Corporate Bioinputs: Agribusiness’s New Toxic Trap

Up until the end of the 1990s, Monsanto was mainly a company focussed on producing and selling chemical pesticides. These kill bugs quickly and indiscriminately, ideal for large, monoculture farms and routine spraying, albeit devastating for biodiversity and human health. Monsanto didn’t care at all about non-chemical pesticides like those made with the soil microbe Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). So-called biopesticides, are slower acting and suited to smaller-scale production, with farmers monitoring the crops closely and spraying only when necessary. Though less harmful, biopesticides make much less money for companies, as they usually fall outside the patent industry’s grasp.

Monsanto’s interest in Bt piqued with the advent of genetic engineering. The company realised it could insert genes from Bt into plants, enabling them to produce the toxin non-stop throughout the plant. This could, in effect, turn the biopesticide into something more akin to a chemical pesticide— well suited to industrial monocropping. And, on top of it, Monsanto could patent this genetically engineered Bt and integrate it into its broader strategy of dominating the seed industry.

Organic farmers, who’d used Bt carefully for generations so as not to encourage insect resistance, knew that if Monsanto moved ahead with its plans, insect resistance would inevitably develop. Two decades later, with multiple species of insects resistant to Bt crops, we know that they were right.[1]