Benefits Of Monsanto

Philippe Henricot

S4 Research Project: Economics

« What are the social costs and benefits of the production and the selling of GM food and what are the most effective policies available to solve the problems that arise from these costs? »

« Monsanto is an agricultural company. We apply innovation and technology to help farmers around the world produce more while conserving more. We help farmers grow yield sustainably so they can be successful, produce healthier foods, better animal feeds and more fibre, while also reducing agriculture's impact on our environment. » This is the slogan of Monsanto, a company founded in 1901 that nowadays has got the leadership of the GM agricultural sector.

For billions of years, food crops have been modified

Indeed, the grow of GM crops in third-world countries will make them more dependent on developed nations and more precisely, biotechnology corporations that flourished thanks to the GM food industry. Moreover, the high investments put in the research and the developing of efficient GM products has given the right to biotechnology companies to protect their product by putting patents on them. This is a way for them to keep the monopoly of the GM food market and enables these GM food corporations to put high prices in order to maintain the research active. To some extend, this will impede small-scale farms and farmers in developing areas to have access to such technologies and increase the gap between poor and wealthy populations.( Murnaghan)

Another economic disadvantage linked to the GM food market is affecting international trade. The difference in regulations and public opinions concerning the GM food industry in some countries has a direct impact on the international trade. The global issue is led by the United States, which is a massive GM food producer, and Europe, strictly regulated among the GM food production and supply. This has resulted in a dramatic decline of exports from the US to Europe and has led to significant losses for the agricultural industry.(

The approval process is divided in 6 stages and takes approximately 4 years to complete an import approval and even longer for cultivation application approval. (J. Park) Europe requires mandatory food labelling of GM foods in stores for products which contains a proportion higher than 0.9% of food ingerdients considered as genetically modiefied. This is a way to provide information to farmers and consumers on the product they buy.