• by Thom Forbes , April 1, 2011

The Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) has filed a suit in Federal District Court in Manhattan on behalf of 60 farmers and other businesses involved in organic agriculture who worry that Monsanto Corp. will sue them for patent infringement if its genetically modified seeds should happen to blow into their field and pollinate their crops.

"It seems quite perverse that an organic farmer contaminated by transgenic seed could be accused of patent infringement, but Monsanto has made such accusations before and is notorious for having sued hundreds of farmers for patent infringement, so we had to act to protect the interests of our clients," says PUBPAT's executive director, Dan Ravicher. The Cornucopia Institute has a good summary of the plaintiffs' arguments here.

Monsanto responds that it's all hogwash; it never has -- and never will -- sue anybody who didn't purposely store and reuse its genetically modified seeds. It claims the suit is a "publicity stunt designed to confuse the facts about American agriculture" and that the charges are "false, misleading and deceptive."

I probably should state this in a statelier manner but here's the unadulterated kernel: Monsanto gives a lot of people the creeps. We can only hope that this suit proceeds in open court and sheds some light on what is, I think, a huge story about Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) that seems to be simmering on the back burners of the media's consciousness. Questions about the use of GMOs go way beyond the intellectual property rights of the agribusiness.

I've been reading and watching whatever comes my way on the topic with increased interest since the U.S. Department of Agriculture seemed to catch the green movement by surprise in January when it announced that it was deregulating Monsanto's genetically engineered alfalfa. The announcement "marks a complete USDA cave-in to the biotech industry's demands, and yet more evidence that Obama wants to be seen as a friend to powerful business interests -- at the expense of smaller, less powerful interests like organic alfalfa and dairy growers, and, in this case, of the public interest," wrote Grist's Tom Philpott at the time, echoing a lot of the commentary.

For some perspective, I recommend watching the 2008 French television documentary, "The World According to Monsanto," which you can download and watch for free, in English, on your computer. A book of the same title by the doc's producer, Marie-Monique Robin, is a bit dense for my taste but fleshes out some of her reporting.

Or watch this YouTube interview -- "Fox Kills Monsanto Milk Story" -- with two respected investigative reporters in the U.S. And here's a succinct roundup, if you'll pardon the expression, of the dangers of Monsanto's pervasive pesticide. Or Google Monsanto on your own. I think you'll be amazed at how we seem to be at odds with much of the rest of the developed world over the use of GMOs.

It's hard to not be sympathetic with the stated aims of Monsanto, which claims that in a world that needs to feed more and more people every year, its Roundup-resistant seeds are simply increasing yield and reducing costs. It's not only Miss America contestants who want to end world hunger, after all. But why do I get the feeling that it's more marketing hooey than genuine altruism?

Monsanto's current ad campaign, which projects images of farmers that seem dated by a century, has come under attack elsewhere as "warm and fuzzy" and "smarmy." It's certainly slick in its homespun way.

So, too, is the Monsanto company blog. I get an RSS feed of it in my quest for the other side of the story. It seems to be written by earnest people with whom you might enjoy batting the breeze at a PTA corn roast. They seem to believe they're under siege by naysayers and self-identified "progressives" who don't want to pay any attention whatsoever to what they have to say.

I do. I'm just not finding it all that credible. Read this exchange last month following the World Economic Forum meetings in Davos, Switzerland, between Mark [Sutherland, Monsanto's internal communication lead] and Jerry [Steiner, evp of Sustainability and Corporate Affairs] and tell me if you give either of them your vote in a free election:

Mark: What if you're just an individual, you're not involved in agriculture, you're not a farmer, you're not an NGO, you're just somebody who's trying to buy food, trying to make a living, and trying to get the things the family needs? What does this mean to that person?

Jerry: Well, the New Vision for Agriculture is really extremely consumer-centric because they are the end of the chain. They're either trying to buy food, put it on the table at a price that they can afford and still have money left over to invest in their children's education or a house or go on vacation, or they're a citizen and they're worried about will there be enough water when my children are grown up. So they have a lot at stake, but as individuals, it's hard for them to drive the system to create these kinds of outcomes. That's why the New Vision for Agriculture is really about catalyzing leadership.

Me, I tend to think that Monsanto's leadership stake in the New Vision for Agriculture is really about nothing more than catalyzing shareholder profit and I'd take anything that comes out of its communication's department with more than a truckload of (sea) salt.