It’s almost Michael Moore-esque in its one-sidedness, but at least it remains grounded in fact. The article takes us through Monsanto’s inception as a chemical company, started by an Irishman with a sixth-grade education, that established itself by selling saccharin to Coca-Cola, then added vanillin, caffeine, sedatives and laxatives to its list of offerings. When World War II cut off supply, they started manufacturing their chemicals independently, and quickly dominated the market.

Plastics, resins, fuel additives, artificial caffeine, vinyl siding, dishwasher detergent, anti-freeze, fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and rubber goods came next (plus dioxin and and PCBs, though we’ll gloss over those), but Monsanto’s emergence as an unstoppable force in agriculture didn’t happen until 1982, when company scientists were the first to genetically modify a plant cell. They’d struck gold again: all during the 1990s, they genetically modified cotton, soybeans, corn and canola with the ultimate effect being that an estimated 90% of the soy grown in the U.S. today is bought direct from Monsanto (and, under a clause, legally but technically unnecessarily re-purchased every year, filling Monsanto’s coffers). One 1990s Monsanto president even claimed that G.M. seeds were “the single most successful introduction of technology in the history of agriculture, including the plow.” The company now spends more than an already unbelievable $2 million a day in research…

Further controversy has ensued with the debate over cow hormone rBGH, manufactured by Monsanto under the brand name Posilac. Farmers who choose to produce milk naturally, and subsequently label their product “BST-free” or “From Cows Not Treated with rBGH,” have been aggressively sued by Monsanto. The company, in fact, has been litigious to an extreme: suing farmers on whose land “Monsanto-owned” seeds have naturally drifted, or others whom they judge may have infringed upon its patents.

This may seem like just another power-hungry company scrambling for intellectual—and financial—control of their far-flung products, and angry farmers lashing back. But controlling the world’s supply of seeds, as the article points out, “is not some abstraction. Whoever provides the world’s seeds controls the world’s food supply.”

Good point.