Talk:Monsanto/Archive 3

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Monsanto Cucumbers Cause Genital Baldnes

Monsanto Cucumbers Cause Genital Baldness -- Immediately Banned in Nova Scotia


A six-month study by AgriSearch, an on-campus research arm of Dalhousie University, has shown that genetically modified (GM) cucumbers grown under license to Monsanto Inc. result in serious side effects including total groin hair loss and chafing in "sensitive areas", leading to the immediate and total ban of sales of all that company's crop and subsequent dill pickles. The tracking study of 643 men and women in Nova Scotia came about after reports began to surface about bald field mice and the bald feral cats that ate them being discovered by farmers on acreages growing the new crop. "The bald wild animals raised a huge flag and we immediately obtained subpoenas for the medical records of all 600 plus adults who took part in focus groups and taste tests of the cucumbers by Monsanto in Canada," said Dr. Nancy Walker, Director of Public Health Research at Dalhousie. "Fully 3/4 of the people who ate these cukes had their crotch area hair fall out. This is not a joking matter at all...these people now have hairless heinies." Nova Scotia became the first province or state in North America to ban a Monsanto GM food product, although GM corn and other food crops are currently outlawed in Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Greece and Hungary. Governments in Australia, Spain, UK, France, Turkey, India and Mexico have public petitions or legislative bills under consideration. Californians recently voted down a bill that would have required all GM foods to be clearly labeled. Monsanto cucumbers have been ordered removed from all food stores in Nova Scotia, while Quebec stores have begun a voluntary removal, partially because the UPC code stickers contain some English. "I pulled down my boxer shorts to get ready for bed one night and there it was...a pile of hair that looked like a chihuahua puppy," said Eric LaMaze, who was paid $50 by Monsanto to compare the tastes of natural cucumbers to Monsanto GM cucumbers in March of this year in Halifax. "Then I saw my bits and whoa they were like all shiny skin. Bald." Mr. LaMaze and other taste test participants said the GM cucumbers tasted the same as the naturally grown cucumbers but made a slight "fizzing noise" when swallowed. The participants also complained of raw skin in their genital area and some bed wetting. Monsanto Inc., a self-described Sustainable Agriculture Company based in Creve Coeur, Missouri, where they share offices with major shareholder Bain Capital, issued a statement saying, "Next generation fruits and vegetables, including VO5 cucumbers, are safe for human consumption with some potential minor side effects. Some fine-tuning is underway." McDonald's Corp. issued a statement following the Nova Scotia ban announcing that they will replace dill and sweet cucumber pickles on their burgers with non-GM pickled zucchini as a precaution until it is proven that no Monsanto pickles were sold into the North American market. McDonald's website contains a bulletin to that effect and includes a revised hip-hop Big Mac jingle that now sings, "Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickled zuke, onions on a sesame seed bun." Federal Minister of Health Leona Aglukkaq said a Canada-wide recall and ban will be issued within 24 hours. "The Government of Canada takes this very, very seriously," said the Minister. "Being hairless down there should be a matter of personal choice for Canadian men and women and not one taken away by a cucumber." "They used to have the real cucumber slices in those salad things at the City Hall Dining Club," sighed Former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford on the courthouse steps after being impeached by a Provincial Judge. "Those were good times..." Robin Steel — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.200.83.71 (talk) 00:30, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Hilarious. This is from http://www.thelapine.ca/monsanto-cucumbers-cause-genital-baldness-immediately-banned-nova-scotia The Lapine is "Canada's Best Satirical Newspaper". Canada's equivalent to the Onion in the US. As their motto says: "rabbits eat onions".Jytdog (talk) 00:56, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Deletion

@Jytdog my error, missed that. Current version appears accurate. Semitransgenic talk. 11:39, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Protest songs?

Really? I don't think much of Monsanto, but it's not exactly encyclopaedic. Pinkbeast (talk) 16:45, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree but it seems important to people. There used to be a whole section of "Monsanto in popular culture" that was all books and movies attacking Monsanto. The section titles and structure has been edited from time to time. I just did it again. There is a whole industry/culture built around attacking/demonizing Monsanto and that industry/culture is notable. Talking through this as I write, it would be good to find a secondary source that discusses that culture and have an intro paragraph in the section describing that industry/culture.... I will look for that. thanks for bringing this up! Jytdog (talk) 17:03, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
Which I just did, as best as I could quickly find. Very open to feedback/criticism.Jytdog (talk) 20:22, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
"It seems important to people" is not a good reason to add advocacy content to an encyclopedia article. This article ought not to be a soapbox for the anti-Monsanto movement, though neutral description of criticism of the company is appropriate. I boldly removed the language pushing a point of view that Monsanto is evil, and the promotional list of protest songs. I also removed the non-notable films, which I define in this context as films that do not have a Wikipedia article. I will not object to adding back films that have well-referenced articles showing that they are notable. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 00:27, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
That was quite drastic, although I think I agree "evil" was used rather freely, for example. Pinkbeast (talk) 01:59, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
If you look at the history of my edits on this page you will see that I did a ton of work to clean up a lot of POV content that was badly sourced, to try to make this a good article. This section is something i never knew what to do with. The existence of a group of people who hate Monsanto, is one reason that Monsanto is notable. The article doesn't say anything about it, and I think it is not unreasonable for the article to describe this phenomenon, in a NPOV and well sourced manner. If you are unaware that there is a group of people who hate Monsanto, just google "monsanto" and see what you find. It is quite shocking. (still surprises me, to this day) I would not delete the stuff that you did -- my guess is that folks will come along and revert it. But I will not revert you.Jytdog (talk) 03:29, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
I think you have done a good job here, Jytdog, and I like your comments, Pinkbeast. In the way of honest disclosure, I am personally much more supportive of the critics of Monsanto than I am of the company itself. I shop and eat organic whenever possible. But as a Wikipedian, I am committed first and foremost to the neutral point of view. This is an article about a multinational corporation, and the article ought to consist solely of neutrally written content about that corporation. Of course, a neutrally written section describing criticism and controversies is important and appropriate. But the criticism should not be given undue weight. If the campaign against this corporation is so notable, then a neutral article about the Anti-Monsanto movement can be written. But listing a bunch of non-notable protest songs, and linking to You Tube videos of these songs being performed? I consider that totally out of line for a neutral encyclopedia, and will oppose the inclusion of such material. This is an encyclopedia, not a soapbox in Hyde Square. To those who want to include a list of protest songs, I would say, go start up your own advocacy website, and post whatever you want there. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 06:07, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
Ha ha this is funny. I think that GM food that is on the market is as safe as conventional food, and that the anti-Monsanto people tend to be ignorant, and stubbornly so. Monsanto's business practices are difficult to swallow but I absolutely do not think that they or their employees are "evil." As I already wrote, as I have worked on this page I have worked very hard to create content that is NPOV and well sourced - to create content that all the "sides" would find fair. I see that in your eyes I bent too far to be fair to the anti-Monsanto crowd. Like I said, I am glad you are the one who deleted the stuff. Have a great day.Jytdog (talk) 18:01, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
Please don't read into my bold editing of the article any criticism of your work here, Jytdog. I like your work here. I have chosen to carry out a couple of bold edits on this article, which I believe are justified by policy and guidelines. That does not mean that I think you should have done so first. We all pick our battles, and there is a lot of material on Wikipedia that ought to be changed for the same reasons, but I don't have the time or energy to jump into every fray. Also, I am not convinced that GMOs are unsafe, and my dietary choices are based on other factors, such as aesthetic and cultural values, and a personal preference to support smaller family farmers. But this is not the place to debate the broader issues. I made my comments about my diet to help create a collaborative working relationship between the three editors commenting here. That's all. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 18:38, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Deforestation caused by soy of Monsanto

Deforestation takes place in order to plant soy of Monsanto, according to http://www.linktv.org/video/4285/argentinas-food-farmers-trumped-by-soy. This is soy produced by Monsanto and so this should be mentioned in the article.Sarcelles (talk) 17:22, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

I am sorry but that makes no sense. Please explain how a nation's governance of its resources is the responsibility of a company that sells products to citizens of that country. Are you saying that Monsanto has lobbied the government of Argentina to clear forest? That would be attributable to Monsanto. Jytdog (talk) 21:42, 31 March 2013 (UTC)


entropy study/bad science?

Here are sources mentioned so far in connection with the study - feel free to expand the list. I haven't made up my mind whether it warrants inclusion or might indeed be bad science. However the exclusion of a peer reviewed academic study based on blogger's opinion at HuffPo is formally a no-go.--Kmhkmh (talk) 00:07, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

Since criticism of that paper is piling up and there seem to be various red flags, I think it is a good idea to remove the paper from the article for now, until we get additional confirmation and/or somewhat positive reviews.--Kmhkmh (talk) 13:59, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

  • I agree. The Entropy study contains no new experimental data and is a review of the literature on glyphosate. There have been several other reviews of the literature that come to the opposite conclusion - in particular one by the German authorities (BVL/BfR).SylviaStanley (talk) 15:05, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
  • For an an encyclopedia, it is best to include both the Entropy review of existing literature as well as any reviews that came to the opposite conclusion, providing they meet WP:RS. The Entropy review certainly does. I am unaware of the others. petrarchan47tc 05:52, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
  • Couple of issues here. First of all, if content based on this source belongs anywhere, it belongs in the glyphosate article. Glyphosate went off patent several years ago now and there are dozens of companies that make it. Monsanto is no longer even the majority manufacturer, worldwide. Secondly, the Entropy article is about potential health effects of glyphosate, so any content generated from it is subject to WP:MEDRS. The key idea of MEDRS is that health-related content needs to be based on very secure foundations, the best we have, that expresses the consensus of the medical community. In this case, the journal is not a biomedical journal or textbook. The authors are not part of the medical community. What they present in this article, is not the medical consensus, nor even primary biomedical experimental research, but instead they present novel hypotheses they have generated based on their review of primary and secondary biomedical literature. This is not a secondary source --a review -- in the standard way we think about them -- it is really a primary source, presenting what I would call "theoretical biomedical research" (there are actually a few journals now for theoretical biology). But you can see here that on all three levels -- journal, authors, and content, the source fails MEDRS. This is not a reliable source, presenting the consensus of the medical community, so no content based on the Entropy article has any place in Wikpedia. If anybody disagrees with that, we should take up on a message board for health content, like Wikipedia_talk:MED. Jytdog (talk) 23:18, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
To be clear, the secondary source I referenced was entitled Heavy use of herbicide Roundup linked to health dangers. Monsanto makes Roundup; this article covers this product, and to my knowledge there is no other "Round Up" article. So, this information belongs here as well as the more specific article, glyphosate. petrarchan47tc 00:05, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
Hi petrarchan -- Roundup is one formulation of glyphosate which does have an article. And if you read the Entropy article, it is about glyphosate, not about Roundup per se. There is a section in the glyphosate article for Roundup, and for other formulations, all of which the Entropy article would be relevant to, IF it were a reliable source under MEDRS, which it is not. Jytdog (talk) 02:18, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
Note - another user Petrarchan47 opened a discussion of the Entropy article on the MEDRS talk page, here Wikipedia_talk:Identifying_reliable_sources_(medicine)/Archive_7#Review_of_Monsanto.27s_Roundup_herbicide Jytdog (talk) 02:18, 30 April 2013 (UTC) (edit, specify "another user" Jytdog (talk) 02:39, 30 April 2013 (UTC))

