5 Million Farmers Sue Monsanto for $7.7 Billion
Launching a lawsuit against the very company that is responsible for a farmer suicide every 30 minutes, 5 million farmers are now suing Monsanto for as much as 6.2 billion euros (around 7.7 billion US dollars). The reason? As with many other cases, such as the ones that led certain farming regions to be known as the ‘suicide belt’, Monsanto has been reportedly taxing the farmers to financial shambles with ridiculous royalty charges. The farmers state that Monsanto has been unfairly gathering exorbitant profits each year on a global scale from “renewal” seed harvests, which are crops planted using seed from the previous year’s harvest.
The practice of using renewal seeds dates back to ancient times, but Monsanto seeks to collect massive royalties and put an end to the practice. Why? Because Monsanto owns the very patent to the genetically modified seed, and is charging the farmers not only for the original crops, but the later harvests as well. Eventually, the royalties compound and many farmers begin to struggle with even keeping their farm afloat. It is for this reason that India slammed Monsanto with groundbreaking ‘biopiracy’ charges in an effort to stop Monsanto from ‘patenting life’.
Jane Berwanger, a lawyer for the farmers who went on record regarding the case, told the Associted Press:
“Monsanto gets paid when it sell the seeds. The law gives producers the right to multiply the seeds they buy and nowhere in the world is there a requirement to pay (again). Producers are in effect paying a private tax on production.”
The findings echo what thousands of farmers have experienced in particularly poor nations, where many of the farmers are unable to stand up to Monsanto. Back in 2008, the Daily Mail covered what is known as the ‘GM Genocide’, which is responsible for taking the lives of over 17,683 Indian farmers in 2009 alone. After finding that their harvests were failing and they started to enter economic turmoil, the farmers began ending their own lives — oftentimes drinking the very same insecticide that Monsanto provided them with.
As the information continues to surface on Monsanto’s crimes, further lawsuits will begin to take effect. After it was ousted in January that Monsanto was running illegal ‘slave-like’ working rings, more individuals became aware of just how seriously Monsanto seems to disregard their workers — so why would they care for the health of their consumers? In April, another group of farmers sued Monsanto for ‘knowingly poisoning’ workers and causing ‘devastating birth defects’.
Will endless lawsuits from millions of seriously affected individuals be the end of Monsanto?
Great article! (you should fix some of the writing mistakes tho) Good luck to the farmers! Damn to hell Monsanto.
Why would you grow GMO ?
Grow organic food !!!!
Feed people real vegies , real fruits ,
that have nutritional values.
GMO causes diseases and no one wants GMO.
Why force GMO on the populations .
Im 78 years old and I remember when all Monsanto did was stink up the town of E. St Louis Ill with their big piles of chemicals and slave the people they brought over from Africa. Theyve come a long way.
Keep the updates about this coming!
Because the govt health agencies won't let you grow organic anymore….you have to get seeds from an approved supplier, and guess who the only ones that get approved are?
where did you get this info? I know of no gov't agency that won't allow organic foods to be grown. many local gov'ts encourage local farmers to grow and sell their produce.
How about the state of Michigan where it's illegal to milk your own cow or grow your own food. WORD.
The worst type of greed is corporate greed, because it provides the plausible deniability that allows their share holders to sleep at night.
Corporations have been murdering people for increased profits ever since they learned that we can't put all the share holders in jail.
It is like fighting a multi-National U.N. coalition force with one slingshot and a couple pea shooters.
But I blame the Farmers. They should "vote with their feet". Buy seed from other Farmers, not multi-national corporations.
Old Chinese saying: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
There is no such thing as "corporate greed", only "human greed". To write these transgressions off as corporate greed pre-emptively exonerates those so-called "humans" who formulate damaging policies, and deflects the focus to a non-accountable imaginary being. I would love to see how committed to a corporation's success a CEO would be if he were paid like a warehouse worker.
