Those Are My Seeds and That’s My Land
Monsanto may not be a household name, yet its products most certainly are. From MiracleGro to RoundUp, Monsanto has worked its way into every part of the agricultural world, including your mother’s garden. Almost every farmer is familiar with Monsanto and the role it has played in farming over the past few decades, whether that role is good or bad, though, is very much up for interpretation. I wanted to investigate a claim made towards Monsanto/Bayer that has proliferated online. As seen in the Facebook post above, there are claims floating around that Monsanto/Bayer has essentially sued farms into either ownership by the corporation or complete dissolution.
Understanding Monsanto
As someone with connections to the world of agriculture, I have heard rumors floating around about Monsanto/Bayer for a little bit now. I knew from the get go, that my own understanding of Monsanto/Bayer was not going to be enough to verify any information off the bat, so I wanted to start with an understanding of the corporation as a whole.
Due to the overwhelming amount of information out there about Monsanto, I knew from the get-go I was going to have to pare down my search. The most seemingly prominent claim out there at the moment is that RoundUp causes cancer, which would require a bit more scientific knowledge than I currently have to fully pull apart and understand. Knowing the specific claim in I wanted to verify was important with so much other information floating around out there about the company, and this is actually important for any verification process. It can get easy to get lost in the weeds or down a rabbit hole, but knowing exactly what you are looking for can make that path clearer.
The Wikipedia Stop
Taking into account what people were saying online, I started my course to the haven of casual information, Wikipedia. Wikipedia has a bad rap as an easily editable site that cannot be used for information; That really isn’t true, at least not to the extent it was often taught to us in school. Yes Wikipedia can be edited, but there is some important information to know about how that process occurs. Wikipedia itself states that:
“Wikipedia’s verifiability policy requires inline citations for any material challenged or likely to be challenged, and for all quotations, anywhere in article space.” – Wikipedia
Wikipedia also has locks on certain pages that are controversial or likely to be edited inappropriately. No, this system is not perfect, but it does help to know that there are safeguards in place to provide the most accurate information as possible.
The best ways to go about using Wikipedia are to use for quick verification (hey computer, is this guy a conspiracy theorist?) or to provide links to other sources that may be more trustworthy or substantial. With the citations for most of the claims, there is a plethora of sources to begin a search with. If you see a claim that is interesting and want to know more, you can just click on the citation and follow the trail!
The Monsanto Wiki
I dug around the Monsanto Wiki to get a grasp of their history a bit before diving into the Monsanto Legal Cases to get a bit more information about my specific question. Because the corporation is so large and has such a long history, I found this step helpful and important, but for most topics, this is probably not necessary. It is completely okay to just look for one claim, I just wanted to see any possible history of a pattern or key information that would help me better understand the moves Monsanto made later. The information I gleaned from their main Wikipedia page is 1) they have been around for a very long time 2) It was acquired by Bayer in 2018 and 3) their agricultural involvement really ramped up in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Due to the Bayer acquisition, I will either refer to the corporation as solely “Monsanto,” as that was the name prior to acquisition, or “Monsanto/Bayer,” especially when referring to the current state of the company.
On the “Monsanto Legal Cases” page, at the top of “Patent Litigation: As Plaintiff” is a claim
“Since the mid‑1990s, Monsanto has filed suit against 145 individual U.S. farmers for patent infringement and/or breach of contract in connection with its genetically engineered seed but has proceeded through trial against only eleven farmers, all of which Monsanto has won,” Monsanto/Bayer-Wikipedia
followed by an oh-so-lovely “better source needed” in the citation, because that information came from Monsanto itself. The information may not be wrong, but I am not going to solely trust the information from a source that benefits from providing information with a certain view point. There was also a link to another citation, this one a book, which makes it inaccessible for the most part. Yes, I could theoretically read the whole thing and find out if it is true, but that is not the point of quick verification. This ended up meaning I needed to expand my search out for those better sources.
More (and Better) Sources
The Center for Food Safety
Wikipedia did provide my with a good first step. Though I didn’t fully trust the information (yet), I knew that it could lead me to more. My next step was to simply search “Monsanto + farmers + lawsuit” to see what I could find. Past the first search result of Wikipedia was a PDF from the Center for Food Safety (CFS). Before looking at the PDF I decided to look into the source behind it. I also wanted to search “laterally,1” which meant expanding my search from just the source itself, outwards and finding sources about my source. I did a quick look-over on the CFS page, before extending laterally, just to get an idea of what they presented themselves as. The Center for Food Safety’s homepage opens with a pop-up of a cow with the words “We Fight Big Ag and Chemical Companies in Court To Defend Our Food System.” This gives a good picture that they are unlikely to be fans of Monsanto/Bayer, right out of the gate. From their page, I was able to find that the Center for Food Safety is a non-profit organization that seems to have a relatively low footprint outside of legal cases, in both controversy or positive publicity. There were no clear red flags (like suspicious funding or overt language) that would indicate major issues with CFS. I began my lateral search, but the only critiques I really found towards the nonprofit come from the Genetic Literacy Project, which, according to their 2020/2021 financial report received $100,000 from Bayer, the corporation that bought Monsanto in 2018. Though not inherently incriminating, it definitely is suspicious. The critique was also about a statement someone at CFS had made about GMOs, which was not important to my search, so I decided to ignore it. Back to the PDF, the Center for Food Safety claims
“After extensive research and numerous interviews with farmers and lawyers, CFS found that Monsanto, the world’s leading agricultural biotechnology company, has used heavy-handed investigations and ruthless prosecutions that have fundamentally changed the way many American farmers farm. The result has been nothing less than an assault on the foundations of farming practices and traditions that have endured for centuries in this country and millennia around the world, including one of the oldest, the right to save and replant crop seed” – The Center for Food Safety
It is definitely clear that Monsanto is litigious. Though it is clear the CFS is anti-Monsanto, they have not shown an inappropriate track record by any means, so this information I am willing to trust. CFS also clears up my question about numbers, stating
“To date, Monsanto has filed 90 lawsuits against American farmers. The lawsuits involve 147 farmers and 39 small businesses or farm companies, and have been directed at farmers residing in half of the states in the U.S. The odds are clearly stacked against the farmer: Monsanto has an annual budget of $10 million dollars and a staff of 75 devoted solely to investigating and prosecuting farmers,” – The Center for Food Safety
It is important to keep in mind as well that this piece was written in 2005, and a lot has likely changed in that time, but this is all still relevant information. The exact numbers are off from what Monsanto itself had claimed, but because of the twenty-year difference between content, it is possible, and would make sense, that things have changed. The numbers are not significantly different to indicate any foul play on either side.