Generally speaking such sources can be used at glyphosate and here. At Glyphosate of course because they are after about Glyphosate and but at Roundup as well because ist main ingredient is Glyhosate. There is no way mentioning or describing side effects or environmental problems of Roundup or its partially negative perception in the environmental community without talking about Glyphosate und using sources about Glyphosate. However it makes of course sense to have a more detailed description in the Glyphosate article and keeping rather short in the Round-up article while linking to the Glyphosate article fr more detailed information (as "main article"). However the main issue here is not the sources usage whether the source belongs to Glyphosate article or the Roundup Article or both, the main issue is, that the source though formally a reliable source raises various red flags.--Kmhkmh (talk) 04:59, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't accept the argument that criticism of glyphosate has no place in the Monsanto article. Monsanto's very successful business plan has been to sell both RoundUp pesticide and "RoundUp Ready" GMO crops, so that the farmer pays Monsanto twice. The strategy has worked very well, and glyphosate is widely used in the US and the world, along with glyphosate-resistant GMO crops which have been observed to retain traces of glyphosate applied during the growing season. The pincer strategy is fully Monsanto's—one cannot separate the two parts of it. Binksternet (talk) 00:11, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
It might be a good time for a RfC. petrarchan47tc 01:17, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
Hi Binkster. The Entropy article, the topic of which is health effects of glyphosate, has been found unacceptable in a discussion started by Petrarchan on the MEDRS discussion board - please see here Wikipedia_talk:Identifying_reliable_sources_(medicine)#Review_of_Monsanto.27s_Roundup_herbicide. Glyphosate went off patent in 2000 (13 years ago) and dozens of companies sell it now. Monsanto is still a major player in the glyphosate market but does not control it, by any means. Additionally the "roundup ready soybean" is going off patent next year and the other crops will follow soon after -- see here http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Pages/roundup-ready-patent-expiration.aspx Jytdog (talk) 01:26, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
Petrachan that is just forum shopping. The Entropy is about health effects - MEDRS governs it. It has already been decided that it is not acceptable under MEDRS. Please! Jytdog (talk) 01:26, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
Monsanto's large-scale production of glyphosate is so economical that other chemical companies cannot compete on price. Monsanto continues to sell glyphosate as an ingredient to other agro-chemical companies for use in their own branded herbicide products. Monsanto is the biggest producer of glyphosate in the world. Talking about it going off patent is just a matter of how much less money Monsanto will make because of the lost monopoly, but believe me, Monsanto is still making a lot of money from glyphosate. The chemical was 50% of Monsanto's income in 2000, 40% in 2002, and 10% currently.
A discussion of the very successful two-part business strategy is in order at this article: selling pesticides to the farmer and also selling him pesticide-resistant seeds. Sources exist which discuss how the market was greatly altered by Monsanto in just a few years. Binksternet (talk) 01:50, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
If you look at Monsanto#Seeds you will see there is a discussion of the interlocking business. btw, are you still discussing the Entropy article or shall we open a new section? Jytdog (talk) 03:00, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
Forum shopping? Actually, jytdog, what I am doing is following some advice, which was to check with MEDRS and then possibly a RfC. Keep your assessment of my motives to yourself, please. petrarchan47tc 08:06, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
Hi petrarchan. I am not questioning your motives. Entropy makes health claims. It falls under MEDRS. The authors of MEDRS took part in the discussion on the Talk page - namely Colin (who made it clear that there is no "public interest exemption" to MEDRS) and whatamidoing - as well as other people who write on health related articles all the time -- jmh and zad and doc james. SV told you that she was unsure of the topic and context. People who are, have weighed in. I don't see what more there is to discuss. Jytdog (talk) 11:36, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
MEDRS is a guideline, and thus doesn't 'govern' anything - it merely suggests. Making a strong claim of health effects based on a single study is problematic, but health effects of glyphosate have been discussed in a number of reliable sources, which could be acknowledged in the article - something like 'there is ongoing debate about effects of glyphosate on human health,' with followed by references to both sides of the argument. Dialectric (talk) 11:40, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
The Monsanto article currently says "While glyphosate has been approved by regulatory bodies worldwide and is less toxic than all the herbicides it replaced, concerns about its effects on humans and the environment persist." The Glyphosate article has a more extensive discusion of toxicity. I just double checked pubmed (search parameters "glyphosate toxicity") and the 3 most recent MEDRS-acceptable reviews on glyphosate toxicity find no tox concerns: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22683395 and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21798302 and really importantly, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22202229 I have been tempted for a while to make reference to those reviews in the sentence above (along the lines of "however reviews of the toxicity of glyphosate to humans have found no concerns" sourced by these 3 articles), but I have not done so in the interest of keeping the page stable, and have instead kept the statement about the "concerns" and sourced them to huffpost. I have also let stand, a bunch of toxicity content in the glyphosate article that is based on primary studies of glyphosate; this content should not be in Wikipedia as it violates WP:PSTS but again out of a desire for the page to be stable I have let it stand. But there are no MEDRS-acceptable secondary sources for broad statements that glyphosate is terribly dangerous when used as directed. Jytdog (talk) 12:21, 1 May 2013 (UTC) (note, left out important word no above, added it in italics. sorry about that. Jytdog (talk) 09:21, 18 May 2013 (UTC))
I didn't respond to your statement about MEDRS merely "suggesting". Mainly because I don't know how. MEDRS is an invaluable tool for creating health content in Wikipedia and it fills a need to adjudicate issues like this one in a way that leads to Wikipedia being a solid and reliable source of health information for the public. Without it all kinds of fringe content on health matters would sweep right in. I struggle with treating it like a "suggestion." Jytdog (talk) 12:50, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Reading some of the arguments, I think there is still some confusion. Nobody has (yet) argued not to mention any criticism (based on acceptable sources), the point here was merely that the Entropy article is not an acceptable source due to its red flags.

As far as the mentioned review study is concerned, Jytdog has point there. However imho that would fall under the category "mainstream and notable/significant dissenters", where the mentioning of the latter and hence of the criticism is still justified.

Another problem is that such review based conclusion are "notoriously difficult" because the articles/information used for the review is highly critical (and easily subject to manipulation). Not considering 1 or 2 publication (for instance due to being in particular database, not being in particular journal set, not being in English, not fitting (arbitrary criteria, ..) can lead to rather different review result. Also the exact language is such reviews is critical, For instance "no consistent problem found" does not mean " "no problems found", "toxicity or low found" does not mean "no serious longterm effects", "no problems with recommended dosage found" does not mean "no problems with actually in reality used dosages found" (which can considerably higher). In other words such reviews have to be taken with a grain of salt, in particular if just judging the abstract without seeing which material review considered and which not.--Kmhkmh (talk) 14:34, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

India - cotton

Binkster, quick question -- where in the documentary does Micha say that pre-GMO, most farmers in India used to save cottonseeds for replanting? I note that in the source you provided (http://filmmakermagazine.com/40204-bitter-seeds-an-interview-with-director-micha-x-peled/) Micha does not say that -- the writer of the article does, in the intro. There is a lot of misinformation out there about Monsanto in general, and about GM in India, that people just repeat (for example, that Mahyco-Monsanto illegally introduced seed, when in fact it was Navbharat Seeds that illegally imported the BT event from the US (source http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/ifpridp00808.pdf page 10; see also http://www.frontline.in/navigation/?type=static&page=flonnet&rdurl=fl1824/18240480.htm and Murugkar,M et al (2007) Competition and Monopoly in Indian Cotton Seed Market Economic and Political Weekly 42(37): 3781-3789 - see page 3782) and that Monsanto uses terminator technology in India, which it does not (see the same page of the Murugkar article which lists the approved genetic events in India) -- Monsanto doesn't use that technology anywhere in the world).

It is hard to find detailed, NPOV information on cottonseed production in India. Everything I have read about seed production in India shows that generally, pre-GMO, most seed was bought from government funded seed collectives that generated hybrid seeds, which farmers bought every year (hybrid varieties are created by labor-intensive traditional breeding techniques, not GM, (http://www.cicr.org.in/pdf/hybrid_seed_production.pdf) and the "hybrid vigor" is only good for one generation, so farmers buy them new each year). (Source: http://www.indianet.nl/cotssec2.html and the following page, http://www.indianet.nl/cotssec3.html -- this is the best source I have found, after hours of looking, for how cottonseed production actually occurs in India). The Murugkar source is great on this too -- see especially pages 3783-84.

Please don't take this that I am disputing that the tragedy of farmer suicides is not real or not a terrible thing. I am just working on content of the article around that issue. Jytdog (talk) 12:58, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

I could not tell you to the minute where in the documentary Bitter Seeds you would find the assertion that Indian cotton farmers for many decades were planting cotton seeds saved from their own previous year's crop. I can tell you that a portion of the film is spent following a farmer around as he tries and fails to find some pre-GMO seeds to purchase in order to rectify the recurring nightmare he has found himself in with Monsanto seeds and their associated crop failures from lack of rain and also unexpected pest incursions, and of course the financial trap of having to buy lots of pesticides and seeds every year. The narrator explains that the regional farmers for generations were able to get by with no money because they used last years' seed to plant this years' crop, and that the farming required nothing further but some manure and a lot of hard field work. Cotton had been a way for a man and his family to get ahead just by hard work, with no other costs except perhaps small rent for the land. The change to GMO seed was profound because now the poor farmer was not able to thrive on cotton farming; instead he made barely enough money to pay for seeds, and for not quite enough pesticide to keep his crop strong. Too many farmers went into debt to make these purchases, then were unable to pay the debts back after crop failures. We learn in the film that one farmer killed himself by drinking pesticide, and now his daughter wants to be a journalist and expose the regional plight. So, yes, the film definitely describes how the farmers traditionally used last years' cotton seeds, but Monsanto convinced them to change, and now they see no possibility of returning to the old ways. Binksternet (talk) 13:33, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for answering, binkster. This is what I got too -- the film tells the story of this farmer and his family -- which is a terrible story. What I am addressing is the statement in our article that makes a general statement: " They also note that Indian farmers had previously used seeds from their own harvests, but that genetically modified seeds are patented, requiring farmers to buy new seeds every year." I do not believe this statement is true, so broadly stated, and the source does not support such a general statement. Do you have any other source for this? If not, it should come out or be made more narrow. Jytdog (talk) 14:13, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
keeping seed is a conventional farming practice the world over, to dispute the source provided, is pedantic in the extreme. I see nothing contentious here. Semitransgenic talk. 15:03, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
I provided sources above that there was a robust market for hybrid cotton seeds well before Monsanto came onto the scene. I do not believe it is true that most cotton farmers in India saved seed in the 1990s prior to Monsanto's entry. Please provide a source, or the statement needs to come out or be narrowed. Hand waving is not enough. Jytdog (talk) 15:13, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
actually, having looked at this more closely, specifically in the context of cotton crops, seed saving is not a factor, in fact, farmers are entitled, by law, to save patented cotton seed in India. And yes, it appears that even when they used non GM hybrid seed, before BT-cotton arrived, they generally bought new seed each year; because of the difficulties involved in separating the cotton seed. There are other factors at play that have more to do with rising growing costs and crop failure. Semitransgenic talk. 16:34, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
thank you for this and for the change in the article. Jytdog (talk) 17:29, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
Maybe this is like the five blind men describing the elephant; India is large and the practices might be more complex than a single description can convey. Micha X. Peled filmed mostly in central India where it is semi-arid, and where farmers had been growing a hardy breed of cotton for more than a century. These farmers are likely not the ones that would have been interested in hybrids prior to the introduction of Monsanto's seeds. I think the observations of the film Bitter Seeds should apply only to the farmers of central India. Practices in other areas should be described separately. Binksternet (talk) 17:33, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
I agree, it's not so simple, but i can't find an explanation that details what's needed here, in terms of connecting suicides directly with an inability to save seed, we need to pin down the context in which this is used in the film, and then detail that, instead of applying it more generally. Semitransgenic talk. 18:40, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
I found this report today http://www.vnss-mission.gov.in/htmldocs/Farmers_suicide_TISS_report.pdf . It is about farmer suicides in Maharashtra, the state in which Bitter Seeds was filmed, and is dated March 15, 2005. In its own words, "The All India Biodynamic and Organic Farming Association wrote to the Mumbai High Court expressing concern over the suicides of farmers. The Hon. High Court treated the letter as a petition and admitted it to the bench. The Court impleaded the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) as a consultant to the case and on the request of the Institute granted eight weeks time to submit a report on the possible causes of the suicides." The link is the report of the Tata Institute. Conclusions are described narratively starting on page iii, and on page 85 is their summary list of 9 main causes. The narrative notes that farmer suicides began in 1995. (This is 7 years before Mahyco-Monsanto were approved to start selling.) It mentions farmers choosing to go after cash crops, and relying on "high yielding variety (HYV) seeds" - cotton seeds - as two of the causes, and it distinguishes the HYV seeds from Bt seeds in paragraph 3 on page 85. It does not mention saving seed. The Tata report matches the findings of the 2008 report linked to in the article http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/ifpridp00808.pdf Namely that the causes of farmer suicides are rooted in Indian government policy of abandoning their price support and extension programs (which we in the US benefit from, even today) and the unregulated nature of the loans in rural areas, as well as the high price of inputs (including HYV seeds and as of 2002 Bt seeds) ... paragraph 6 of the summary on 85 is really heart-breaking, describing the terrible trap of poverty and the bad choices that farmers have to pick from.... Jytdog (talk) 03:53, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
it also states that: "Input costs have also exhibited a sharp rise. Agriculture has become more expensive post-1995. This rise in the input cost is reflected in the electricity bills, rising costs of high yielding variety (HYV) seeds, fertilisers, energy (diesel), transportation, etc. The rising input cost is not matched by the crop yield and price obtained." This is the same problem faced by farmers that adopted Bt cotton, except perhaps worse, because of the premiums charged for Monsanto's technology, they spent more, yet still failed to see the yields that were promised. It's not simply a matter of blaming government policy, Monsanto plays a role in this by ignoring the reality of what's happening on the ground with poor farmers while continuing to lobby the Indian government (both nationally and at state level) for greater uptake of its products, it's profit before people, plain and simple. Semitransgenic talk. 10:00, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Farmer suicides started in 1995. Monsanto entered the market in 2002. There were already higher priced seeds (the "high value varieties") as of 1995. I am not denying that the higher price of Bt seeds became part of the problem. They did. I am saying that the terrible problems were well established - as were the suicides - 7 years before Monsanto's products came on the scene. And there is a much bigger picture - an "elephant" indeed - here. In 1991 India the government made dramatic changes to the economy -- see Economic liberalisation in India - by turning away from many socialist policies and toward free market ones. This led to a dramatic change for the worse for many poor farmers. As a result of the 1991 reforms, support (both financial and the advice that the extension offices gave) greatly diminished or vanished, and the price of many inputs went up and the role of private seed companies starting growing -- indigenous Indian companies started introducing the HYV seeds mentioned above and they were more expensive indeed. The government made further changes when it entered into the world trade system via the TRIPS Agreement in 1994. It was only after that, that the multinationals like Monsanto started working in India, and it took Monsanto til 2002 to get its first products approved. I know there is a lot of hatred of Monsanto, and they are an easy target, but the problem of farmer suicides is much deeper than Monsanto. If you really care about the farmers who are suffering you would do well to fully understand the problems that are causing the suffering. The questions of how to help entire countries develop is a really hard one. India has done a bunch of work that has led to it being one of the so-called BRIC countries - once poor countries that are dramatically improving -- and many poor people in those countries have been able to improve their lot. But rural poverty remains a very difficult problem to solve and the farmer suicides in India are the terrible evidence of that. Nobody wants those problems nor their results, but it is not easy to fix. It is far from "plain and simple." Jytdog (talk) 10:57, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