To put it another way, a group of like-minded (or greedy) individuals acting in concert does automatically constitute a separate entity with human attributes. A corporation is an abstract concept to which human character flaws and motivations CANNOT BE ATTRIBUTED. A corporation cannot formulate its own policies; human intervention is required, in exactly the same way that an oil tanker must have competent navigators to pilot it. Of course, the analogy dissolves when we remember, for instance, that Capt. Joseph Hazelwood did not receive $100,000,000 in stock options or severance pay after being dismissed and prosecuted for his part in the near total decimation of Prince William Sound and its wildlife. Only a human could conceive of so lavishly rewarding the incompetent for their complicity in the face of such thorough and abject failure. Does the name Jamie Dimon sound familiar? Only a human can decide to reward actions that directly counter his company's goals for success; the normal sequence of cause and effect would DEMAND said incompetent's removal from his position before greater damage can be inflicted, and without further compensation. If I'm complicit in the burning down of a house that my contractor boss is trying to build, don't I also deserve a small fortune for my part in the disaster? Well, if Jamie Dixon does, I do…but the reality is that I will be dismissed, and very probably prevented from ever working in that field, in my area, again. What would happen to you in a similar situation?
Have you forgotten what the corporate 5 justices on the supreme court and Mitt Romney said, "corporations are people my friend."
STOP GMO NOW,IT IS POISON PEOPLE ALL OVER THE WORLD..COUNTRIES OVER SEAS HAVE BANNED GMO. MANY STATES IN THE UNITED STATES I READ WHERE 15 STATES ARE FIGHTING GMO NOW!!!I READ WHERE FARMERS WANT THERE HEALTHY SEEDS, NOT YOUR CRAP!!!
From being a farmers Daughter and having grown up with the trials and tribulations of growing wheat crops I am so proud of these Farmers for taking Monsanto on! Best of luck to them & looking forward to hearing more.
From being a farmers Daughter I am so proud of farmers standing up and taking Monsanto on – what this organisation does is outragous and what they have gotten away with to date is beyond me. Best of luck to the Farmers and I look forward to more updates on this!
Why you pompous jerk. If the significance of the story escapes you in the face of such "blaring" typo's, then recede into your mindless ignorance and eat some HFCS.
A Farmer commits suicide every 30 minutes. Are you listening, Bill Gates? George Soros sold his stock, but you buy more. I guess you are into dead farmers, Soros is not.
All of us eat GMO, it is in nearly everything now. Monsanto has so polluted the gene pool GMO food is unavoidable.
this video is worth the time to watch, 109 minutes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH6wqCC5wQo
This idea that we can avoid "the curse of weeds" that Monsanto, and Disneyland have brainwashed us with has been going on for generations. The lie to farmers was: "Use our genetically modified seed, water with roundup, and have a weed free crop".
The laws concerning bio-genetic experimentation, are as lopsided as intellectual property rights. With bio-experimentation one can patent, a "helpful/good strain", but not be held liable for "unhelpfully destructive/bad strains", when the offending strain makes it's way into the world.
The answer is simple: Don't use herbicides, use a hoe, all promises by Satan, and his partners, that we can avoid labor in weed abatement, or food production, are false, we are seeing the results of it now.
Basic instructions for dealing with weeds is given in the Bible: gather them up, and burn them in the furnace, not spread the seeds with string trimmers, and blowers, or poison the earth.
BTW herbicide/pesticide production is an end run around internationally recognized bio/chemical weapon prohibitions.
Only problem with the advice to burn the weeds is you can't burn anything anymore its against the law because of pollution! There are natural weed killers you can make from vinegar mixtures go on line and see what you already have in the kitchen. Listen its a little late to be worried about the GMO its been in full running operations since 1950 over in area 51 NV. I'm sure that most of us are only part human at this stage.
Laborers that pick the crops are dropping dead in the fields, but nobody cares because they're undocumented workers. And we're eating that stuff.
Farming organically for 32 years. We grow grass for the cows, don't need any Monsanto on our place. Have numerous success storys of people who eat the grass fed beef from our place. Do regret losing the bullfrogs in my stream from up stream use of roundup!
THANK-YOU!! From the bottom of my heart, thank-you for staying organic and keeping hope alive that we will be able to make the earth better again with Organic instead of unnatural and that we can take the world back for the people, and not just the greedy few!
