MONSANTO’S COMMERCIAL POLICY RAISES DELICATE ETHICAL QUESTIONS

The polemical multinational leader in GMO production Monsanto announced in October 2013 the acquisition of The Climate Corporation. This acquisition represents a possibility for Monsanto to improve agricultural production. Through this operation The Climate Corporation will have more opportunities to extend its competence in data-science. However, considering the past ethical and legal problems of Monsanto, we can wonder about the real purpose of this acquisition.

The transaction cost $ 930 million  and it will be concluded in the first quarter of Monsanto’s fiscal year 2014. The declared aim of the operation is to let the two firms’ philosophy meet, namely the desire of improving agricultural production by using fewer resources. The acquisition will combine Monsanto’s research and development and The Climate Corporation’s experience in providing farmers information about current risk-management and agricultural analytics. In fact, The Climate Corporation created the most sophisticated platform of data-science, which collects many sorts of information and translates them into practical actions. Since weather changes are evaluated to be the most important risk factor for farmers’ productivity, the platform monitors and integrates them in order to give farmers efficient solutions and recommendations as, for instance, to anticipate the sowing time or to change the irrigation plan. Moreover, The Climate Corporation offers an insurance policy, which pays subscribers in case of bad weather. On its side, Monsanto is supposed to provide “new technological solutions” and “agricultural products” in order to optimize production and food quality. This means, in other words, that the firm is the first global GMO provider. What is more, last year the company bought The Precision Planter, a society which offers farmers access to data tools by smartphone, useful to take real-time decisions. 

Thanks to these two operations, Monsanto is now able to control the entire production chain, from seed to sow. Therefore, ethical questions seem to be licit. First of all, we cannot forget Monsanto’s past involvement in environmental and legal controversies, such as the inquiry about the impact of herbicides -created by the firm and then used by the US Army during the Vietnam War with the name of “Orange Agent”- on soils and people’s health. Monsanto has also been concerned in many legal actions tied to the GMO sales. Actually, the GMO market is extremely monopolized: 53% of the seed trade is controlled by three multinationals, the most important of which is Monsanto. In addition, Monsanto created a strict patent system which tied farmers to the firm: farmers who buy genetically-modified seeds from the company cannot sow them the next season. Since the largest part of seeds created by Monsanto is sterilized, farmers are forced to buy other grains from the company. Moreover, in the last few years prices of genetically-altered seeds increased drastically adding problems for small and medium farmers and independent agricultural firms. Finally, farmers who bought Monsanto’s artificially modified seeds signed a contract and have therefore no possibility to annually alternate their crops. The lack of variety causes a progressive and disastrous soil impoverishment, which has negative impacts on the production. Even though the company’s clear involvement and responsibility is known, Monsanto hasn’t really been judged, since different sources reported that a consistent part of the research is run by ex-Monsanto’s executives, implicating an obvious conflict of interest.

In conclusion, the acquisition of The Climate Corporation represents a great opportunity for Monsanto to improve its research platform, the so called “Integrated Farming System”, in order to maximize the production. The ethical dimension, however, is thornier since the unsolved questions of the impact of GMOs are destined to become more and more relevant as the leading producer of genetically manipulated seeds is now able to control the whole production chain, from the creation of grains to their sowing, through the supply of herbicides, insurance policies and production consultancy.

Camilla F.