Monsanto’s Recurring Failures: Why Has US Government Regulation Failed Time and Again?
Do we really understand today’s agriculture and food?
When people think of farming, their subconscious memory is often that of an ancient scene: peasants toiling in the soil, back-breaking work under the open sky. In reality, driven by technology and capital, the landscape of modern agriculture has undergone a radical transformation: herbicides, pesticides, GMOs, digital farming… our food has entered the world of new technology in an increasingly aggressive manner.
To understand the systemic changes in the food and agriculture sector over the last century, the US giant Monsanto serves as an ideal case study. From its rise in 1901 to its acquisition by the German multinational Bayer in 2016, Monsanto has been one of the most pivotal actors in the evolution of the global food system. From food additives and chemical pesticides to agricultural seeds, its influence continues to shape our lives today.
*Seed Empire*, a new book published by Sanlian Academic this year, traces the shocking history of Monsanto’s commercial expansion through global fieldwork, revealing how its chemicals and GMO technologies have permeated almost every crack in the global food supply.
In August 2024, the “Species on the Table” column of Tencent News, in collaboration with Foodthink, Sanlian Academic, Yale, and the Farmer Seed Network, invited experts to re-examine Monsanto’s rise and explore how capitalism has reshaped today’s food and agriculture system.
Why did Monsanto commit repeated wrongs while US government regulation arrived so late? Can scientific research, which claims to be objective, still be trusted today? And as ordinary people and consumers, what kind of regulation can protect us?
While we may not find the simplest answers to these questions, everyone can at least ask them.
I. The Rise of Monsanto
Zhang Jing (Editor at the Academic Publishing Branch of Sanlian Bookstore): This book was a collaboration between Sanlian Bookstore and Yale. Sanlian has always engaged with contemporary intellectual life through academic and conceptual development. Our aim is to use the medium of the book to reveal the complex facets of contemporary issues, rather than simply taking a side or offering a superficial critique of phenomena. Food and agriculture are areas we simply cannot ignore, as survival depends on food. However, the vast majority of us have little understanding or real sense of how food is produced today, or how it reaches us through various stages of consumption. A key reason for this is that the entire structure of modern agriculture has become completely different from that of traditional farming.
Using the US-based Monsanto as a representative case study, *Seed Empire* provides a historical account of the systemic changes in the food and agriculture sector over the last century, and particularly over the last half-century. It traces the complete history of Monsanto from its inception in 1901 to its acquisition by Bayer in 2016, devoting significant detail to its product research and development, production methods, and corporate operations. As we read, it becomes apparent that these models continue to influence our lives today, whether subtly or overtly.
Zhang Jing: In recent years, Monsanto has been known as an agricultural company. But it began as a chemical enterprise, entering the commercial sector through the production of saccharin. By 1918, its saccharin was being sold in China. Later, it began producing caffeine and became one of the core raw material suppliers for the Coca-Cola Company. After the markets for saccharin and caffeine were impacted, the company sought survival by extracting other chemical products from coal tar, including one of Monsanto’s most profitable products, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). The production of these products quickly led to severe toxic pollution issues.
Subsequently, due to the toxicity of its products, Monsanto came under scrutiny from regulatory agencies. Its original profit model entered a crisis, leading the company to pivot toward agriculture and produce herbicides. The predecessor of these herbicides was the notorious Agent Orange of the 1960s (Note: a powerful herbicide named for its orange colour). During the Vietnam War, the US military used Agent Orange extensively to fight in the rainforests, which brought lasting problems to Vietnamese society, including birth defects, disfigurement of the populace, and land pollution. As the largest supplier of Agent Orange, Monsanto made a fortune.
This coincided with the rise of genetic modification. Monsanto applied GM technology to cash crops such as soybeans, maize, and cotton, successfully achieving crop resistance. Consequently, herbicides and seeds were bundled together for sale; to use the herbicide, one had to purchase the matching seeds. But new problems soon emerged: weeds developed resistance. Monsanto was forced to upgrade its pesticide formula once again, introducing the more potent herbicide, Dicamba. The cycle repeated; Monsanto continuously iterated its products, and farmers had no choice but to keep buying these upgraded versions to cope with the increasingly stubborn “superweeds”. Through this process, Monsanto gradually built a seed empire. In 2005, it became the world’s largest seed seller, with its seeds subsequently promoted in countries including Vietnam, Brazil, and India.
II. How Capitalism Reshaped Agriculture?
Xu Zhun (Professor of Economics at Sun Yat-sen University): As a quintessential capitalist corporation, Monsanto is historically representative. Over the last few centuries, since its emergence, capitalism has maintained a very close relationship with agriculture. Anyone slightly familiar with the history of capitalism will recall that its origins were intimately linked to farming—take, for example, the Enclosure Movement in Britain, often described as ‘sheep eating men’.
However, with the advent of the chemical industry, these methods became more diverse. In livestock farming, for example—with chickens or sheep—growth cycles can be accelerated through feed, getting them out of the coop and into the market as profitable meat as quickly as possible. This is a form of control over livestock and a fundamental change in farming methods. Once biotechnology emerged, this control became more direct, allowing for the modification of animal breeds.
Agri-giants like Monsanto have a massive incentive to control agriculture—using pesticides and seeds to control what we eat and use, thereby extracting profit. On the other hand, the products they are driven to produce may not align with the interests of the general public. The book *Empire of Seeds* illustrates this conflict of interest well, showing how the company employs various methods to mask these discrepancies.
