Monsanto Draws Antitrust Investigation

It is about time.

An article in the Washington Post reveals that the Justice Department, which the Obama Administration has given expanded authority to investigate antitrust cases, is conducting an inquiry into whether Monsanto's activities run afoul of laws regulating dominance by a single corporate entity.

Monsanto produces the genetically engineered (GE) seeds for 93 percent of the United States' soybeans and 80 percent of its corn. Considering that these are the country's two primary crops, the vast majority of crop plants grown in the US come from Monsanto seeds.

The company predictably claims that because it created a set of products farmers want, it deserves to have whatever portion of the market and accompanying profits it's got coming to it.

But as with most things in life, and certainly in food, it's not that simple.

The market in question isn't like any other; it is a marketplace made up of products that create an interlocking living system — a feedback loop of seeds and chemicals — that can't be casually entered by competitors.

Monsanto's rival, DuPont, which has been active in pressing for the antitrust investigation, claims that these circumstances create a situation in which any competitive products must coordinate with the dominant GE seeds, a feat that is impossible when Monsanto tightly controls the licenses for the biotechnology involved.

The Monsanto seeds that have stirred all this controversy are called "Roundup Ready," developed to resist the company's powerful herbicide, Roundup. Though Roundup is now off patent (and known generically as glyphosate), the seeds' symbiotic relationship with the chemical is the key to Monsanto's success.

Farmers have found the prices rising year after year — they have approximately doubled in the last decade, up to the current price of $50 for a 50-pound bag of soybean seed, according to the Post. And while that's expensive, farmers pay in part because pursuing alternative courses is too burdensome in the current monopolistic atmosphere. Monsanto makes sure of it.

DuPont claims that Monsanto is in the business of intimidating farmers who speak up against the situation. Farmers and potential competitors of Monsanto are "afraid to speak in public, worried that they will become victims of retaliation," Thomas L. Sager, DuPont senior vice president and general counsel, said in a statement, reports the Post.

The recent films "Food, Inc" and "The Future of Food" detail Monsanto's bullying tactics convincingly via interviews with farmers. Those films report in detail about Monsanto's thuggish tactics for ruining the careers and reputations of any farmer who does not comply with its agenda, as well as its proclivity for mounting aggressive legal attacks against farmers whose fields are unwittingly contaminated with Roundup Ready DNA. Unfortunately, the ubiquity of the GE version of the seed makes keeping conventional cross-pollinating crops free of contamination very difficult, if not impossible.

Monsanto certainly has a lot to answer for. "Monsanto has abused its unlawfully-acquired monopoly power to block competition, thwart innovation and extract from farmers unjustified price increases of over 100 percent in recent years," DuPont's court documents state.

And this is all before we even get into the discussion of whether anyone should be selling GE seeds in the first place.

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