Science Spotlight: Monsato's Seeds

What does it mean to possess the genetic information of something or someone? Is the genetic code – the foundation of life from bacteria to homonids  – a patentable product? Or is there a line somewhere, because genetic information is the stuff of life and life is sacrosanct, and patent law only goes to a point?

It’s an interesting and difficult question and a question that is particularly relevant today. A week and a half ago, on Feb. 19, the Supreme Court heard a case involving the biotechnology company Monsanto, and a small Indiana farmer, Vernon Hugh Bowman (Bowman v. Monsanto Company, No. 11-796).

Monsanto is suing Bowman, who owns a 300-acre soybean farm in Indiana, for saving and planting multiple generations of their patented, genetically modified “Roundup Ready” seeds. Andrew Pollack of the New York Times reported: “[Bowman] bought commodity soybeans from a grain elevator [for a second planting]. These beans were a mixture of varieties from different farmers, but, not surprisingly, most of them were Roundup Ready. So Mr. Bowman sprayed Roundup on his late-season crop. ‘All through history we have always been allowed to go to an elevator and buy commodity grain and plant it’  [Bowman] said in an interview.
The courts, however, have not agreed. After Monsanto sued Mr. Bowman in 2007, a district court in Indiana awarded the company more than $84,000.”

Bowman is being taken to court for planting seeds that contain the gene for Roundup Ready resistance without buying the seed from Monsanto. Monsanto is a biotechnology company, and they’ve devoted massive amounts of resources to the development of this line of seeds. To them, it’s a patent infringement case and for that reason, Monsanto has a broad range of support from diverse groups – from software companies to laboratory instrument manufacturers. Everyone is concerned about how this case will affect the future of commercial enterprise and innovation.

Charlotte Silver, an opinion writer for Al-Jazeera commented that: “According to court reports, the panel of judges was less than amenable to farmer Vernon Hugh Bowman’s argument that the purview of Monsanto’s patent ends once its seeds have yielded their first generation of a crop. Monsanto sees it differently, arguing that it must be able to prevent farmers from using seeds obtained from subsequent generations of plants. That the Supreme Court would resist Bowman’s argument should come as no surprise. After all it was the Supreme Court that, in 1985, granted seed companies the right to limit farmers’ ability to save the seeds the companies had patented.”

But is there another angle we should be examining?

What has been for centuries free for farmers – the seed planted from last year’s crop – is now becoming a patented, profitable commodity, and a lucrative one at that. According to a report from the Associated Press in the New York Times on Jan. 8 this year, “The company’s sales grew 21 percent, to $2.9 billion in the quarter, with most of the increase coming from the company’s corn seed business.” The report goes on to indicate that “Sales of the company’s largest unit, seeds and genomics, grew 27 percent, to $1.1 billion, on demand from farmers in Brazil and Argentina.”

Is this right?

Silver criticizes Monsanto for exporting their biotechnology to developing countries in South America, Asia and Africa. She wrote: “Prominent food justice activist and defender of seed biodiversity, Vandana Shiva, described AGRA as a major assault on Africa’s seed sovereignty for its encouragement of biotechnology in African countries. In 2009, three years after Gates launched his AGRA initiative, Doug Gurian-Sherman, a senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, published the first independent study on transgenic crop yields. It concluded that biotechnology has not resulted in increased yields, and, in fact, traditional and organic breeding techniques have a much more successful track record.”

Apart from sub-par yield performance, herbicide-resistant crops are giving rise to new problems. Weeds are slowly becoming resistant to Monsanto’s Roundup pesticide. Silver wrote; “A recent report published in January by Farm Industry News found that the number of farmers reporting Roundup-resistant weeds is rapidly increasing. In 2012, nearly half of all US farmers interviewed found super weeds on their farms, a considerable increase from the 34 percent reporting such weeds in 2011. Although Monsanto’s first generation of transgenic soybeans and the concomitant herbicides are responsible for the development of these brawny weeds, it will try to convince farmers that their second generation of herbicides will provide the solution.”

This last issue begs the question: should we mess with nature’s systems? Many would argue no. But the promise of biotechnology is undeniable, and the march of progress is inevitable. In the absence of a complete halt of technological advancement, I would argue that our priority right now would be holding a conversation as a society about which aspects of progress are ethical and which are not. And the only way that such a conversation can be meaningful is if it is grounded in strong scientific understanding.

The debate must be approached respectfully, humbly, with curiosity, as, in the words of Aristotle, “the person who deliberates seems to inquire and analyze in the way described as though he were analyzing a geometrical construction, “with the aim of answering the question: what is right?  Because it’s not only the Supreme Court who should be engaging these issues. We all need to engage them on a daily basis. They will impact our lives profoundly.