Having grown up and worked on a farm for most of my life, I can’t help but poke a few questions at the books and this video. The background music in this video was just about enough to make me want to hang myself. Monsanto should not have been using strong arm tactics against small individual farmers. That was a huge mistake on their part. Sadly it went all the way to the Canadian Supreme Court. The case always was a sham, and Monsanto is now feeling the wrath of an incensed public. Monsanto mishandled every aspect of GM crops. What “biotechnology” represents is power. Power can either be used for good or for harm. The knife blade can either help heal someone (via surgical procedures) when in a skilled doctor’s hands, or that same blade can be used to wantonly destroy. This biotechnology debate is over the application of how to use this ability. Monsanto has historically been a chemical company, but has recently changed the corporate direction into a life sciences company. Their shift has been towards plant breeding—notably resistance of Roundup herbicide. Before we had Roundup, there was no way to control quackgrass or other invasive weeds. The roots of it went underground and spread shoots through the soil to multiply. The only way to control it was to cultivate it out, which meant the entire piece of ground would sit idle for an entire year while a farmer spent half the summer cultivating very deep into the ground to bring up the roots, which were later burned. Roundup has made our lives so much easier controlling quackgrass and other pervasive weeds. I could go on and on about milkweed as well, but I’ll refrain today. FYI, the patent is off Roundup. Glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup) is now available under many generic brands and for a fraction of the cost. It’s cheap, it’s safe, and it works. It is a systemic herbicide, which means that even if only a little chemical contacts the plant, the chemical will get into the entire plant and kill it. Liberty was another chemical used, but it was only a contact killer. Roundup kills the entire plant. However, there are some species of plants that it is weak on, and some that it doesn’t kill at all—namely buckwheat. For the rest, it is much safer and much easier to apply than any conventional chemical ever will be. Harmony can drift ¼ mile in the wind and destroy nearby crops. Other chemicals are much more prone to drift. Roundup is pathetically easy to apply and very safe. This demonizing of Monsanto is really not helpful. Patenting varieties is nothing new. That’s how we ended up with rust resistant wheat, after the rust years in the 50s and 60s ruined a lot of wheat crops. Plant breeders are always trying to breed resistance into crops. Without the specially developed varieties, we would be SOL. I have no idea how a crop could become resistant to Roundup. I suppose it is theoretically possible, but if it is possible it will probably take years, maybe even decades. Roundup is not like the sulfunylurea chemicals, like Glean, that the weeds became easily resistant to (ala kochia). We now have resistant kochia to some chemicals, and also resistant wild oats to other chemicals. I suppose that if something showed signs of developing resistance to glyphosate, research would be done into finding a solution for that. However, I don't think the apocalyptic rhetoric is really necessary.