"If you really care about the farmers who are suffering you would do well to fully understand the problems that are causing the suffering" please don't be so patronising, how much time have you actually spent on the ground in India may I ask? I'm not sure what it is that motivates your defence of Monsanto, as with every multinational corporation, they exist with the aim of maximising shareholder profit, they are not a philanthropic organisation and the aggressive exploitation of emerging markets, using whatever means, is a standard operational strategy. In India, corruption is a problem, cronyism, nepotism, bribery etc. are all commonplace. That you are so quick to ignore that interested parties, such as Monsanto, take advantage of all this in pushing their own profit motivated agenda, is a little naive if you ask me. Semitransgenic talk. 12:11, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
I am sorry that you feel that I am being patronizing. I am not "defending Monsanto." I agree that Monsanto is a MNC and exist to make money for their shareholders (of course they are) Please let me explain. If you look at my user page, you will see that I don't like bullshit. I don't care if it comes from the right (e.g. climate change deniers) or the left (e.g. anti GM activists who are the climate change deniers of the left.} Bullshit has no concern for truth -- it is driven by ideology and ignores inconvenient facts. Reality is messy. I came to this article a year ago with no knowledge of Monsanto and no stance on it (I walked by a protest where a guy had a sign that said "Monsanto kills" and I thought, "wow, what's up with that?" so I started reading about Monsanto. I hit this article first thing when I started doing that research, and the article at that time reeked of bullshit. So I started doing research like a scholar would - like we are supposed to do in Wikipedia - finding NPOV sources and reading them and then coming back and editing the article. It was surprising to me find the same statements about Monsanto repeated over and over in anti-Monsanto sources (which you come across a lot of, as you search for information on the web). And repeated in this article. And it was more surprising to me to find that many of those statements were untrue or half-true. As I have worked on the article I have been very careful to leave negative things about Monsanto in the article, and I expanded some of them and added some of them. I replaced POV sources with NPOV sources. And I got rid of the untruths and completed the half-truths, based on NPOV sources. I left this section in place - Monsanto and the other multinationals' activities in India are part of the problem. Part of it. Not the most important part, but part. I have not been to India but I have read a ton about it because I was very troubled when I learned about the farmer suicides {which I think was probably the concern behind the "Monsanto kills" sign}. It has taken a lot of work to find information about this topic - NPOV, reliable information. I have been surprised that so many of the anti-Monsanto sites discussing this, do so with no discussion of or concern about the reality of recent Indian history, which I touched on briefly above. To me, it is tragedy that people who care so much about these poor farmers have concentrated their energy on a peripheral issue. It is like patching a tiny hole in a boat's hull when there is a huge gash just behind you and the boat is sinking. (look at the Tata Institute's recommendations about what to do about the farmer suicides to see what this indigenous organization that is a human rights leader in India recommends as action items.) People are so busy, and there are so few people who care - it is sad to me, that their time and energy are not directed to the main issues - which are complicated and messy, and hard to solve. Rural poverty in the developing world is a bitch. (This is one of Harry Frankfurt's main points in his little books "On Bullshit" and "On Truth" - namely, if we want to be effective in the world and make real change, we need to see the world clearly, as it is, in all its messiness. These books deeply influenced me.) Bringing the anti-Monsanto stance to this issue is also somewhat colonialist - the focus on Monsanto ignores choices that India itself made in 1991 well before Monsanto came on the scene. And it ignores the fact that some poor Indian farmers have chosen for a long time now, to grow cotton -a cash crop - instead of crops they can eat, because they want to make money -- they want to better themselves. They take the risk which is a huge one, and since 1991 they have lacked government support that even wealthy American farmers get from their government. But they choose this, nonetheless. In any case, closing this out, this article should provide the truth about Monsanto. The good and the bad, and there are plenty of both. Based on reliable, NPOV sources. I am not defending Monsanto - if I am defending anything, it is Wikipedia and the people who come to it looking for good information - for the truth about the world, as best as we can provide it. People like me, a year ago. Jytdog (talk) 13:06, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
While I can agree with most you've said regarding farmer suicide and problem of this article, I nevertheless would advise you to stay away from lines like "climate change deniers of the left", if you really to avoid bullshit that. There is no are no doubt irrational or anti science attitudes exist among the left is well, which in fact have quite a tradition (see Lysenkoism for instance. However the thing Kloor apparently tries to pull here does fall at least partially under the "bullshit" category. That brush he applies there is way to broad and there are plenty of perfectly rational concerns some/many anti gmo activist have, which have nothing to do with ideology at all. One of the biggest problems is not GMO as such, but how it is pursued and handled by corporations in the free market and who is primarily benefiting from it. To a degree to the nuclear industry in particular and many energy companies in general. The socialize risk while privatizing profit.--Kmhkmh (talk) 13:47, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
You are right I should have said "as well as some, even many, anti-GM activists who are the climate-change deniers of the left". There are many. But not all, it is true. I do like the title of the Slate article and its content (faulted as it may be) because it is one of the few ways in actual conversations that I have gotten anti-GMO folks to stop and think a minute - they know what it is like to stand on the science on the climate issue and talk to a denier - how frustrating that is -- and I have been able to have more rational conversations because of that. But we are waaaaaaaaaay off the topic of Monsanto and cotton in India. Jytdog (talk) 14:49, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
"the focus on Monsanto ignores choices that India itself made in 1991 well before Monsanto came on the scene." Choices that "India" made? who are you talking about here? India's corrupt political elite? or the actual citizenry of the nation? There is no doubt that the government reneges on its responsibilities, but the reality is Monsanto, and others, have used the corrupt nature of Indian politics to their advantage in their quest for profits. In Europe, for example, corporations have to play a different game, because of regulatory provisions and a legal system that appears to function as it should, the same cannot be said of India, hence the kind of carte blanche business practices we see corporations engaging in there, they can buy influence, and get quick results. If Monsanto actually took corporate social responsibility in India seriously it might be possible to assess this issue differently. Semitransgenic talk. 16:31, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
Hi Semitransgenic. We are getting way off topic here...and I sorry for leading the way off topic, in response to your question. Let's get back to the India cotton section. What I was trying to establish was that two separate NPOV reports, one by Tata and the other by a european organization, have made it clear that the suicide problem started in 1995 well before the MNCs entered India, and the primary cause is the "liberalisation" of the Indian economy under Indian law. The entry of the MNCs added to the already-existing problem. I realize that Vandana Shiva and others emphasize Monsanto's role (although I give Shiva credit for blaming the Indian government as well) but Shiva is a very POV, highly charged source. In the article prior to your edits and binksternet's, Shiva's perspective was represented (this is only reasonable) but it has been given too much weight now, drowning out the full story as presented in NPOV sources. I would like to work with you to get this back into reasonable balance. Monsanto has a role, for sure (the section has always been here) but the current section does not accurately describe what happened and what has happened. Can we do that? Jytdog (talk) 17:48, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
i see no problem with the section as it currently stands. Semitransgenic talk. 20:00, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

quick note I neglected in my edit note to say that I added the tata source and content based on it, to this section, while I reorganized it. sorry for not including that. Jytdog (talk) 13:46, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

you've added another primary source, and failed to provide a secondary source that refers to this research paper (and that highlights the points you have chosen to include), this is your summary of the paper. Semitransgenic talk. 14:37, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
thanks, fixed it. the tata report is important is it the only one i can see that was court-ordered and conducted by a NPOV indigenous nonprofit.Jytdog (talk) 18:07, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Edits May 3

Hi Semitransgenic. In reverting my edits, you said "restructuring unnecessary, the wording and ordering was fine." Could you please specify your objections? My reasons for each edit are given in the edit summaries. Thank you. Arc de Ciel (talk) 04:29, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for adding the new source and working to improve this selection, Arc. I just reverted semi's reversion. We need to edit not just revert when there are helpful edits like this. Jytdog (talk) 12:20, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
Jytdog you state "restructuring was useful to deal with weight," what? weighting in favour of a primary source? when multiple secondary sources are provided on other aspects of the matter? generally it's better to use a secondary source that refers to a paper/report etc. rather than using the primary source as the cite. Semitransgenic talk. 19:57, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
Responding to both your comments -- as I wrote above, Shiva is a very POV source and what she says contains things that are untrue. She is a loud voice so it is reasonable to provide her perspective, which was already done, pre-expansion. The Bitter Seeds documentary is OK to include too, but it too presents a narrow slice of the picture. There are two reports - one commissioned by the Supreme Court of India, that should be the main sources for the section, as they aim to be comprehensive and they are NPOV. Jytdog (talk) 20:31, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) By "primary source," do you mean the one that I added? I wanted to replace a vague statement with a specific one that doesn't allow for subjective interpretation. To me it looks to be secondary - they are not the ones that collected the data, and you can see the list of references at the end. Bt_cotton#Genetic_modification uses an estimate from the same organization, which is a non-profit based at Cornell University. But I'm not wedded to this particular source, and if you'd like to add a different/better estimate for the amount of Bt cotton grown in India, I encourage you. :-) Also, assuming I'm correct in which edit you were referring to, did you have objections to my other edits? Arc de Ciel (talk) 21:11, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
@Arc de Ciel, there is nothing more to this than you preferring a particular arrangement of text because you believe there was some inherent bias in the previous version. Semitransgenic talk. 10:32, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
I gave my reason in the edit summary - higher-quality sources should be given more prominence. So yes, there was (in my opinion, of course) a WP:WEIGHT issue, which is a type of bias. :-) I think the current version is good in this respect, and that your edits were improvements - especially, thanks for finding the source! I made a few minor changes (for example, we should discuss the report rather than its authors because the argument is made in the report; this is what the Nature Biotech piece says as well) - we can discuss any of that if you think it necessary. Arc de Ciel (talk) 07:18, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
@jytdog: "Shiva is a very POV source," this is your opinion, yet we have a range of RS sources that reference her views, whether you like it or not, she is widely recognised for her work. That you want to downplay her significance is disingenuous when it's clear she's a notable (Indian) commentator. Semitransgenic talk. 10:32, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
HI semi. On your first point -- you have a preference, others have preferences -- this is why we try to work things out on Talk, rather than edit warring. With respect to Shiva, I did agree that she is an important voice. But the sources presented for her unfortunately don't present her in a NPOV but rather repeat and amplify the untrue things she says. Do you think WIkipedia should use sources that state things as facts that are blatantly not true? This seems to be a problem to me. For that reason, and because she is so POV there should not be so much weight given to her, but rather to the NPOV sources. It is a question of weight. Thanks for your edits today I think they were helpful! Jytdog (talk) 13:35, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
(e/c) Having RS's reference someone's views does not mean that the person is neutral or without an agenda. For example, the views of left-wing documentary maker Michael Moore or right-wing commentator Rush Limbaugh are well-covered by reliable sources but nobody would say they are neutral. So what we need to do is see what independent reliable sources say about Shiva:
  • Time says "Shiva has made it her mission to fight for social justice in many arenas" and describes her as a "teacher, an ecologist, an activist, a feminist and an organic farmer"
  • ABC News Australia says "Dr Shiva has been described as an eco-feminist and anti-globalisation campaigner and author.", "The Sydney Peace Foundation's Director Professor Stuart Rees says she is one of the most significant environmental campaigners in the world... 'She was the leader of the anti-globalisation movement...' he said."
  • Nature describes her as "an environmental and feminist activist".
  • Nita Bhalla writing for the Reuters India news blog describes her as a "prominent environmental activist"
  • The Business Standard ran a short story stating that Shiva is the head of a new NGO that "launched a campaign against government's plan to develop genetically modified bananas" in India
So, independent reliable sources do not depict Shiva as a neutral, independent, non-partisan news source, but rather as an agenda-driven activist. I do not mean this in a negative way, that her causes aren't noble or worthy, or that assertions of fact attributed to Shiva are in question, but it is important that when we use Shiva as a secondary source for the synthesis of primary data, we do so in compliance with WP:RS#Biased_or_opinionated_sources. Zad68 13:37, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
This a bit problematic, because you can quickly read a bias into anything that way. Ultimately we should focus less on the a potential biases a person might have, but more on the reliability/reputation of her claims. Michael Moore for instance is known to cut corner and to intentionally polemicize and Limbaugh is fairly well known for talking outright nonsense. What we need for proper assessment os how other reliable/reputable sources assess her claims rather whether they consider her an activist.--Kmhkmh (talk) 14:22, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
I'm not disagreeing with what you're saying, but you're addressing a different question, really. There are two things to consider here when using Shiva as a source: 1) Are the assertions of fact Shiva makes reliable? 2) Is the selection and synthesis of the facts she chooses to use and asserts neutral or opinionated? You're addressing question 1), I'm talking about question 2). It is possible that every assertion of fact Shiva makes is 100% independently verifiable but that the overall synthesis Shiva makes with those facts is opinionated.

