Since 1997, St. Louis-based Monsanto has sued 147 farmers in 25 states...

In Brazil they're having none of it, at least for now. Last Thursday, a Brazilian court temporarily halted royalty payments to Monsanto...

On Jan. 6, the company agreed to pay $1.5 million in fines after a U.S. Department of Justice investigation revealed that between 1997 and 2002, Monsanto paid more than $700,000 to bribe Indonesian government officials...

With Monsanto's quarterly seed sales at $40 million - $57 million below the same quarter last year - perhaps the company should change its motto, "Setting the Standard in the Field" to "Rethinking the Cost of Our Ethics."
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Paying seed fees forever unreasonable
Corvallis Gazette Times, Janauary 18 2005
http://www.gazettetimes.com/articles/2005/01/18/news/opinion/1ed118.txt

Montsanto Co., having engineered the herbicide-resistant crops that reshaped world's field production of soybeans, corn and a host of other crops, remains committed to forcing farms to abandon the ago-old practice of saving some seed from one crop to use in planting the next one. That is, unless they get their cut.

Since 1997, St. Louis-based Monsanto has sued 147 farmers in 25 states for not paying a $6.50-an-acre "technology fee" for gathering seed from crops engineered by Monsanto. Since Monsanto developed its herbicide-resistant seed in the early 1990s, it has dominanted the world's soybean and corn production. Such seed enables farmers to spray crops when weeds are present. The net result is bigger yield with less pesticides.

Monsanto does deserve to be compensated for its technology, but the question in a number of global contexts Ñ is "At what cost?"

For farmer Homan McFarling of Tupelo, Miss., Monsanto's going rate could add up to $32,500. Monsantao is suing him for collecting soybean seeds and using them to plant the next crop without ponying up Monsanto's demanded price. Someone ratted McFarling out to Monsanto, but that's business as usual. Monsanto employs spys and informants to gather information on "technology fee"-skipping farmers, pitting neighbor against neighbor.

In Brazil they're having none of it, at least for now. Last Thursday, a Brazilian court temporarily halted royalty payments to Monsanto on behalf of a 8,700-member farmer's group. The court's position is that Monsanto should not be allowed to base its royalties on the soybean crop's yield, only on the amount of seed sold. In other words, the farmers' productivity shouldn't benefit Monsanto forever. The obvious question is, why doesn't Monsanto just charge more up front and give up its role as the world's seed police? But it seems Monsanto is dedicated to more than engineering better seed.

On Jan. 6, the company agreed to pay $1.5 million in fines after a U.S. Department of Justice investigation revealed that between 1997 and 2002, Monsanto paid more than $700,000 to bribe Indonesian government officials to back off demands for environmental impact statements before allowing sale of Monsanto's genetically engineered products.

With Monsanto's quarterly seed sales at $40 million - $57 million below the same quarter last year - perhaps the company should change its motto, "Setting the Standard in the Field" to "Rethinking the Cost of Our Ethics."