
coming out
of the state of Illinois--
- That are not GMO.
- Public variety. Public variety.
When it comes to the point that I can't
buy any more certified seed,
what do I do?
What are my options?
I acquired this list
that was mailed to me.
The black list here is Monsanto's
unauthorized growers list.
Wow.
Either farmers that have
judgments against them,
or businesses,
or else it's--
or it's farmers that have not submitted
their paperwork,
will not turn over
their records.
For my case,
that's why I'm on there--
'cause I would not
turn over my records.
- Am I on this list?
- Yes, you are.
Wow.
I see two of the farmers
that I work for on here.
This list-- now it comes down
to the point
where I cannot buy
Monsanto products, okay?
Right.
So it's coming down to
"What can I plant?"
Monsanto is suing me
on the basis
that I'm encouraging the farmer
by cleaning
their own seed.
I haven't been
in a courtroom yet
and my bill is
already $25,000.
People that were
friends of mine
now are reticent
to even talk with me.
We've been friends
for 50 years,
and now we can hardly be
seen together.
Right.
I don't think
I'm really guilty,
but it was cheaper
to pay the fine
than it was
to try to fight it.
- It gnaws at you...
- Sure.
...because if you think
you're right at something,
but yet you admit
you're wrong.
and breach of contract.
None of it was true.
You go into a market,
you find a dominant farmer
and if you can ruin them, you scare
the rest of them to following the line.
fighting the battle, pretrial.
And we were told
to take the thing to trial.
We settled out of court.
The way the system appeared
to work to me was
Lady Justice had
the scales
and you piled cash
on the scales
and the one that piled
the most cash on the scales,
hired the most experts
and was most willing
to tell the biggest lies,
that was the winner.
That seems to be how our justice system
functions now.
It's terrible.
It's terrible.
How can a farmer
defend himself against
a multinational corporation
like Monsanto?
just three days ago.
They'd been
to his farm, you know?
And this poor kid,
he's just starting out.
His fiance was there.
I talked to her
and tried to give them
the best advice I could.
Unfortunately the best advice
I could give them was
"Try to get out of this thing
with your skin intact.
Don't fight 'em.
You've got to roll over
and give them what they want,
'cause you can't defend yourself."
In the case of Monsanto,
their control is so dominant.
If you want to be
in production agriculture,
you're gonna be
in bed with Monsanto.
They own the soybean.
They are going to
control that product
from seed
to the supermarket.
They are, in effect,
gaining control of food.
There has been
this revolving door
between Monsanto's
corporate offices
and the various regulatory
have made the key decisions.
Justice Clarence Thomas
was a Monsanto attorney.
That wouldn't be
such a big deal
if it weren't
for one court case
that really decided
this whole seed-saving issue.
Justice Clarence Thomas
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"Food, Inc." Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Oct. 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/food,_inc._8384>.
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