Let's step back for a minute, agree or disagree:

Shiva is not an impartial news reporter but rather is working toward achieving political, environmental and human rights goals.

Above are sources that support this statement; if you disagree, what sources can be provided that refute it or support the contrary? Zad68 14:37, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

I think this is going a little awry... I don't think anybody would dispute that Shiva is an activist. I think she is an important voice and her perspective should be represented. I hope nobody thinks we should delete all reference to her -- I would not support that. The issue I raised is that after recent initial edits by binkster and semitransgenic, it seemed to me there was too much weight given to her perspective. Additionally, the secondary sources used to source content describing her perspective, were - in my opinion - not NPOV, but rather took her POV and even repeated some of the untrue things that she often says. (I believe she is very well intentioned and that she works very hard for what she believes to be good... it bums me out that she undercuts her own cause by stating things that are false, to back her arguments that farmers should grow a variety of foods using organic techniques and that big MNCs should stay out of the food chain.) Arc's edits moved toward better weight distribution of content based on NPOV sources, and semitransgenic's edits today moved yet closer to better weight distribution of content based on NPOV sources. I think we are pretty close! Jytdog (talk) 15:15, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

OK, I was writing in response to Semi's "Shiva is a very POV source," this is your opinion - if we're all in agreement that the guideline WP:RS#Biased_or_opinionated_sources needs to be kept in mind when using Shiva as a source, then it's no problem. I agree that there were WP:WEIGHT problems before with the use of Shiva. I'm not 100% sure they're solved now in this general overview article of Monsanto, and there's probably a case of pushing some of this detail down into a sub-article like Genetically modified food controversies, but I'm not really familiar enough with the breadth of sourcing available on Monsanto to act.

In general I think the article has too much criticism and controversy in it at a level of detail too great to be in compliance with WP:DUEWEIGHT - by a quick calculation over half the article text is devoted to legal action, controversies, investigations, false advertising and political contributions, down to very low level of detail. I have a hard time believing that a systematic review of all the available reliable sourcing of Monsanto would support that level of weight and detail on those events as compared to the amount of detail offered of the other events of this 110+-year-old company. But, again, someone with a better understanding of all the available sourcing would have to pursue this. Zad68 15:38, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

I completely hear you, zad, that the article gives a lot of weight to criticism of Monsanto. When I started working on this article a year ago, there was even more, and unfortunately there were a lot of untrue things stated, and POV sources used to support them. I made a conscious decision when I went to work on this article, to leave the issues that anti-Monsanto, anti-GMO advocates bring up, but to discuss them factually, in a NPOV way, and using NPOV sources. Keeping the critical voices of course, but always giving the most weight to NPOV sources that provide reliable information. In this way, people who are critical of Monsanto and come here expecting to find issues discussed, find such discussion - but accurate and NPOV discussion, and people who wonder (as I did, a year ago), why people hate Monsanto so vehemently, see the range of issues that are involved. And people who just want to learn about Monsanto find accurate information (albeit it, with a lot of discussion of controversy). This strategy has allowed the article to become closer to wikipedia ideals of NPOV while keeping it relatively stable... maybe that is a bad strategy but that is how we got here, at least from my perspective. There were a lot of other people involved and I don't mean to claim any kind of ownership of this article (one cannot!) but I am the leading contributor by edit count by now so i just wanted to give my perspective. Jytdog (talk) 16:08, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
Jyt, thanks for the background, I had not investigated the article's history or editor base. Zad68 18:35, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
WP:RS#Biased_or_opinionated_sources should equally apply to any information emanating from a source that is in any way associated with Monsanto; that includes individuals conducting research using contributions from Monsanto, or individuals, such as politicians, or industry spokespersons, that are in receipt of financial support from Monsanto.
@Zad68 if a company has gained notoriety because of the controversy that surrounds its business activities, that's not our problem, we do not fine tune articles in such a fashion that we ignore negative material because we don't want to "unbalance" an article. Shit sticks, let's not pretend otherwise. Semitransgenic talk. 17:41, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
Regarding sourcing, I agree. I'd go further and advocate that we should not be using any primary research results at all, funded by Monsanto or not. The article should of course be based on secondary sources. In particular we should prefer independent secondary sources without an "axe to grind" either way, but sometimes such sources may be used - Would we all agree that both Shiva and, let's say, the Hudson Institute which has been funded by Monsanto, are such partisan sources and if used should be used carefully with attribution per WP:RS#Biased_or_opinionated_sources? Let's be clear that as the article currently stands, there isn't a problem along this line regarding Shiva: in all the cases where she is used, she's described as a "critic" or the information is attributed to her by name. (The Hudson Institute is not used in the article at this time.)

Regarding criticism, please be careful to meet the point I'm actually making: I'm not saying that all criticism needs to be removed or that the article must "ignore negative material". What I am saying is that as the article currently stands, it appears undue weight is being given to criticism. For the article to comply with WP:DUEWEIGHT, it must convey "all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources". More than half the article is criticism of Monsanto, and for the article to be in line with policy, more than half the available reliable sourcing covering Monsanto would have to be criticism. I don't think that's the case. Zad68 18:35, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

it's not a simple matter of "undue weight being given to criticism". Controversial incidents are addressed, because they are, controversial, many are without precedent, I don't think there is anything undue about this. It also reflects that the company has garnered undue attention in meatspace because of its controversial business practices, and particularly since becoming a global player in the GMO industry. Semitransgenic talk. 23:46, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
Meatspace criticism of Monsanto simply is what it is, and it isn't for Wikipedia to pass judgment on it, only to report on it. But let's stick to Wikipedia's definition of how to make sure an article doesn't suffer from an WP:UNDUE problem: it should cover "all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable source". Let's take the topic you mentioned: criticism Monsanto has earned due to controversial business practices. How can we make sure the amount of weight this article gives to criticism of controversial business practices doesn't overwhelm, beyond what is due, the other encyclopedic topics this article needs to cover? What I am asking for here is your description of a methodology we can use to make sure this (or really any) article complies with WP:DUE. Zad68 02:45, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

semi, would you please, please be civil? This doesn't have to be war... been meaning to ask you that for awhile. Jytdog (talk) 01:39, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I'm a big believer that being civil is essential for allowing even the possibility of constructive discussion, especially at contentious articles, but I'm not seeing too much here to make me upset, personally. Zad68 02:45, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
"Meatspace criticism of Monsanto simply is what it is, and it isn't for Wikipedia to pass judgment on it," again, criticism, is not the appropriate definition in this instance. No judgements are being made. That the company has generated so much bad press is not our doing, and we are certainly not using verifiable secondary sources in a manner that gives the appearance of "passing judgement." I personally don't agree with your view with respect to this article suffering from WP:UNDUE. Semitransgenic talk. 18:37, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
Sorry to show my ignorance here, but what do you all mean by "meatspace"? It sounds kind of like what real people do in the real world. If so I don't understand how you are measuring that. There are scads of articles critical of Monsanto online of course but is that "meatspace"? Sorry that I don't understand. Jytdog (talk) 18:50, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
in this context, what's meant is that this internet based representation of Monsanto (in this article, on Wikipedia) would not exist in its current form were it not for the abundance of mainstream reporting that has been done on Monsanto and its business practices. This is a multinational corporation, operating across multiple territories, that engages in business practices that have caused some controversy, therefore, I do not find it in the least bit unusual that this article exists in its current form. Semitransgenic talk. 19:35, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

{od} Thanks for explaining that, and so kindly. And I can confirm that I have been able to find NPOV sources for all the issues that are discussed in the article. That being said, the whole "weight" thing is pretty tricky to me. I think weight in an article is ultimately driven by the consensus of the editors who work on it, and editors are driven by what they care about; one finds the sources one looks for. I loved zad's question to you, semi. Do you have any "methodology we can use to make sure this (or really any) article complies with WP:DUE"? I don't (just the sense that it is driven by what editors care about). Zad, do you? Jytdog (talk) 20:27, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

simply put, the point regarding "undue weight" is being overstated. Let's look at it this way, if we have a subject, whatever it might be, and of the literature written on the topic (all conforming with our guidelines on reliable sourcing) 70% of it happens to be about various controversies, legal matters, and political issues that if taken together demonstrate that the subject matter is seen to be "controversial," we don't then turn around and whittle this down so it balances out with the 30% of material that deals with aspects of the subject that are less "controversial," that's simply not the purpose of the guideline on undue weight. Additionally, @jytdog, any source that conforms with WP:RS is admissible, much of the emphasis you place on NPOV here reflects a personal bias, it's about what you consider NPOV, instead of it being a matter of whether or not a particular source contravenes guidelines. Semitransgenic talk. 11:28, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
Well we can't tell if the WP:UNDUE concern is being overstated or not until we come up with a method to determine how much weight is due, executing that method to find a result, and then comparing that result with what's currently in the article.

For the method, I like the method underlying your thought here: if we have a subject, whatever it might be, and of the literature written on the topic (all conforming with our guidelines on reliable sourcing) 70% of it happens to be about various controversies, legal matters, and political issues that if taken together demonstrate that the subject matter is seen to be "controversial," we don't then turn around and whittle this down so it balances out with the 30% of material that deals with aspects of the subject that are less "controversial," that's simply not the purpose of the guideline on undue weight. The underlying thought is that we should survey all the available reliable sourcing on Monsanto and see what proportion of it is criticism. We then curate the article content to be in proportion to the prominence given, per WP:UNDUE. Another method would be to review what other high-quality tertiary sources (such as Wikipedia is trying to be) and see what proportions they give, and model our content distribution after that. So, surveying the available reliable sources, what prominence is given to criticism vs. other topics?

I'm not stating that this is or is not the motivation of any editor here, but the interests of someone who wants to see Monsanto exposed as an evil corporate tyrant are actually better served by adhering to WP:DUEWEIGHT. A carefully curated list of Monsanto's most significant wrongdoings, unimpeachably sourced and dispassionately presented, will be much more effective than an indiscriminate list of every criticism ever printed in a newspaper. That sort of list will have the effect of diluting the importance of the truly noteworthy criticisms by lining them up against trivial ones and making them appear of equal weight to a reader. We also don't want the article to look like an activist page, for the same reason - persuasive rhetoric comes across as such and is likely to make the reader ignore the whole article with the thought "Activists must have written this." Zad68 13:27, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

@Zad68 I don't agree with the suggestion that we should use other tertiary sources as a guide, wikipedia exists independently of such entities, and as editors here, we create unique content using sources that adhere to WP:RS. We don't pick and chose sources because we have personal issues with what they offer, that leads to filtering according to individual biases. I also beg to differ on the matter of this article looking like an "activist page," it would read very differently if that were the case. Semitransgenic talk. 14:30, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
Regarding using other tertiary sources as a guide, that's OK, I don't think there would be one on the subject of this article anyway. It's not really that unusual to look at other tertiary sources to see how they handled something, or if you're doing a GA review, for example, to make sure our article isn't missing something. Anyway, I'm fine with not looking to one, and sticking to assessing secondary sources.

Regarding We don't pick and chose sources because we have personal issues with what they offer - nobody's saying this, or at least I am not. But we do have to pick and choose sources based on their quality and authority, and we do curate the sources we include based on Wikipedia's content policies like WP:WEIGHT. That is what I'm talking about.

Question to you - Agree or disagree, "Every item talking about Monsanto and published in a reliable newspaper may be included in this article, no matter how out-of-date, trivial or inconsequential." For example, apparently Monsanto used to make AstroTurf; we could use this St. Joseph Gazette article from 1971 to source new article content, "In 1971, Monsanto employee Gene Troy punched a piece of the company's AstroTurf product to demonstrate its resiliency." Would you agree to adding that content to the article? If not, why not? Zad68 03:07, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

not a simple agree or disagree situation, it's entirely dependent on context and existing content. If we actually had a section dedicated to Astroturf, and within that we had a sub-section entitled "Astroturf injury controversy" (which is actually feasible), sure, we could think about it, especially if there was a relevant issue concerning resiliency that was worth highlighting.
you selected this paper article and suggest it is an isolated mention, but, there have been questions raised, multiple times, across multiple sources, over a number of years, about whether or not Astrotruf is associated with an increase in sports injuries, as such, there could be valid grounds for including "Astroturf injury controversy" in the article. Semitransgenic talk. 09:23, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
I agree with your thinking behind this response. I note that you did not support the addition of the specific content proposed ("In 1971, Monsanto employee Gene Troy punched a piece of the company's AstroTurf product to demonstrate its resiliency.") but rather discussed a more noteworthy, higher-level topic that this one news item might be a tiny piece of. So, here is a case of Monsanto-related content in a WP:RS that you seem to agree would be undue for inclusion. The encyclopedic theme isn't Gene Troy punching a piece of AstroTurf, the theme is the safety of one of Monsanto's former products, and I think you'd agree that one newspaper item would not be useful in developing the content for that larger theme.

So this is my whole point - we need to make sure the themes we are developing in this article are all generally at the same level of detail. We could write one paragraph about Monsanto's income stream over the past 110 years, and we could write a blow-by-blow account of every difficulty every Monsanto seed customer has had in the past 20 years. But if we did that, the content would be unbalanced, because just by simple measure of column-inches we'd be unduly weighting one over the other.

