Environment Issues Intro: Cliché PR

Monsanto's PR campaign is the definition of a truncated narrative.

In these two pieces, published January 30th and March 30th 2011, Monsanto gives the purely one-sided bias of a corporation out to make a profit. Monsanto is the world's leading producer of RoundUp, and also the largest producer of genetically engineered seed, GMOs, and the technology to grow them. In these two PR videos, Monsanto discusses the benefits of American farming techniques, and how it hopes to further spread those techniques to other countries with the promise of food for all.

But in reality, Monsanto isn't trying to save the world; it's trying to trap the world in its grasp, with food it owns and the tech to grow it. They destroy country’s local markets and enforce its expanding global one, so they can better control prices and maximize profits. Monsanto's vision of "sustainable agricultural" for the world is an outrate lie; it is only a system to exploit the exploitable to fatten the wallets of American investors.

A May 2008 article by Vanity fair goes into some detains about Monsanto's past and current practices. They describe how Monsanto secretly investigates small rural farmers for infringements on its patents. Mansanto also downplays damages causes by chemical infections by its products, like those from a Nitro Plant explosion and veterans exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam. Monsanto treats second class citizens in its own country with little respect; it’s no surprise that they have no care for the poor in foreign lands.

In Vandana Shiva reading "Global Harvest" we discover how businessmen and governments around the world are the ones who benefit from trading with Monsanto. The ones lucky enough to own large amounts of land benefit from the high yield practices Monsanto provides, and the governments that support them gain a higher amount of taxes with the healthy exports. But the small land owners are the ones who are devastated. They take out loans to cultivate the genetically modified crops, the pesticides to treat them with, and the fertilizer for the harsh land. Most of them get trapped in a debt treadmill and are force to sell their farm to a larger one, where they'll then work for a few dollars a day. "Farmers are transformed for produces into consumer,"(Shiva, 7) where they export all their cash crops at "world value" and buy everything they need.

What ticks me off is the ability of companies to flat out lie to an audience that believes anything they see on TV. They can flat out deny the facts in their commercials and PR and there's nothing to stop them. The businesses have their hands in the government’s pockets, so no laws will be passed to stop this, and any individual speaking up will be sued for slander or even terrorism. You see this today with BP covering up dead dolphins in the gulf from the oil spill, and not a single news network has aired a word of the deaths. So, what have we done to deserve to live under a government that allows corporations to hide the facts so they can make a quick buck, completely disregarding the future consequences?