Why don't u grow hemp?
you used roundup or someone else?
Do you sell any seeds? I would love to find some that are not manipulated by companies like Monsanto? Please respond. I live in Louisiana.
Even if they aren't able to win the suit, as long as they are abler to perpetuate it and keep costing the company in legal fees & bad PR…mission accomplished 🙂
Here in South Africa Monsanto's seed perform well and it will be difficult to achieve the same yields of Corn or Soybeans with non-GMO's. What is the other side of the story?
Actually, when organic crops are grown on soil that has not been depleted by conventional methods, they perform as well as GMO's. Furthermore, organic crops out-perform GMO crops in difficult conditions like drought and flooding, because their root systems are stronger.
With GMO crops, you have to use more and more pesticides every year to get the same yield…which is why they were invented in the first place. Farmers were not able to use enough pesticides and herbicides to eliminate competition for their crops without killing the crops themselves. So some wise guy thought it would be a great idea to create an herbicide-resistant crop so that you could douse it with more chemicals. Too bad we don't have herbicide-resistant humans.
it doesnt matter that the crop is poisoning the people that eat it and causing cancer?
money money money eh
Who is the half-wit that thought it would be a good idea to allow a company to patent a seed? It's a shame we have to share the planet with such narrow-mindness.
It goes deeper than that,94 percent of the seeds varieties have disappeared,since 1900,i think thy are in the seed banks in the Antarctic stolen by the elite you couldn't make it up.
It's simple, give anything to the Americans (sorry for the generalization, I don't literally mean all of them, mostly the corporates) and they will evaluate it with one and only one thing: profitability. Nothing else matters. Everything in the society is built around this concept. And the same attitude is spreading world-wide like a plague, because it justifies screwing the hell out of someone who doesn't work on this principle, and obviously makes the followers "successful." Hopefully people will realize that this is not a long-term solution before it destroys it all! Mankind, sigh…
monstanto CEO should be burned alive with pesticide poured on their bodies.
monsanto contamiates ngmo beans then take no resposiblty for the cost to farmer for the lost market david webster a 77 yearold farmer lost over $15,000 because of monsanto david webster brussels ont. canada
It is up to everyone in America to refuse to purchase or eat any product made from corn or soybeans unless it is labled gmo free. I would bet if all cereals as well as any other products containing high fructose corn surup could not be sold there would be an immediate change in gmo and roundup poluted foods you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. Shame on all consumers for not standing together to boycott these foods.
I love this article, except that it seems to lack critical information. What country is this lawsuit taking place in? When was the lawsuit filed and in what level of court? WHat is the status of the filing? WHere can we find more information about what's happening? When I "google" this topic, I'm not able to find ANYTHING. I ABSOLUTELY agree with the cause, but could you please provide us with more details?
Where are the farmers from?
I think American Farmers should sue the Big M for false advertising. They said it would increase their crop yields…it did not. They said it would control the rootworm…it actually made it worse. They said it could be controlled…it can't. They said that there was no difference in the nutritional value…there is a dramatic difference. They said it would control the weeds…it does not. Instead it creates super weeds that are so tough that special Kevlar tires are required to mow them a second time. They said that it would be the answer to world hunger…if you count farmer suicides, then perhaps they are right on that one…or the people dying slowly from complications from Bt pesticides. That is where you get them…perhaps they haven't bought the judges that will decide that yet.
Is there any update to this lawsuit? It’s been over a year since this was posted, so there has to be something. I can’t find any updates anywhere; they all just link right back to this article.
Dude! You have a round up ad right in the middle of this article!!!
This is not rocket science. Don’t buy Monsanto seeds. Here is a link to other places that have signed the “Safe Seed Pledge” and do not sell GMO. This is list is comprised by state. http://www.councilforresponsiblegenetics.org/ViewPage.aspx?pageId=261
When I bought seeds for my garden this year, I was easily able to find NON GMO seeds.
What verse did Satan say this in? Why are we just now hearing about Satan promising to kill weeds for us?