So your solution is what? For Monsanto to do absolutely nothing, ever, which may do good for people, because it’s cynical? Even if the donation were a PR stunt it still doesnt make sense to call it nothing but a PR stunt – farmers in haiti get exactly the same benefit from seeds donated purely out of the goodness of our hearts, as they do from seeds donated out of cynical corporate need for good PR.

“Just the same as the tired, though sometimes true argument about hybrids being more productive. At times this can be the case and at times it is untrue. A proven example is the inability of any of your corn lines to grow in the high dessert of Montana where Dave Christiansans Painted Mountain continues to grow”

In general hybrids are more productive. Not always. Should people not use hybrids because in a tiny handful of circumstances they don’t outperform some locally adapted variety (particularly when they haven’t been selected to operate in those conditions)?

” also know the little tricks you seed selling PR people love to use to sell seed, that yield trick works on folks who don’t know any better”

Who doesnt know any better exactly? Farmers? That’s a pretty insulting statement to farmers – if any seed company promises better yield with a given variety and it doesn’t work farmers will know in a season or two of small plot testing and you won’t sell any seed.

“Of course, this doesn’t mean that Monsanto couldn’t do some good if it wanted. For example, I’m willing to bet that the lines of corn you sent to Haiti were made up of very little in the way of Southern Dent lines and instead included tropical highland and lowland maize genetics, genetics which you lab coat wearing gene jokeys picked up quite simply by way of the looting of tropical locales (such as haiti) and their natural and folk/culture resources, the same resources which when your not trying to pull off a major PR stunt you are busy trying to resale back to the people who originally owned them (while actively searching out those farmers who stole “your” genetics). What a sad little joke.”

What a bizarrely convoluted way of looking at how plant breeding works. Even if genetics were utilized from tropical maize it’s not simply a case of taking tropical maize A, rebranding it, and selling it on – there is a huge amount of effort that goes in to breeding various traits between different lines and achieving better varieties of a crop which are suited to a particular environment and outperform whatever is currently utilized in that environment – it seems to me that to profit from this work is perfectly fair (particularly when a portion of the profit from that work goes towards developing even better genetics to utilize down the line)

Mica is out of the office today so I thought I would get back with you. I touched base with some of our colleagues in Africa who worked very closely with the Malawi seed donation.

Your story about our Malawi donation is untrue. The Malawi success story of transforming the country from a food deficit to food surplus situation is driven by hybrid seed with the government and development organizations subsidizing these inputs in a way that does not disrupt the private sector operations.

In an email from my colleague, Enock writes:

“Coincidentally, the UN Secretary General, and the Director General of FAO were in Malawi two weeks ago, to collect facts on the ground on how this’ success formula’ can be replicated in the rest of the Africa and other developing nations struggling with hunger and food insecurity.

In the past 3 seasons, when Malawi registered grain surpluses of 500,000 to 800,000 tons, the hybrid proportion to the Open Pollinated varieties distributed under the voucher (coupon) program has been 85% to 15% respectively – a clear indication that farmers deliberately choose hybrids because of the yield benefits they bring.

The reports that hybrids are detrimental in Malawi are obviously unfortunate and the facts and evidence is bare, right in Malawi. Monsanto started with the seed donation that benefited 144,000 families in 2006 and continued as a key player providing quality hybrid seeds from 2007 to date. Our contribution towards attainment of food self-sufficiency in Malawi is undisputed and more importantly, is acknowledged by the Government of Malawi in general and by the very beneficiaries, the Malawi farmers in particular.”

You can find more information on the Malawi seed donation on our website. Malawi Seed Donation

Thanks for reading, and looking through this information.

Let us make no mistake about the purpose of this blog or the seed shipment to Haiti. As has been said a million times over by a million people; “Any publicity is good publicity.” There is no doubt that this donation is nothing more than a PR stunt, one which the company you work for hopes will to some extent soften the blow of your East India Trading Company type treatment of average farmers.