Can you agree that ideally the article should be delving into the details of each topic at approximately the same level, in line with the prominence given to each topic in reliable sources? Zad68 20:14, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

  • "I note that you did not support the addition of the specific content proposed ("In 1971, Monsanto employee Gene Troy punched a piece of the company's AstroTurf product to demonstrate its resiliency.") but rather discussed a more noteworthy, higher-level topic that this one news item might be a tiny piece of. So, here is a case of Monsanto-related content in a WP:RS that you seem to agree would be undue for inclusion."
Not true, in terms of "not supporting" and "agreeing" I said nothing of the sort. I stated the inclusion of this material would be entirely dependent upon context and prior content. Trying to frame this as something that can be solved using simple binary responses is not helpful.
  • "The encyclopedic theme isn't Gene Troy punching a piece of AstroTurf, the theme is the safety of one of Monsanto's former products, and I think you'd agree that one newspaper item would not be useful in developing the content for that larger theme."
No I don't agree, this statement is confused and seems to ignore the issue I raised regarding available sources. As I mentioned, there are multiple available reliable sources on this AstroTurf issue, enough to actually write a subsection. If we set about writing this sub-section, who knows, we might actually be able to use this snippet.

  • "So this is my whole point - we need to make sure the themes we are developing in this article are all generally at the same level of detail."

But your point is invalid, because there are enough sources available to actually write the AstroTurf subsection, and within that, we might indeed find a use for some dude punching a piece of AstroTurf, but we don't know because we haven't created the content.
  • "Can you agree that ideally the article should be delving into the details of each topic at approximately the same level, in line with the prominence given to each topic in reliable sources?"
If there are enough available reliable sources to flesh out content on subject matter that is relevant to the topic Monsanto, it should be included, that is how I see it. The level of detail depends on the sources we have to work with but in general we develop unique content using all available reliable sources.
Perhaps what you could do, if you are concerned about this article, is use a sandbox to write a version that you think is acceptable. Rather than talk around the issue you have here, it's probably better to actually address specific content you find objectionable Semitransgenic talk. 11:35, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
I still think we're talking past each other, but your suggestion to develop proposed content changes is a good strategy, I'll consider pursuing it. Zad68 14:16, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
perhaps, I just don't agree that whittling away at sourced content is a solution, especially when it's clear other less "controversial" aspects of the article could be fleshed out; and possibly as a means of addressing the weighting issues you see here. Semitransgenic talk. 10:42, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Poor grammar and missing citation for nuclear weapons claim

This sentence is incoherent after "the Manhattan Project". It also lacks a citation. Since I'm not sure what the phrase "after 1947, the Atomic Energy Commission." is supposed to refer to, I'm not going to try to fix it.

Also in the 1940s, Monsanto operated the Dayton Project, and later Mound Laboratories in Miamisburg, Ohio, for the Manhattan Project, the development of the first nuclear weapons and, after 1947, the Atomic Energy Commission.

--Wurdeh (talk) 14:22, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

thank you for asking this question. Addressed it. Interesting material! Jytdog (talk) 22:19, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Request for watchers at Syngenta

A potential COI edit by User:SyngentaUK was allowed to stand in the article for several weeks. The article could use some editing attention as well. Arc de Ciel (talk) 00:51, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Oh dear my last experience at COI page did not go well but I will give this a shot! It is on my watchlist. Jytdog (talk) 00:59, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
Thanks! Hopefully this time will be better. :-) The user only made the one edit so it's possible they won't be back. Arc de Ciel (talk) 01:29, 27 May 2013 (UTC)


Monsanto Modified Wheat Not Approved by USDA Found in Field

According to Bloomberg petrarchan47tc 01:17, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! Added to article under legal actions, as defendant. sorry for initial wrong attribution in edit notes. Jytdog (talk) 02:30, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

What the source says:

Genetically modified wheat created by Monsanto Co. (MON) that wasn’t approved for use turned up on an 80-acre farm in Oregon last month, threatening the outlook for U.S. exports of the grain that are the world’s largest.
A farmer attempting to kill wheat with Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide found several plants survived the weedkiller, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said today in a statement. Scientists found the wheat was a strain field-tested from 1998 to 2005 and deemed safe before St. Louis-based Monsanto, the world’s largest seedmaker, pulled Roundup Ready wheat from the regulatory approval process on concern that importers would avoid the crop.

What you said:

In May 2013, glyphosate-resistant wheat was discovered in a farm in Oregon. The wheat was a "strain field-tested from 1998 to 2005 and deemed safe before St. Louis-based Monsanto, the world’s largest seedmaker, pulled Roundup Ready wheat from the regulatory approval process on concern that importers would avoid the crop."

You've reworded it in a way unrecognizable to the average reader. Seriously, we use the term GMO, which is why Bloomberg used it. We can't get too WP:TECHNICAL when trying to convey (rather than hide) information.

This is also hidden in a nondescript, long paragraph about legal matters. It seems a pivotal event, as this has not happened before. I like Bloomberg's version better, it's straightforward and written with clarity in mind. Your version feels more like a refutation and, frankly, a bit of a whitewash. petrarchan47tc 06:48, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Thank you again for bringing the reference. I put this in the legal section because ultimately that is what this is could be - a violation of the Plant Protection Act. (like the paragraph right above, the old Monsanto's dumping of PCBs was a violation of the UK's version of EPA laws. At this point we don't know how the GM wheat got there and Monsanto may have no penalties - it is not clear yet. If you have a different idea about where this would fit in the article I would be happy to hear it. Good call that I didn't say it was not approved for release -- I added that; it wasn't intentional I just did the edit quickly. I added the term "GMO" which I think is superfluous but I would like to accomodate you. Also added the bit about threatening US wheat exports. From my perspective this is fresh news and we don't know much yet. This may turn out to be the start of something huge; it may turn out to be a blip. I am sure we will both stay tuned and will bring more sources and information as it emerges. Jytdog (talk) 12:30, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
I think a separate section about this new phenomenon (non-approved GMOs found) should be considered by editors. There are legal ramifications, sure, but from the prospective of the Wiki reader, that's probably not their primary interest regarding this story. (I would imagine it is Monsanto's, but that's not our concern). As for whether it has legs, Japan has already stopped importing wheat from the US because of this incident. Japan is the second biggest importer of US wheat. Here is MSNBC's coverage of the issue, for anyone interested. petrarchan47tc 21:23, 30 May 2013 (UTC)\
This is an article about Monsanto. The relevance of this event for Monsanto will be legal. There is a separate article in wikipedia that discusses wider ramifications of GM organisms that 'escape' - see here: Genetically_modified_food_controversies#Escape_of_GM_crops Jytdog (talk) 21:47, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
Follow up note - Japan has cancelled some orders, according to the article you provided, and it may not last long, according to same source. This may turn out to be a huge deal; it may be a blip. Wikipedia is not a newspaper and definitely not a tabloid that blows up preliminary information into big facts (e.g. '"cancelled some orders" somehow becomes "stopped importing wheat"); Wikipedia is an encylopedia. We don't have to rush to judgement here; daily "gotcha" is not the point. Nobody knows yet if this is a big deal or not. Jytdog (talk) 21:58, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
No, we don't know how big of a deal it will turn out to be, but we can keep the article updated according to what we know now. The news is specific to Monsanto, I have checked. It was Monsanto's seeds, and from Monsanto test crops, not about "wider ramifications of GM organisms" as this implies other companies were involved. Not the case. Does this make sense to you? petrarchan47tc 08:51, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Just because a news story mentions Monsanto doesn't mean we should put it in an encyclopedia. Also, wikipedia is not a crystal ball, we don't stick content in an article in case it becomes a big deal. That would be highly speculative IRWolfie- (talk) 12:54, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

This is hardly a case of a news story mentioning Monsanto. The fact that GM wheat somehow mysteriously turned up in a farmer's field is a big deal. If it wasn't you can be sure that the New York Times would not write an article on it. Interestingly, this story from 2010 [1] says that they were going to start testing GM wheat while the other current articles seem to say that it was tested in the past and dropped.
As for any "it's too current!" arguments, that is one of the many advantages of our on-line encyclopedia--we can stay current--and depending on developments we can adjust our coverage accordingly. Gandydancer (talk) 15:17, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
It is important, that is why I added content to the article as soon as petrarchan brought it up. I also added it to the related section in the GM food controversies article. We have no debate there, so I am unsure what your point is. As for the "recent" thing, what I was trying to address is that we don't know a lot now, but in a few weeks there will be a lot of facts on the table and the scope of this will be clear - many batches of crops will be tested and we will see if this is an isolated incident or a big problem. To be clear, these were volunteer plants the farmer was trying to kill - -in other words, they were not in the wheat field that the farmer was going to harvest. This ~might~ be an isolated incident. It ~might~ be that the whole field and many others are contaminated and this is a huge deal. It seems crazy to me to have big battles over what to say while we are still waiting for the whole story to emerge. We have the anchor and that will always stay - let's see what emerges to flesh it out with and if it needs some other section in the article. That's all I am trying to say. Jytdog (talk) 16:10, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
My response was to the edit by Wolfie: Just because a news story mentions Monsanto doesn't mean we should put it in an encyclopedia. Also, wikipedia is not a crystal ball, we don't stick content in an article in case it becomes a big deal. That would be highly speculative Gandydancer (talk) 17:03, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
Gotcha. Jytdog (talk) 17:09, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
Monsanto shares fall as South Korea joins pause in wheat imports
EU recommends testing of US wheat after Japan finds GM grains, blocks imports petrarchan47tc 23:52, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
Monsanto shares plunged Friday as the US agriculture giant faced a rising protest over its genetically engineered seeds after an unapproved modified wheat strain was found on an Oregon farm. Two days after US officials announced the discovery of herbicide-resistant wheat on the farm, Japan suspended imports of US wheat, the European Union told its member states to test imports from the area, and South Korean millers said they would suspend purchases. That helped push Monsanto shares down 3.5 per cent at US$101.25 in late New York trade. (source) petrarchan47tc 00:06, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

March

I realise that there are serious problems with the March Against Monsanto article, but that should be handled there, instead of exporting the problem to other articles like this one. bobrayner (talk) 02:37, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

saving seed

article current has a statement, teeing up the section on Monsanto's patent litigation history.

sentence is "The usual claim involves violation of a technology agreement that prohibits farmers from saving seed from one season's crop to plant the next, a common farming practice."

last bit was supported by this source: http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/programs/sustainable-economy/trade-environment/wto-cancun-agriculture-env.html

An editor deleted ", a common farming practice." and the reference. Another editor reverted and said that this must stand, and asked that this be brought to talk.

I left "a common practice" but deleted the source and left a citation needed tag. As noted in my edit note, the sierra club source is focused on issues in the developing world. In the developed world and parts of the developing world, farmers have not saved seed for many crops for a long time since companies started developing hybrid strains that were only good for one planting -- farmers could save them but the 2nd generation was not as consistently strong as the 1st hybrid generation so farmers buy new hybrid seeds every year. This is true in the US for corn, for example, since the 1900s and is true of cotton in India since the 1980s or so. So for a statement as broad as "a common farming practice" a source is needed. I don't believe it can stand, as stated. Jytdog (talk) 18:15, 2 June 2013 (UTC)(copyedit - added a crucial "not". Jytdog (talk) 19:23, 2 June 2013 (UTC))

Can't we simple restrain the claim to areas of the developing for which it was made in the source? Rather than turning it into a global claim for which we have insufficient sourcing?--Kmhkmh (talk) 18:45, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict)I agree that that source is poor and that something much better is needed. This discusses seed saving of soy beans in the US concluded that seed saving was until recently the norm, but that this changed with the introduction of RR soybeans. This isn't especially reliable, but it discusses seed saving in the EU and could be used as a starting point. I found this too which is only a snippet, but does say that seed saving is common in the developed world. In the UK at least "farm-saved seed will continue to play an important role in many top arable businesses in the coming years." Seed saving could do with more information about how widespread it is/was in agriculture. SmartSE (talk) 18:56, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
This discusses it in the US more generally and explains that it's certainly more complex than a common practice (It's an excellent book btw). SmartSE (talk) 19:08, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
Replacing the source with a better one and rewording for clarity makes sense here. 'Common practice' as a phrase may be vague, but it seems impossible to fully capture geographical and crop-related variations on the frequency of the practice in a single sentence. The Seed saving article isn't sourced well either. Dialectric (talk) 19:21, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
I did a search for sources related to seed saving prevalence, and found a journal, 'Sustainability', a reliable academic source, which has a quote 'the majority of farmers worldwide still engage in seed saving', from 2008. (http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/1/4/1266) The full quote is "While the majority of farmers worldwide still engage in seed saving, the prevalence of this practice is declining rapidly, particularly in industrialized nations [14]. In the United States, for example, the rate of saving corn seed fell to less than 5% by 1960 [10]. Rates of saving soybeans decreased from 63% in 1960, to 10% in 2001 [2]. Although seed saving and replanting is currently more common among wheat growers, just one-third of those recently surveyed in Washington State stated that they engaged in this practice [32]. p 1270, Visualizing Consolidation in the Global Seed Industry: 1996–2008 Philip H. Howard Sustainability 2009, 1, 1266-1287. Dialectric (talk) 20:09, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
Dialectric, MDPI is a bit problematic as this is one of those pay-to-publish open source publishers, and reference 14 is "Who Owns Nature? Corporate Power and the Final Frontier in the Commodification of Life; ETC Group: Ottawa, CA, USA, 2008." This is not a great source. Jytdog (talk) 20:20, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
There are some crops where you can save seeds and where this is done, although not for long. Wheat is such an example. The problem is when your neighboring farmer plants a different sort of wheat you'll eventually end up with a mix of the two through pollination. Additionally, its difficult to store seeds over the winter (molding can ruin your work). Additionally, with hybrid seeds, saving seeds is even worse. When you buy new seeds every year, you're ensured quality by your distributor.
Saving seeds really only happens with certain seeds in certain areas of the world, and generally not so much in modern agriculture. As the above source shows, 1/20 to 1/3 of those farmers save (some) seeds. So it's not really a "common practise", and hasn't been for quite some time.
If you don't explain all of this in the artice, just leaving in "a common practise" makes it sound like as if this is all because of patents. And that's not the case. --84.130.162.209 (talk) 13:54, 9 June 2013 (UTC)