Verify the Verification
I kept my lateral search going, typing in exactly what I needed to find: “How many farmers has Monsanto sued?” For the most part, every source on the first page either quoted the numbers Monsanto/Bayer used or the ones provided by CFS. I decided to do, then, what no human has done before…go to the second page of a Google search. Most people seem to get stuck on just the first page of search results, as that typically provides all the information needed, but that isn’t always the case! Not every website is necessarily going to execute a high enough level of Search Engine Optimization to earn a place on the first page, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a good source.
The second page of Google did provide some interesting articles, but still did not answer my question directly. If i really wanted to dig into the issue, I could always count out the cases with Monsanto as plaintiff in Westlaw, but that would be the antithesis of my goal, demanding more time and resources than a search like this should have.
Though I wish there was more substantial evidence that was easily accessible to answer my question, since the two sources I do have mostly align, I will choose to believe that the information I have found is correct. Monsanto/Bayer has sued over 140 farmers over accusations crop patent infringement.
The After-Effects
So, I had the numbers and claims of the lawsuits affects on farmers, but I wanted to know a bit more about the latter. Back on Wikipedia, a claim about one sharecropper stood out and I decided to dig in more. The source of the claim was a Vanity Fair article titled “Monsanto’s Cruel, and Dangerous, Monopolization on American Farming” written in 2008. They write “
“Farmers who buy Monsanto’s patented Roundup Ready seeds are required to sign an agreement promising not to save the seed produced after each harvest for re-planting, or to sell the seed to other farmers.,” – Vanity Fair
They continue to explain the significance of this practice, as it is a complete reversal of the farming practices used for centuries with most farmers saving seeds for next year’s crop; This claim is similar to that made by CFS. The story is partially about a store owner in Missouri that was threatened by Monsanto for using their patented crops (which he did not do) and was never apologized to over the issue. I wanted to verify my source beyond just the fact that it was published on Vanity Fair. After looking up both of the authors, I found out that both By Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele are Pulitzer prize winning investigative journalists, which definitely lends to them being trustworthy sources.
On my previous attempt to find more information on the second page of Google, one article also provided some information, specifically from Monsanto’s point of view. Titled “Patent Foe Sues Monsanto on Modified Crops” and published on Science.org (details from a lateral search about science.org – peer reviewed and founded in 1888) the article gives a quote directly from Monsanto, where they say
“Monsanto has not ever sued and has publicly committed to not sue farmers over the inadvertent presence of biotechnology traits in their fields,” – Monsanto, Author – Eli Kintisch
This statement may seem contradictory to what even Monsanto/Bayer has said, but really it is an attempt to clarify that even though, yes, they have sued farmers in the past, they claim they have not done so in cases where IP infringement occurred “inadvertently.” Clearly, based off of the other article written three years prior, that is not entirely true as they have attempted to sue people who aren’t even farmers for alleged infringement. This is a bit of a more nuanced area though, as it is hard to prove accidental usage on the part of the farmer. The actions committed by Monsanto could absolutely be viewed as an abuse of power, as is the opinion of CFS, but it is technically, legally, within their right to sue over IP infringement for seeds.
Let’s Get Legal
Now that it is pretty certain that Monsanto has sued, or tried to sue, quite a few farmers, but is it really legal for them to do so?
Yes. Yes, it is.
Monsanto/Bayer has created seeds and patented them as well as their offspring. Because of this, Monsanto has the right to go take legal action against anyone that does not follow their contractual obligations, as affirmed by Supreme Court case Bowman v. Monsanto Co., 569 U.S. 278 (2013). Through one NPR article that I found as I was looking for more information about the case, it seems that the issue of application is quite complex. NPR discusses how there is legal standing for Monsanto to do the things they do, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t impacting farmers especially when Monsanto RoundUp Ready seeds take up a majority of seeds available. They state, in regard to Bowman v. Monsanto, “Monsanto’s soybeans account for 94 percent of all the soybeans grown in Indiana.”(NPR). So yes it is true that what Monsanto/Bayer has done is, legal, but it still has had some affects on the nature of agriculture over the past few decades.
Back to the Beginning
So, looking back at the original claim, I deem it… Semi-verified.
Yes, Monsanto sued quite a few farmers and likely had a large impact because of it, but nothing that I found quite backed up the claim that Bayer now outright owns the land used to grow their seeds. Maybe in a few years Bayer will be looking at an anti-monopoly case, but for now their actions were technically legal (ethical on the other hand…maybe some more research would help with that one).
Sources
1 – Caulfield and Wineburg Verified
“Instead of spending minutes on a site they’ve never seen, fact-checkers put the name of the individual or group in their browsers and open new tabs across the top of their screen. Fact-checkers draw on the entire internet to evaluate an individual site, a strategy we call lateral reading.”
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