Many documentaries have been broadcasted on TV in France about Mosanto. It was depicted a the evil personified (like http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-world-according-to-monsan... ). Most of this must be correct because no repeated broadcast has been prohibited. Now, I wonder if this was a plot. Maybe Bayer has favored these broadcasts to reduce the cost of takeover. Maybe Bayer is worst than Mosanto. Welcome parano…
Bayer confirms $66bn Monsanto takeover
61–70 of 77 posts
Re: Bayer confirms $66bn Monsanto takeover
#62Well this seems absolutely fucking horrible.
Re: Bayer confirms $66bn Monsanto takeover
#63Could be interesting? Selling Glyphosate and 'roundup-ready' GMO crops is their main line of business in the United States for a long time! Monsanto is already a evil evil organisation -- and now they have the inventors of Heroin at the helm.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12496398 and marked it off-topic.
Re: Bayer confirms $66bn Monsanto takeover
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
> are we for the legalization of drugs today or against? Nobody in their right mind wants to legalize heroin.
Portugal did and is seeing benefits.
it didn't, portugal _decriminalized_ possession of drugs, in an amounts reputed for "personal use".
It's still illegal to sell drugs, and if you are caught with a joint you have to face social support, can get various licenses removed, get fined, lose welfare benefits etc.
It's a much better policy than the war on drugs, but it's not legalisation.
Re: Bayer confirms $66bn Monsanto takeover
#65Many documentaries have been broadcasted on TV in France about Mosanto. It was depicted a the evil personified (like http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-world-according-to-monsan... ). Most of this must be correct because no repeated broadcast has been prohibited. Now, I wonder if this was a plot. Maybe Bayer has favored these broadcasts to reduce the cost of takeover. Maybe Bayer is worst than Mosanto. Welcome parano…
Well Monsanto is one of the companies that produced the chemical weapon Agent Orange, causing birth defects and death in Vietnam to this day, and the last time Bayer, a producer of poison gas in WWI, had a merger, the result was IG Farben, producer of Zyklon B. So what could go wrong?
Re: Bayer confirms $66bn Monsanto takeover
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
The funny thing is there's basically a jethro in my family but I won't get into that here. In California there's still some specialty crops on expensive land that allow for family owned operations but even here it's probably going to be a thing of the past soon. I worked on an avocado ranch (insert unnamed corporate sponsor here) in undergrad and I met a lot of "jethros" - there's a fraternity called AGR, I think tha…
The typical US farm is a family owned business. http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/201431/eib24b_1_.pdf A key para Ninety-eight percent of U.S. farms are family farms. The remaining 2 percent are nonfamily farms, which produce 15 percent of the value of agricultural output (fig. 4). Two features of family farms stand out. First, there are many small family farms ( So large closely held farms produce 60% of US output and s…
that's really interesting although slightly dated dated (it goes against my preconceived notions either way though) - the "million dollar farms" section is notable given the increase recorded from 2003 to 2004, I wonder whether those numbers have shifted significantly in the last decade.
Re: Bayer confirms $66bn Monsanto takeover
#67And yet another global industry is now so concentrated that free market forces are fully contained ... What we eat will be decided in Germany and China now. Guten Appetit!
> What we eat will be decided in Germany and China now
Keeping your own flock of chickens and living off eggs and butter may come back in vogue..
Re: Bayer confirms $66bn Monsanto takeover
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
any chance this could help the perception of GMOs in Germany then?
No. GMOs are more or less banned throughout Europe for legitimate ecological concerns, with plenty of grassroots opposition in Germany. The fact that it's a field dominated by one of the more evil companies in the world is secondary.
Sorry, but I have to call bullshit on that. What legitimate ecological concerns? As far as I can tell there has never been any evidence that Monsanto's GMOs cause any legitimate ecological problems. Plus Germany is known to be extremely anti-science, like when the green party wanted to shut down all the power plants despite ostensibly being the party you'd most expect to want to help the environment, not hurt it.
Re: Bayer confirms $66bn Monsanto takeover
#69The competition angle isn't what scares me, it's the incentives created by the appearance that Monsanto, an entity whose primary income streams come from utilizing, manipulation, and corrupting the common-sense understanding of IP laws (even unto victimizing farmers who experience pollen drift from nearby farms which use Monsanto products [0]) has generated an exit at over 20% bump in share price. IMO, the IP legal s…
Your source is very biased. Do you have any evidence of Monsanto suing farmers for unintentionally growing crops from seeds that have drifted onto their fields? The most well know case is Monsanto Canada Inc v Schmeiser, but the facts do not support the farmer's claims of innocence. It's clear he tried to grow and acquire as many of Monsanto's seeds as he could. The case you pointed to is about invalidating Monsanto'…
> It's clear he tried to grow and acquire as many of Monsanto's seeds as he could.
What's wrong with that? If your patent passes on its genes onto my corn, then it's no longer exactly your plant.
Re: Bayer confirms $66bn Monsanto takeover
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
The funny thing is there's basically a jethro in my family but I won't get into that here. In California there's still some specialty crops on expensive land that allow for family owned operations but even here it's probably going to be a thing of the past soon. I worked on an avocado ranch (insert unnamed corporate sponsor here) in undergrad and I met a lot of "jethros" - there's a fraternity called AGR, I think tha…
The typical US farm is a family owned business. http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/201431/eib24b_1_.pdf A key para Ninety-eight percent of U.S. farms are family farms. The remaining 2 percent are nonfamily farms, which produce 15 percent of the value of agricultural output (fig. 4). Two features of family farms stand out. First, there are many small family farms ( So large closely held farms produce 60% of US output and s…
The number of "family farms", however you choose to define that as a meaningful term, is roughly the same percentage. the output has dropped below 50% of total agricultural output however.
http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/eib-economic-informatio...
Farming is still an industry of family businesses. Ninety-nine percent of farms are family farms, and they account for 90 percent of farm production. Small farms make up 90 percent of the farm count and operate 46 percent of the Nation's farmland. Most farm production, however, occurs on midsize and large-scale family farms.
It's also worth asking the question, "Is the term 'family farm' meaningful in many of these cases?"