Stock Price Graph

I propose the graph of the stock price be removed or updated. It gives the impression that Monsanto has consistently out performed the market where it has not. Firstly, the time frame up to 2010 ignore the gains made across the whole market recently. Secondly it is wrong to compare any stock to the Dow Jones, as this index is flawed in several ways. Far better would be to compare it to the S&P 500. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 27.252.238.21 (talk) 04:53, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

OK; good point. Is there an updated graph available somewhere? bobrayner (talk) 05:19, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Monsanto Citizenship Fund

I have merge the stub Monsanto Citizenship Fund into here, ideally it should be its own article. Also the us section is large and should be split into smaller subsections. Any ideas would be welcome. James Michael DuPont (talk) 11:43, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for adding this content! I formatted refs and did some other light copyediting. Then I made 2 serious edits. I deleted the table of recipients. There are several problems with including it. First, this kind of listing violates WP:NOT - it is too much random detail. Secondly, it is unclear why the funds contributions in one year is NOTABLE vis a vis other years. Also, is unclear how the list was compiled out of this huge (157 page) document. Finally, actual contributions are not cut and dry. The fund donated $2500 to Todd Rokita, for example, but the very next entry in the table shows that the Rotika campaign returned that money. So the actual contribution was zero. For this table to be accurate and useful (maybe in a newspaper article, not in an encyclopedia) would require a bunch of WP:OR, going through and adding separate contributions to the same candidate and of course deducting returned contributions. The other major edit was removing the separate section. This is fine as a paragraph in the contributions section - it is unclear at this point why it would need a separate section. thanks again for contributing to the article! Jytdog (talk) 13:15, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
Ok thanks for the update, I will double check the returns, sorry I missed that. I am working on compiling the FEC data for wikipedia, I find it very interesting to see who gave what. I will review the numbers and look into this more. James Michael DuPont (talk) 00:02, 23 July 2013 (UTC)


Undue material about some march

I've removed this material about a march: [2]. Wikipedia isn't a newspaper and something worthy of coverage by a journalist doesn't necessarily have weight to be in the encyclopedia entry. IRWolfie- (talk) 18:06, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

I hear you on that. This was added over the weekend, and if you look at the edit history of the page, you will see that I and others worked initial content that into something reasonable for Wikipedia standards. In the meantime someone created a main article on the march, which was promptly put up for deletion, using the same reasoning you have. So far the deletion discussion is trending toward "keep." While I voted for deletion there, I decided that if the community decides to keep the Main article, then the content here would have justification to remain here too. Rather than getting into an edit war with people who are intense about these issues, I decided to let the text stand at least until the deletion decision ends. If the consensus is keep, it would be very hard to argue that this should not be here. But even if the decision is to delete, I would probably lean toward maintaining the text here. It was widely reported so I think it passes "notable." But more importantly to me, the march is important to a lot of editors, and rather than make this page into a war zone, I would treat this as I have other negative things about Monsanto - keep them, state them neutrally and concisely, and source them reliably. It is really important to me to keep things WP:CIVIL. And I have found that with respect to politically charged content, efforts to completely exclude content based on WP:UNDUE lead to horrible, warlike discussions (which I just bail on); it is hard enough to keep relative weight reasonably decent (and even that gets ugly). So, no, I do not think this should be deleted, not based on wiki policy nor strategically for this article to remain a decent place to work. Jytdog (talk) 18:26, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
The existence of the other article doesn't mean it has due weight to be mentioned here. The criteria for the existence of an article, and the criteria for having WP:WEIGHT are very very different. The very act of giving undue attention to something is in itself a violation of neutrality (particularly a movement which espouses a fringe viewpoint about GMOs), it is why we have guidelines like WP:ONEWAY. An easier option would be to see where the consensus is, and have an RfC if needed, IRWolfie- (talk) 18:54, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for the discussion. Hm... if the other article stays, and since this is a protest against Monsanto, it would be hard to understand how it would not be mentionable in the article about Monsanto. (in other words, not clear how ONEWAY applies) The weight in this article is appropriately small now and I will work to keep it that way. You didn't respond at all to the larger issue of war that is of great to concern to me, and I would appreciate it if you would. It is really not worth an RfC and big fuss for a small paragraph. Along those lines, I agree that their POV on the safety of GMOs is absolutely WP:FRINGE. Nonetheless, these people exist. So we can describe them, but make sure that articles actually describing GMOs treat the science appropriately (e.g. scientific consensus is that GM food on the market is safe as conventional counterparts and claims that it is not, are fringe and that is definitely worth fighting over.) Desire for better understanding of safety (and worry that we don't understand it enough) among the public and scientists are not fringe - there is a difference. Even regulatory scientists who have approved GM foods want better tools. Jytdog (talk) 19:28, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
Whether people will edit war or not is kind of irrelevant, but I doubt it will happen. An RfC is a slow affair that takes a month. We can describe them in their own article, but they have no weight to be described here. There is no reason once-off American rallies should be getting a place in articles. Don't forget this is also a world encyclopedia, the rallies didn't make the news here (there is a danger of confusing churnalism with an actual notable event with due weight). IRWolfie- (talk) 19:47, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
Just out of curiosity, where is "here" for you? Jytdog (talk) 21:42, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
There seems to be some inappropriate editorial bias being shown here. One's own views about the science of health concerns regarding GMO's seems like a poor place to decide the breadth of coverage here - our opinions about the science behind a protest is simply a terrible reason to decide whether something deserves coverage or not. The starting point should always be coverage in reliable sources, about which there is plenty. I do agree that a lengthy mention in this article is not needed; however, maybe a sentence or two describing what actually happened (strangely, the sentence now included reads as if it was written before the protests), what the protesters were protesting were actually against and how many people attended would be in order. Nwlaw63 (talk) 20:01, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
Who said that was the reason why it was being rejected? I said "Wikipedia isn't a newspaper and something worthy of coverage by a journalist doesn't necessarily have weight to be in the encyclopedia entry". Including it is pure recentism. There is no evidence of any enduring impact on Monsanto so it's speculative to include it. IRWolfie- (talk) 20:56, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
Come on now. You yourself just cited what you refer to as a fringe view on GMO's as a major reason for not wanting to give weight to the story. 'Recentism' may be a valid argument for whether a separate article needs to exist on the marches, but when numerous news stories discuss hundreds of protests around the world against a company, that's worth a bit more explanation. Nwlaw63 (talk) 21:04, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

I said particularly because its fringe and it would be undue promotion, but not as the main reason. And, no, we don't need to discuss news items with no lasting impact (not that we could anyway because the news coverage is not in depth). IRWolfie- (talk) 21:19, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Nwlaw you are ignoring IRWolfie's main argument and picking on a sideline. His argument is that this is not notable, that there has not in fact been worldwide coverage (although the promoters have done a great job of saying it was). I looked hard for lots of coverage and found very little. That is why wolfie says it is thin or better, fails WP:INDEPTH. Jytdog (talk) 21:42, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
That is my argument for notability which is an argument against the existence of an article. My argument against mentioning it here is that this is routine newspaper coverage of a march, which has no long term encyclopaedic significance. None of the coverage is in-depth or provides reasoning why it should have weight in discussing Monsanto; it's being WP:COATRACKed in. It amuses me that the same individuals aren't trying to argue for inclusion of the Séralini affair. IRWolfie- (talk) 13:17, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
  • IRWolfie & Jytdog, would you please explain how you arrive at the conclusion that anti-GMO is fringe and, more importantly, why it bears on this discussion? Because it's not clear from the comments above other than your personal opinions. Also, IRWolfie perhaps you can forgive others for assuming you have an editorial bias when your reference to the event in this discussion thread as "some march" seems dismissive. I see from the article Genetically modified food controversies that the intro gives the opposition enough weight for a full paragraph there, and the body text seems to include plenty of reliable sources. I would like to remind folks here that that article is a daughter article to the GMO one, despite what the parent's intro says ('separate')... El duderino (abides) 05:50, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
Genetically modified food controversies gives weight to anti-GMO opinions because it is an article on the controversy, including public reactions, policy debates, etc - although to avoid giving the wrong impression, scientific evaluation is still included where relevant, including in the lead. This is analogous to other articles, e.g. Global warming controversy which focuses on the public discussion, whereas Global warming focuses on stating the actual facts. :-)
(Note that I'm not giving an opinion on the topic of this thread, at least for now. I haven't considered the issue yet.) Arc de Ciel (talk) 06:19, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
Yes exactly correct, controversy articles are rarely about scientific controversy, but more controversies involving denial or rejection of the scientific consensus by select groups. The right denies global warming and evolution, and the left have irrational fears about GMO and nuclear power safety, IRWolfie- (talk) 20:16, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
"GMO is dangerous" claims are fringe because it is contrary to the scientific consensus. You can dress that up anyway you like, but just because Monsanto is evil doesn't mean GM is dangerous or that irrational fears about GM are warranted (it reminds me of the irrational features about nanotech), or that the scientific consensus is other than it is. I say "some march", because the march is barely notable (in terms of its own article), and I see no reason that it should be included in this article considering that it does not have due weight when you consider the plethora of sources about Monsanto. IRWolfie- (talk) 20:16, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
El duderino - Hi. First of all, I never said, and would never say (at least not calmly) that "anti-GMO is fringe." Hardly anybody would say "anti-GMO is fringe" as broadly as that (well, to the extent an anti-GMO person opposed all GMOs no matter what (e.g. would oppose genetically modifying a bacteria in a research lab in order to study the protein it produced)-- pretty much everybody would call that person FRINGE). I would say, as I said above, that many of the marchers' "POV on the safety of GMOs is absolutely WP:FRINGE". I hope you can see the difference. There is a basket full of reasons to oppose Monsanto and GMOs other than concerns about health effects of GM food that is currently on the market; some of those are interesting and concern me too. In any case, the question is off topic of the Monsanto article. Can you please explain why you are asking it here? That said, I think that wolfie and arc answered your questions accurately (although I would modify wolfie's first sentence to "GMOs on the market are dangerous to human health" claims are fringe.) Jytdog (talk) 21:31, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
Y'all describing the position taken by the European Union, huge swaths of India, Peru, Japan, several US counties (including Mendocino & Boulder), at least one federal judge, and millions of concerned activists worldwide... as "fringe"? The viewpoint of corporate PR agents, certain well-funded scientific institutions, and the corporate-owned American media... is not only the mainstream, but actually reflects an unassailable consensus? If it were not for industry pressure and American exceptionalism, it is the GMO pushers who would be seen as "fringe". groupuscule (talk) 05:42, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
The determination of fringe is based on scientific consensus. It's not "unassailable" but is only responsive to peer-reviewed evidence sufficient to overturn the previous consensus. If such evidence appears and becomes widely accepted, the relevant sources will report it.
Also, scientific institutions are well-funded? I wish. ;-) Arc de Ciel (talk) 06:12, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
A scientific consensus for what exactly is supposed t exist here? Also "fringe" and "scientific fringe" are not the same and need to be distinguished.--Kmhkmh (talk) 08:38, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
We have one policy, WP:FRINGE. The general case is "consensus of relevant experts," e.g. to write an article about historical events you should use the consensus of historians. In the case of GM foods the relevant experts are scientists (specifically: plant biologists, evolutionary biologists, geneticists, etc, depending on what statement is being considered). In this example it was not quite clear what El Duderino was referring to ("the position taken by...") but based on the links I interpreted it as something along the lines of "GMOs are dangerous enough to reject completely," which is a fringe position. Of course it's possible that in the future we will find that there's actually some significant danger, but that's true of anything, and our current knowledge doesn't give us a reason to suspect it. Arc de Ciel (talk) 09:26, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
Groupuscule, regulators have approved GM crops in both EU and in India, as per the scientific consensus. The cities in the US that you mention, are in the US, which has approved GM crops, as per the scientific consensus. Nobody will deny that GMOs are controversial among the public, and that has driven political decisions in those US cities and in parts of India and the EU. The controversy among the public is, unfortunately, not a science-driven one. And as Arc said, FRINGE is about science. The label is accurate. Jytdog (talk) 12:02, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
I asked because you both mention fringe as a reason to exclude, and I disagree on both points. It's neither fringe nor a reason to exclude. There is growing concern that GMOs are unhealthy and Monsanto deserves the criticism it's getting, even if establishment Geneticists and other scientists with COI beg to differ. There is also too much reliance on biased sources, misrepresentation of neutral sources, and obviously selective quoting of both. El duderino (abides) 08:32, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
Do you have examples of this bias which we could discuss? Arc de Ciel (talk) 09:26, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
Scientists employed in the fields of genetics, bio-technology, etc are inherently biased towards their fields, as a matter of self-interest and job security. Anyone who cares to look can find specific examples. How about the revolving door [3] between Monsanto and the FDA? Or Monsanto and the scientific journals [4] publishing these GMO reports? El duderino (abides) 05:05, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
Wikipedia policy disagrees with you. (Also, if you don't know, any scientist who can show that an entire field is mistaken and back it up with strong evidence is rewarded quite well.) My question was intended to ask, do you have examples of bias within the article that you think we could address? In other words, please make suggestions to improve the article; otherwise this discussion doesn't have much purpose. Arc de Ciel (talk) 09:44, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
That's an odd way to express your disagreement. Because policy doesn't agree or disagree with us. It either supports or doesn't, and afaict that's largely based upon interpretation when it comes to disputes like this. Here we are talking about inclusion of the march, and some editorial bias against it based upon selective use or rejection of sources, not for the whole article. So, which policy are you invoking? If it's wp:fringe then, as i've argued elsewhere, that needs to be properly framed here because the current conception of 'mainstream science' on GMO safety should not necessarily include any and every scientist. El duderino (abides) 12:04, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
Please don't argue semantics when it's not important. The policy I was referring to is WP:RS, by which peer-reviewed papers are legitimate sources and generally considered better than non-peer-reviewed sources, and syntheses of multiple peer-reviewed sources by experts is preferred. If you want to challenge WP:FRINGE you should do so on Wikipedia talk:Fringe theories; if you want to challenge WP:RS you should do so on Wikipedia talk:RS. We don't have the ability to change the guidelines on this page. Also, you repeated your assertion of bias but didn't answer my question. Arc de Ciel (talk) 04:23, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
Not important to you, perhaps, because (presumably) you know what you mean, But when you are interpreting policy here, there are important distinctions to be clear about. I'm not challenging wiki policy. I'm challenging the assertions of editors here who seem to be pro-GMO, claiming that any and all anti-GMO protest is based on fringe science and thus easily dismissable. Much of it may be in the minority, and some of it may qualify as fringe, but not all of it. We have the capacity to make those differentiations. El duderino (abides) 06:39, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
I do not agree with the statement "any and all anti-GMO protest is based on fringe science." One of the major motivations, potential health risks, is based on fringe science (and possibly there would be fewer protests if that motivation were removed) but that is a different statement. If you wish to argue against this statement, please present high-quality reliable sources. The best place to do it probably would be at Genetically modified food or Genetically modified food controversies.
Again, please make concrete suggestions to improve the article; otherwise we are violating WP:TPG and WP:FORUM. Arc de Ciel (talk) 05:29, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
Stop trying to direct the discussion. I was responding to others' false claims here. That is not a violation of wp:forum policy nor against talkpage guidelines. And you are wrong about the health claims too, they are not all based on fringe science. You are sounding more and more like other bio-tech industry flacks touting GMO safety. El duderino (abides) 12:23, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
The purpose of the talk page is to discuss improvements to the article. I have been trying to point you in that direction since my first reply to you in this thread (1 June, in which I asked you for specific examples). If you think the article is biased, pick one biased statement in the article, suggest a change to it (which can be deletion if you like, or proposal of another sourced statement as a counterbalance), and then we can discuss it. No matter the outcome of such discussions, we will have made progress with the article.
However, if you don't have any concrete suggestions to make, then there's no point in continuing as the discussion has no productive purpose. There are no possible improvements to the article that it could result in; any example you could point to, you could achieve more efficiently by proposing that example directly. If you want a broad discussion unrelated to any specific article, that should be done on a user talk page. For that matter, I welcome discussion on my own talk page as long as it follows AGF and CIVIL. Or if you want a broader audience, you could try Wikiproject Genetics. I am of course completely willing to continue the discussion here if it involves specific points relevant to the article. Please let me know. Arc de Ciel (talk) 07:59, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
I have not argued to exclude. Jytdog (talk) 12:02, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
Ok, but did you not support IRWolfie's assertion that the anti-GMO protest is fringe? El duderino (abides) 06:39, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
This discussion is about whether to include information about the march in this article or not. An in-depth discusion of whether representing GM food on the market as dangerous is fringe, belongs on the GM controversies Talk page, where that conversation is also happening. It's unproductive (to me) to have the same conversation in two different articles. Jytdog (talk) 12:35, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
I'm not seeing much conversation about it in either place, more like stonewalling. When the erroneous label of 'fringe' is brought up in this thread, I believe its not only appropriate but necessary to challenge it here. You mentioned nuance in another reply about wording, yet where is it in this context? Among those touting the industry line about GMO safety, there seems to be little or no middle ground between the absolutes of mainstream vs fringe. El duderino (abides) 15:45, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