Just the same as the tired, though sometimes true argument about hybrids being more productive. At times this can be the case and at times it is untrue. A proven example is the inability of any of your corn lines to grow in the high dessert of Montana where Dave Christiansans Painted Mountain continues to grow (selected from Mandan landraces).

I also know the little tricks you seed selling PR people love to use to sell seed, that yield trick works on folks who don’t know any better, just like donating a couple “million” dollars worth of seed to a third world country. Totally looks awesome and “humanitarian” on paper, but face it, it’s a drop in the bucket to you guys, just like those petty lawsuits you love to bring against the peasant farmers in countries around the world.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that Monsanto couldn’t do some good if it wanted. For example, I’m willing to bet that the lines of corn you sent to Haiti were made up of very little in the way of Southern Dent lines and instead included tropical highland and lowland maize genetics, genetics which you lab coat wearing gene jokeys picked up quite simply by way of the looting of tropical locales (such as haiti) and their natural and folk/culture resources, the same resources which when your not trying to pull off a major PR stunt you are busy trying to resale back to the people who originally owned them (while actively searching out those farmers who stole “your” genetics). What a sad little joke.

OF course if Monsanto wanted to really do some good they could take a look back over the years, back to those early corn hybridization experiments carried out on the East Coast and realize that even those great corn “Drs.” said themselves that hybridization and synthetic solutions were only temporary fixes for permanent problems and that the real improvements which would benefit mankind in crop seed production and yeild increase would come instead from genetic pool/population breeding and diversity, but of course then those farmers who work their butts off to break even due to the high prices of your inputs and seed would have the option of not purchasing that seed every year if they so wished.

Stunning isn’t it? Indeed I know, amazing that you guys could come along half way through the 20′th century and turn a 10,000 year old way of life and culture into a commodity, that you can take things away from the people who “owned” them, resale them to them, and then sue them for following the practices which ensured the seed was squirreled away to a safe place where it was later “pirated” by you. Congratulations on hijaking the single most important step towards civilization in the known world; agriculture.

If the farmers choose to burn your seed, I applaud, at least they still have their pride.

If the French and Germans choose to destroy your test plots, I congratulate them.

Until the day you do something for the LEGITIMATE betterment of mankind I have nothing I am willing to pat you on the back for and say “good job”.

You also say “Our two partners, WINNER and The Earth Institute, will consult with farmers on whether additional inputs such as fertilizer and pesticides are needed, and if so, how to obtain them.”

With the amount of research and experience you have will you not know in advance whether fertilizer is needed, if so , can it be any fertilizer or pesticide or one specifically patented to Monsanto ?

Thanks in advance

But compare your champion hybrid to this open pollinated heritage corn.
http://www.flag-sa.org/blog/2009/12/helena-holds-up-one-of-our-open.html

Everyone knows that each subsequent generation of hybrid seeds degenerates. Open pollinated “pure bred” corn seeds which do not degenerate are yielding 15 tons per hectare in Mexico. Commercial seed breeders deliberately refrain from continuing the breeding process and stop at the “hybrid” phase specifically so that they can resell new seeds each year.
The handing out hybrids to resource poor farmers and then claiming that they have increased their yields seven fold is unethical. This was done in Malawi. The farmers there are now forced to buy seeds each year because they have lost their ‘area specific pen pollinated heritage seeds’ which consistently out performed commercial hybrids on dryland during seasons of drought. (Yet the very drought resistance of these heritage “african” seeds is stolen from Africa and bred into your patented hybrid seeds.)
These farmers were not informed of the consequences of hybrids and were therefore not able to make the important decision you describe above. Just as most educated farmers failed to plant refuges which has resulted in the corn stem borer resistance to GM (Bt) corn in irrigated fields throughout Southern Africa.

That donation worked similiarly – we partnered with the Malawi government as well as NGOs already working on the ground so we could be additive to current approaches rather than creating a new initiative.