You might have heard a piece of one of Greta Thunberg’s speeches this past month on Instagram, Twitter, etc. If you do not know who Greta is she is a 16 year old Sweedish girl who has given many speeches and met various public figures in her journey to make others aware of the climate change and decay of the world. Greta speaks to the audience conveying great emotion as she portrays how angry she has become with those who have inherited her this world mid deterioration; thus in one of her latest lectures she mentions the billion dollar company Monsanto.
If on any account you attempt to keep up with environmental issues bombarding our world you have heard of the Monsanto group and the constant court battles since the 1990s. Now in our day and age Monsanto is finally serving serious charges and being held liable for the waste their products and seeds have released into the atmosphere. Monsanto produces Roundup which is a brand name herbicide, this herbicide began as a product that could be sprayed and controlled but in order to reach more territory they developed genetically modified seeds.
These genetically modified seeds were seen as a positive step towards enhancing and protecting the crops of farmers. Due to how advanced their idea was proving to be Monsanto decided to patent the product so that the contract would need to be renovated yearly and they could make a higher profit on the herbicide. Although this product has brought innovative changes to the way in which farming is done not only in the United States but almost everywhere in the world it has brought on harsh retaliation from critics in recent years.
You see these genetically modified seeds are largely more difficult to remain controlled and from spreading into other crops and fields which are marked as non GMO and organic. Farmers who were originally not utilizing this genetically modified crop have fallen behind on revenue because their “organic” crops do not grow at the rate or size as the engineered produce. The non GMO and organic crops have lost value as the genetically modified seeds are picked up by the wind and birds and spread to organic fields of the few farmers that have decided against purchasing the yearly patent for these seeds.
The state will be taking legal repercussions towards this company for not disclosing information about the genetically modification of these seeds and for damage done to crops and fields in the past couple of years. The important thing is that this issue is now being brought to the attention of the population for them to form their own opinion of whether or not this is ethically correct.