A bunch of people are responding. I don't know what you mean by "stonewalling". As far as I can see the objections to including content on the "march against Monsanto" in this article are no longer being argued for and we can close this discussion. I don't intend to respond here any more about the consensus issue. Jytdog (talk) 15:59, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

What is the current state of the discussion now? Is the the current description in the article ok with everyone?--Kmhkmh (talk) 08:47, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm neutral on the inclusion. If they do it again next year, or it leads to something else significant, then I would support. I'm less sure that it's sufficiently important to warrant its own section, but including it as part of a section "Protests against Monsanto" or (probably better) "Public opinion of Monsanto" would fix that. Arc de Ciel (talk) 09:26, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
I am neutral too. Some people want it here and that is OK with me. I would not be opposed if consensus was to exclude but I don't think that will happen. The conversation about whether claims that eating food from GMOs is dangerous is based on fringe science is really irrelevant, in my view, is a waste of space on this page -- especially since the same question is debated right now on the Genetically modified food controversies Talk page, by many of the same people talking here. There are other reasons to oppose GM crops and Monsanto. More importantly, the marches happened and are documented in secondary sources, so if people want to include some content on them in this article that seems justifiable to me. Jytdog (talk) 17:57, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
@IRWolfie-: I am confused when you say that this march is fringe. Are you saying that the march never took place, or that only fringe sources claim that the march took place? I don't think that's what you mean, but that seems to be what you are saying. Perhaps you are confusing the beliefs of the marchers as fringe, with the obvious fact that this march did actually occur? You do see the difference between the former with the latter, right? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 00:29, 19 August 2013 (UTC)
The issue is pretty much settled as wolfie has dropped his objections... this Talk section was going to be archived pretty soon. Sometimes it is best to let sleeping dogs lie. :) Jytdog (talk) 01:06, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

Feedback please

The article states:

Monsanto's introduction of this system (planting glyphosate-resistant seed and then applying glyphosate once plants emerged) provided farmers with an opportunity to dramatically increase the yield from a given plot of land, since this allowed them to plant rows closer together.[69] Without it, farmers had to plant rows far enough apart to control post-emergent weeds with mechanical tillage.[69]

However, according to this information more recent information (2013) [5]: "Monsanto has changed its stance on glyphosate use, now recommending that farmers use a mix of chemical products and ploughing." I wonder if we need to edit the article to reflect more recent information? Gandydancer (talk) 13:46, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi Gandy, thanks for suggesting this. I think we should. I went looking for somewhere where Monsanto recommends tillage, and if so what kind... have not found it yet. Also there are several kinds of tillage (clearest explanation I have found is here - not a source I would want to cite in the article as it is by a biotech advocacy organization). And the last paragraph of that section makes it clear that the optimum system involves herbicides + sustainable practices. I suspect the tillage that may be recommended by Monsanto is "conservation tillage" but I need to keep researching this. It is a great point tho and I want to address it when I get time. My wiki-time has been absorbed with ugly stuff recently. But Thanks again. Jytdog (talk) 01:20, 19 August 2013 (UTC)


Zyklon B content added today

today an Ip address made an edit adding the following to the lead, in the list of products Monsanto has made: "Zyklon-B (ref)http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Monsanto(/ref) (ref)http://bestmeal.info/monsanto/company-history.shtml(re/f) (ref)www.naturalnews.com/037290_zyklon_b_gmo_food_weapons.html [unreliable fringe source?](/ref)," with an edit note "Mention of partnership with Bayer and IG-Farben to manufacture Zyklon-B"

Issues:

  1. this was added to the lead, and is not in the body. Should be added to the body first and only put in the lead if it has enough weight. But that is a small thing.
  2. more importantly, not one of those sources is reliable, and not one of them says that Monsanto made Zyklon-B.
    1. The first is sourcewatch, which is a Wiki. Wikis are not reliable sources. Additionally, what that source actually says is "In 1967, Monsanto entered into a joint venture with IG Farben. (The) German chemical firm that was the financial core of the Hitler regime, and was the main supplier of Zyklon-B to the German government during the extermination phase of the Holocaust" This does not say that Monsanto made Zyklon-B.
    2. The second is "bestmeal.info" which is some kind of blog, the 'about' page of which says "BestMeal.info provides many resources and a website directory of locally grown food from farmers, local grocers, restaurants, and food resources. Use our local directory to find quality products and respected restaurants listed in your area. BestMeal.info is currently compiling a database of information about food. We're adding many more resources and links DAILY." However all the content on its side (Food Info : Documentary Movies | GMOs | Organic Foods | Health | Environment|Codex Alimentarius | Water Fluoridation | Monsanto | rBGH Milk | Aspartame) is fringe theories about "industrial" food. This is not a reliable source. On top of that, what it actually says about Zyklon-B is the exact same thing as sourewatch: "1967: Monsanto entered into a joint venture with IG Farben = the German chemical firm that was the financial core of the Hitler regime, and was the main supplier of Zyklon-B gas to the German government during the extermination phase of the Holocaust; IG Farben was not dissolved until 2003."
    3. The third source is "naturalnews.com" which is also not a reliable source for anything. Additionally, it no where says that Monsanto made Zyklon B. It is built on the metaphor that GMO=Zyklon B but that is a different thing than saying that Monsanto manufactured the stuff.

I did some searching and found no reliable source that said that Monsanto ever produced Zyklon B. The edit was either sloppy thinking (which is the point of the quote in the first two sources and the metaphor driving the third, to get sloppy-thinking people to assume that Monsanto had something to do with Zyklon B) or was outright vandalism. Jytdog (talk) 23:42, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

poland

i reverted this edit that was made today. First, the text about Poland was inserted into the middle of a section about India. More importantly, nothing in the text was about Monsanto per se (it was not about somebody suing Monsanto or Monsanto suing somebody or any governmental enforcement against Monsanto per se). Moved content to Regulation article, section on Europe, where there is very related material: here. Jytdog (talk) 20:23, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Poland

I want to add the article that was updated on Poland. It is relative to Monsanto by the fact it is dealing with their corn products, and how countries in Europe are handling the spectacle on growing GM products. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wheelkeepturning (talk • contribs) 19:20, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

please see section directly above. The content was not about Monsanto but was about how Poland is regulating GMOs, so I moved it to the regulation article. I here you that it is related to Monsanto, but if we added all the content in Wikipedia that is just related to Monsanto, this article would be way too long, right? Everything else in that section is action directly upon, or action directly by, Monsanto. I hope that makes sense. Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 19:43, 18 October 2013 (UTC)


Material on Litigation added today

today in this dif and then this dif, User:Faithedup added content to the Monsanto#Patents section. The first two sections go into depth on two cases, one against Loren David and the other against William Trantham; there is also a brief discussion about the case against Ray Dawson. The Parr case (seed cleaners_ is already briefly discussed (although not by name) as is the case of the unnamed guy against whom Monsanto errantly filed a suit. The last paragraph is also discussed elsewhere. In general, use of a book as a source is great, but when that is done, a page number should be given. Harvest of Fear" is already used as a source. Big picture - adding new content is great but you should blend it into what exists instead of dropping it in whole... and its important to consider how much weight to give any piece. Currently the Schmeieser case is given the most as that is arguable the most famous case. The Bowman case has some length/Weight because the issues there were huge, and it went all the way to the Supreme Court. Jytdog (talk) 01:49, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