Tianle: Professor Xu just mentioned that the capitalist agricultural system seeks to produce food in shorter cycles. Monsanto’s flagship products are GM soy and maize, which rapidly captured over 90% of the US market. Most of this soy and maize is used as feed for livestock. On one hand, this technology seems to reduce the cost of meat, which appears beneficial; on the other, it creates contradictions that may ultimately harm the consumer.
In reality, however, it later became clear that its herbicides and insecticides caused equally severe environmental issues. Why was this the case? Because the company focused solely on short-term results, ignoring the mechanisms of co-evolution in the natural world. In the short term, its herbicides may have been effective in small doses, but over time, weeds evolved and developed resistance. To continue clearing them, farmers were forced to use ever-increasing dosages—an unexpected form of retaliation from nature.
III. Two Biases Regarding Science and Technology
Zhou Mujun: The public generally holds two extreme perceptions of scientific research. One view is that science and technology are entirely objective and impartial. In English, this is the idea that ‘knowledge is the only way of speaking truth to power’. The belief is that if we conduct the research properly, we will uncover the truth. The other extreme is more cynical, believing that scientists, power, and capital are all cut from the same cloth. I believe both views are biased.
We can reflect on the relationship between scientific research and the public interest from two angles. First, although there are many procedural norms in scientific research designed to keep researchers as objective, neutral, and impartial as possible—free from preconceptions—scientists do not conduct their research in a vacuum. The establishment of research agendas, the choice of questions, which studies receive more funding and support, and which do not… these are all determined by the social environment and structures in which the scientist exists. Power and capital may not be able to force a scientist to call black white, but they certainly influence a scientist’s judgment on what constitutes an ‘important’ problem. These are points for reflection.
The Monsanto case illustrates this perfectly. From the start, Monsanto emphasised a microscopic biological perspective. However, the issue of GM seeds is not merely a microscopic one. Understanding the evolution of weeds requires ecological and environmental perspectives. Furthermore, following the use of GM seeds, the way farmers are organised and the power dynamics between them and seed companies have shifted. To understand the impact of these changes, we may also need a sociological perspective. Therefore, the endorsement of a technical expert does not automatically mean their position represents the truth. We must look at the level on which these experts are discussing the problem.
IV. Why has US government regulation failed repeatedly?
Zhang Jing: Reading *Seed Empire* can actually be quite infuriating; we sometimes joke that it is not suitable as bedtime reading, as it is impossible to get any proper rest after reading it. In the book, the author employs an interwoven narrative style: whenever Monsanto launches a new product, after a period of time, its negative effects emerge—whether through pollution during production or health and environmental issues once the product hits the market. This is usually followed by a series of lawsuits. These legal battles often drag on for ages, and those harmed are slow to receive compensation. Because the company is the inventor of the new technology or product and holds all the technical insider knowledge, they maintain the upper hand once the product is on the market. As we know, ethics cannot be regulated; regulation can only target specific issues. Consequently, regulation can only emerge after a problem has occurred, meaning it is inherently reactive and often happens long after the damage is done. This is because there are many possible causes for a problem, and ruling them out one by one takes time—not to mention that Monsanto has incredibly powerful lobbying groups that have embedded themselves within the government to defend the company’s interests.
I believe this is an area that truly warrants our reflection: what mechanisms can ensure that the general public has a basic right to know the truth, and that such costs are faced with fairness?
Tianle: From the book *Empire of Seeds*, we can see that many of Monsanto’s products have caused massive environmental pollution, yet the company has not borne the costs of remediating the environment. They made a fortune selling the products, but the various negative externalities resulting from those products are borne by society as a whole. I wonder, from an economic perspective, how we should view this phenomenon?
In reality, however, the situation is often far from this ideal. For a company like Monsanto, the costs it pays and the costs actually borne by society are often vasty disconnected. Moreover, in many cases, there are no particularly effective ways to deal with this.
V. What kind of regulation can better manage risks?
Despite this, we shouldn’t necessarily reach a purely pessimistic conclusion about the law. In other scenarios, if the drafting and enforcement of laws are more just and government regulation more effective, it can still produce results.
Of course, we need the law to balance private corporate interests with the public interest, but we cannot expect a powerful government and very strict laws to solve every problem. Because the creation and execution of law unfold within a specific social environment; ultimately, the public’s attention and will regarding these issues must be fully considered.
Tianle: The issue of food regulation is very interesting. During the recent Olympics, there were international calls to kick the sponsor Coca-Cola out of the games. This is because Coca-Cola and similar beverage manufacturers use sports to promote their products—through advertising and athlete endorsements—attempting to link things that are inherently very unhealthy with a healthy lifestyle and healthy people; it is a very cunning marketing tactic. Yet, people seem reluctant to let the government or the law dictate what they eat. To what extent is regulation useful, and to what extent is it necessary?
Xu Zhun: Regulation is certainly useful. The question is, what is the price we pay for that utility? Law is, of course, very important, but the nature of law is that it is cumbersome and lumbering; it is unrealistic to expect the law to prevent every possible incident. Relying solely on a conservative legal system is, in itself, a conservative approach. There is no such thing as a foolproof system; living in society, given any legal or regulatory framework, someone will always find a loophole to exploit for profit.
Therefore, I believe the core issue lies in the relationship between competing interests. For instance, regarding a new technology, every group potentially affected by that technology should have its own representative to discuss the matter within some form of committee. Relevant experts should clearly explain the benefits and drawbacks of the technology, allowing for questions, debate, and full communication. In short, it requires active and broad public participation.
*First published on Tencent News ‘Let’s Talk Science’
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