Monsanto: The True Cost of Our Food

🌍 What do you normally look for when you shop for food? (i.e. GMOs, organic, grow your own?) 💡If you want to help to bring more attention to this topic, considering sharing this video on Reddit, Facebook, or Twitter!

The problem with videos like these, no matter how informative they are, are seen only by people like me, who already knew how these corporations operate. Youtube's algorithm doesn't suggest videos like these to millions of people, younger or older who watch mukbang, r&b and pop-culture videos. So life continues as we knew it.

"Militaristic farming" is probably a new favorite word of mine

Oh the irony of the ad before this video was actually an ad for Roundup

That’s why I think growing your own food is important, if you can.

“This man” dude that’s the gangster gardener. 1:04

The new Netflix documentary kiss the ground deals also with this topic and is very interesting

How could the CEO of Bayer live with all this happily everyday? Just ignoring the facts? Money? Coward.

I were just learning about this in biology

I earned my degree in biotechnology thinking I was going to work for a company like Monsanto, but then I realized how their whole business model is based on lies. We do not need genetically engineered, privatized seeds to "feed the world." Thank you for explaining this issue so well and for holding up real solutions (small, diverse farms).

The CEO needs to drink a glass of this every day!

Incredible video as usual. I knew a little bit about the seed patent situation, but had no idea how horribly it impacted farmers and biodiversity.

Your channel is criminally under viewed.

This was a huge issue from 2007-2012 and thanks to lobbying and millions of investments into information suppression, no one remembers. THAT is what's really crazy.

Worked in AG, if you think the organic label at the grocery store means anything, you're fooling yourself and spending 1/3 more on groceries for no reason

In Sweden at least in the south one of the best things is buying tomatoes from local farmers. It tastes way better then tomatoes from outside the country.

insane that these people should be allowed to live when they've killed so many, past, present and future

A few things that were not included in the video: 1: Monsanto wasn't the only company to make Agent Orange. There were many. It's not a great look, but they have moved away from an industry that was far less controversial then. 2: The WHO also claims cell phones to be possibly carcinogenic. There are reasons to look at glyphosate with a careful eye, but also take into account the studies that invalidated themselves by the sloppiness with which they were conducted. Such as the study that looked at the prevalence of tumors, but used rats that are well known to develop tumors unassisted. 3: Did Monsanto sue that farmer? Yes. But that is barely the whole story. Neighboring farmers were buying the Monsanto seeds. They use a subscription model, so that farmers can get the seeds for a decent price, while Monsanto can earn back their development costs. The sued farmer had been selectively using seeds that blew onto his fields. This means he could use the Monsanto pesticides at the expense of his neighbors. He was repeatedly asked to stop, but he refused. At the behest of the farmers, then did Monsanto take legal action. 4: The idea behind GMO crops is that you can more specifically use a certain pesticide, reducing the dosage and frequency between use. This is a financial incentive for farmers. Sure, this system has been some what manipulated and companies aren’t always in search of products that help the environment, but we want to use less of it, so you use a crop that isn’t affected by said poison. 5: Not mentioned in the video, but definitely worth mentioning. Monsanto received a lot of flak for the use of GMOs and thee risk that they could escape into the wild. This is a legitimate concern. So thee introduced the ‘terminator’ gene that prevented reproduction of the plant. Now they were playing god and shackling the farmer to a ball and chain, even though they did exactly what the public was saying. Probably the ‘public’ should have been more clear. 6: Growing produce locally is something we should stride to. But lets not fool ourselves. Certain crops cannot be grown on a small scale economically. Things like corn or wheat, or crops not intended for human consumption, like sorghum (just ignore that people eat it, its more of an example). High value crops like fruits, herbs and vegetables can be cultivated in such a fashion, because their higher value offsets the higher costs of location. That is why you wont bee eating a piece of bread from a vertical farm, but you might just have basil from one. Don’t get me wrong. I am no fan of Monsanto. When I heard of the upcoming merger between Bayer and Monsanto, I was concerned at the least. And before then, I wanted Monsanto broken up like they did to Windows in the 90’s. But it is all too popular to hate on Monsanto without first figuring out why they do the things they do. And at that, this video sadly fails. Can’t say it surprises me. The amount of disinformation on Monsanto is so vast, it legitimately sounds true. And it does sound like something a megacorp might do. Sorry for the long post, here is a virtual gmo and pesticide free potato.

Great video, as always. It's truely maddening what those corporations can get away with...

'This new paradigm of smaller, more intimate food systems' = Every Italian grandparents' backyard since the beginning of humanity!