These cases are significant simply because they were examined and discussed by Susan A. Schneider in her 2011 book. Binksternet (talk) 04:00, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Schneider's book discusses many cases; why pull these out? That is my question. Jytdog (talk) 04:59, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
The book isn't about Monsanto; however, Monsanto is discussed in the book. These cases were pulled out because they are the cases in the book which are relevant to this page.Faithedup (talk) 05:37, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Hey, Schneider's book is great Binksternet! I'm doing agriculture law research and I rely on it a lot. I realize the Monsanto page is heavily contributed to and heavily edited. I can add page numbers, no problemJytdog. But I'm not clear if you would like me to work on the flow of the content or if you would like me to take it out. I wanted to add the David case because it is a prime example of Monsanto enforcing its patent rights in seeds. The farmer was ordered to pay Monsanto $786,989.43 - an outrageous sum of money for one season's harvest of soy. While David is not the most famous case and never reached the supreme court, it did reach the court of appeals and is a case discussed by legal and environmental groups. Similarly, Trantham is important because it demonstrates that Monsanto has been able to penetrate Bankruptcy - traditionally a safe harbor for farmers. Faithedup (talk) 04:17, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for talking User:Faithedup. Great to have editors with law experience working on the article. Adding material is great! Please do work with what we have. Please be aware that Wikipedia is not here to right great wrongs; if there are NPOV secondary sources that explain how the $790K judgement was arrived at by the court and describe it neutrally, it would be great to include that. (this patent law blog lays it out, by the way). The description of the case should include background - that David was well aware of the patent and had signed licenses several years in a row and was well aware of their terms, and he lied about his breaching/infringing activities under oath, changing his story three times. So no, the judgement was not especially lenient. David was as much driven by a desire to make a buck as Monsanto. As you are probably aware there are loads of BS flying around about Monsanto's litigation (eg trying to twist the Schmeiser case into "Monsanto sues farmers if seed just blows onto their land", when the reality is that Monsanto took Schmeiser to court for the crop he intentionally planted with the RR seed he harvested from the blown-in crop). I am not pro-Monsanto; I am anti-BS. Jytdog (talk) 04:59, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Ditto. I've been doing research on agriculture law for a couple months and started to feel compelled to share facts and info on these pages. I'm a wiki-rookie, so my contributions are still awkward. I'll get the hang of it eventually. I appreciate your guard of this page. People are extremely polarized Re: Monsanto (pro/anti). Nevertheless, I do find their power and dominance a bit unsettling. I will work on my narration and you can let me know what you think.Faithedup (talk) 05:24, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Great! I hear you on the unsettling part, but as far as I can tell Monsanto has played within the rules for the most part; they were pioneers in ag biotech (and bought other pioneers) and they have had strong patents and used them smartly, to their advantage; the courts have found that to be true over and over. As I wrote above, Wikipedia is not here to right great wrongs; we are not here to pass judgement on whether the patent system as it stands now, nor those who use it, are good or evil. It will be interesting to see what happens in the seed markets as Monsanto's seed patents expire.Jytdog (talk) 13:55, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
I see you have blended the content you added! Thanks for doing that. I went through and blended more. I removed some POV description and quoting... When it comes to quoting stuff, I generally only quote when I need language from a source, as I did with the perfectly concise phrase "fell within the Bankruptcy Act’s exception for willful and malicious injuries and therefore was nondischargeable." If you are adding a quote from a person for color and impact, you are generally heading toward POV. My own test for that when creating content about a dispute (as I wrote in the edit note) is whether it would be reasonable to include quotes from the other side. When I run though that exercise, it generally becomes clear that the quote from the one side is just pushing that party's POV. Thanks again for adding useful detail to this section - I look forward to working with you in the future! Jytdog (talk) 13:55, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
There is significance to everything I added, but my brain is wired to argue and I do struggle with NPOV. Thanks for your help and advice. Monsanto's team has outsmarted a lot of people, which is one reason there is so much emotion and retaliation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Faithedup (talk • contribs) 14:20, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Maybe it will be useful to consider that when you edit here, Wikipedia and its 5 pillars are your client, not any party in a dispute described here. :) I really do look forward to working with you on these and other pages. Jytdog (talk) 14:30, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

more on indian farmer suicides

Note - please pardon me but i moved the comment below from the middle of another section to here, where it belongs.Jytdog (talk) 04:47, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

I just read India’s cotton farmers experienced a disaster with their 2007-08 crop of cotton when they used Monsanto’s GM cotton seed. Over 125,000 Indian farmers committed suicide because their crops were so bad that they lost their farm and homes to banks. In 2010, the government instituted a ban on GMO eggplant due to this tragedy and further information provided by scientists and agricultural experts. The Bt Brinjal variety was banned due to concerns of the seeds contaminating other self-sustaining crops.[1]Seashell1 (talk) 04:01, 3 December 2013 (UTC) After reading this article I wanted to add to Article section for India the government instituted a ban on GMO eggplant due to information provided by scientists and agricultural experts.

User:Seashell1 This is already covered in the article. Please take the time to read what is actually here - you are not the first person to learn about Monsanto.Jytdog (talk) 04:47, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Food Monopolies

Attempted to add Category:Food monopolies was removed I thought this was standard knowledge. I am not using this in any sort of negative connotation.14:49, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

User:Hogie75 has created a new category, Category:Food Monopolies and today added Monsanto under it in this dif. I have not thought about categories much before, but this led me to go read about them.
Wikipedia:Categorization#Articles says:

Categorization of articles must be verifiable. It should be clear from verifiable information in the article why it was placed in each of its categories. Use the {{Category unsourced}} template if you find an article in a category that is not shown by sources to be appropriate, or the {{Category relevant?}} template if the article gives no clear indication for inclusion in a category. Categorization must also maintain a neutral point of view. Categorizations appear on article pages without annotations or referencing to justify or explain their addition; editors should be conscious of the need to maintain a neutral point of view when creating categories or adding them to articles. Categorizations should generally be uncontroversial; if the category's topic is likely to spark controversy, then a list article (which can be annotated and referenced) is probably more appropriate.

The criteria for inclusion in this category is unclear to me. There were four companies listed under the category: Monsanto, Imperial Cold Storage and Supply Company, PepsiCo, and National Linseed Oil Trust. Of those four, only one, National Linseed Oil Trust, has been found to be a monopoly under the law. Pepsico is in a fiercely competitive market, most famously with Coca Cola, and the Imperial Cold Storage and Supply Company says nothing about it being a monopoly. Many have accused Monsanto of being a monopoly, but a recent US justice department inquiry on anti-competitive behavior in the seed markets came back with no findings. It appears to me that in general, this category has no criteria, fails NPOV, and fails Verifiability. Since Monsanto has never been actually found to be a monopoly by any legal authority, I removed the categorization in this dif. It seems to me that this category should be more clearly defined or perhaps deleted altogether, but I have no interest in taking action on that. Happy to discuss its application to Monsanto, however. I am noting this posting at Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories. Jytdog (talk) 14:58, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
Wow ok, I guess I had seen that Monsanto was a food monopoly so many times that I thought it was standard knowledge. Didn't mean to offend your employer. I will not pursue this further. Thanks for the info though.15:14, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
The accusation of bad faith editing is unwelcome, but thank you for replying. Jytdog (talk) 15:15, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
User:Hogie75 your use of the wikilink to the category in your post above, actually categorized this Talk page. Would you please remove the category from this page? Thanks.Jytdog (talk) 15:21, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
Done15:28, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 15:31, 8 December 2013 (UTC

Farmer suicides and Cuozzo article

The reason for User:GeorgeLouis' reverted deletion of the "Farmer suicides" section is clearly that this article was savaged by Steve Cuozzo in his criticism of Wikipedia in yesterday's New York Post:

The entry for admittedly controversial Monsanto is no balanced history of a Fortune 500 company with 22,000 employees, but an indictment — even including a long section on Monsanto's supposed role in driving farmers in India to commit suicide. [6]

Gildir (talk) 18:13, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Let's not give the Post any sort of editorial oversight here. It's a trashy tabloid. Binksternet (talk) 18:22, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
If you actually read the section, it is pretty clear that while people accuse Monsanto, there is no credible reason to believe that the farmer suicides are Monsanto's fault. Ya'all read badly.Jytdog (talk) 18:30, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
In his documentary Bitter Seeds, filmmaker Micha Peled conclusively demonstrates that Monsanto is at fault for the suicides. Binksternet (talk) 18:56, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
You have not read our own article either! The published, independent reports say that the biggest drivers were not Monsanto. But this is talking about reality, not the article, so we should stop. (btw I believe you wrote somewhere you have some relationship with Micha, is that not so? if so you should watch your COI there...) Jytdog (talk) 19:02, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
Ha! I have no COI with regard to Monsanto. What I do know is that you are assuming that Monsanto was acting aboveboard in India, which I understand is incorrect. Monsanto illegally introduced Bt cotton technology in India in 1995, in partnership with Mahyco, supported by the World Bank's deregulation of seeds in 1988. By 1998 the Bt cotton was growing illegally across nine states of India. (See Vandana Shiva's chapter in Redesigning Life?, and Marie-Monique Robin's The World According to Monsanto, starting on page 485, and Harriet A. Washington's Deadly Monopolies, before and after page 388.) You are assuming wrongly that Monsanto waited until 2002 when they finally got approval from the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee under the Ministry of the Environment. This is not fully supportable as there are reports describing illegal distribution of Bt seeds and suicides closely related to frustration and failure of non-irrigated cotton crops based on Monsanto's seed technology. The more than 270,000 farmer suicides started soon after 1995's Bt introduction. [7][8][9][10] Monsanto paid for positive news reports.[11][12] These positive news articles (really paid advertisements) made their way into international press coverage. Binksternet (talk) 20:43, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

I found the COI-y thing for you and Micha. It was here. Two things.

  1. I will note here, as I did in the conversation I linked to below, that the independent reports from India, from the region where Bitter Seeds was made, as well as reports from other regions, lay the most blame on India's abandonment of farmers as part of its roughly executed move toward a market economy and away from its former socialist orientation. Left farmers with no advice, no secure and reasonable source of loans, etc, and at the mercy of loan sharks.
  2. Those same sources make it clear that Bt cotton was not introduced by Monsanto/Mahyco til 2002. It is Big Lie that Monsanto/Mayco introduced the seed illegally in the late 1990s. Please bring a reliable source (not a source with an ax to grind) that says that. The reality is that an indigenous Indian seed company, unrelated to Monsanto, called Navbharat, introduced "bootleg" Bt seed illegally prior to the 2002 launch by Monsanto/Mahyco. Sources are as mentioned above, as well as this and this and this and this and this. I even threw in some "organic consumers union" and "mother jones" links as you seem unwilling to believe something truly neutral like the Tata Institute report. Just google "Navbharat Bt cotton".Jytdog (talk) 21:22, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
I chortled at your implication that Wikipedia's reliable source guideline forbids us from using sources "with an ax to grind". If that were the case (which it is not) then the Monsanto-friendly sources would be unavailable to you.
I am not unaware of the Navbharat piracy seeds case, which is not the same issue as Monsanto exerting great influence over the pesticide industry in India, and subsequently exerting great influence over the sales of patented seeds to farmers who have no irrigation and thus no hope of success with Bt cotton.
I will assume you have satisfied yourself with the poorly targeted COI allegations against me, and that you will stop mentioning it going forward. If, however, you still think I have a conflict of interest with regard to Monsanto, you are free to take your concerns to a higher authority. Binksternet (talk) 21:56, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
On sourcing. I don't use Monsanto-friendly sources. On your COI for the documentary: no big deal, just declare you had a hand in editing it when you tout it (I was only talking about the documentary, not this article. sorry you misunderstood) On selling seeds, you wrote quite clearly above "Monsanto illegally introduced Bt cotton technology in India in 1995, in partnership with Mahyco, supported by the World Bank's deregulation of seeds in 1988. By 1998 the Bt cotton was growing illegally across nine states of India." and presented a whole litany of ax-grindy sources. If you cannot admit you are wrong when you are wrong, what kind of conversation are we having? What kind of conversation are we having, anyway? We are not talking about content so we should stop in any case. 2nd time I am saying that btw. Have a great night.Jytdog (talk) 22:13, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
We are talking about farmer suicides. I presented more information about that. The "ax-grindy" sources are chasing down the truth, which is what I'm interested in. Binksternet (talk) 22:57, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
ok to hell with discussing content. :) if you are interested in the truth, admit that what you wrote about Monsanto "illegally distributing" seeds before 2002 was bullshit. Jytdog (talk) 23:21, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
and by the way, if you smoosh together Monsanto running field trials, with actual farmers having Bt seeds, I will scream.Jytdog (talk) 23:22, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

For others who may stop by, we have had some lively conversations on this issue, the most concentrated of which was here. Jytdog (talk) 20:40, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

How absurd for Jytdog to make COI accusations after he has cried foul so much when others do the same to him, and here based on such flimsy evidence as the link above to SlimVirgin's talkpage. But i'm guessing he won't take it to WP:COIN for fear of boomerang: I recall something about his self-identification awhile back was for GE-related work for a university which gets funding from Monsanto. Also typical for him to try to direct the path of the conversation because he doesn't like how it's going. El duderino (abides) 05:48, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
Try not to make the debate personal. Can we concentrate on content and sources? bobrayner (talk) 20:17, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
That would be the Steve Cuozzo article here. -- Jreferee (talk) 02:27, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

U.S. Officials Connections to Monsanto

I removed this section because movement between private and government employment is both legal and commonplace. The section seems to be written with the goal of creating an impression of impropriety without needing to document any unlawful behavior or other improprieties. If specific individuals were charged with crimes or accused of improprities, these movements would be notable. 98.155.21.76 (talk) 00:54, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

I restored it because many commentators have published articles about the "revolving door" phenomenon which links Monsanto to the US government regulation agencies. I added a bit of text to tie it all together, supported by three references. Binksternet (talk) 01:38, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
Let me start out by saying that I'm not going to fight to the death on this, its really not worth my time and I understand that those on the other side of the issue are numerous and deeply emotionally committed to their positions. But this article is a sad parody of what an encyclopedia article should look like. The NPOV rule has not found a home here.
You are correct that articles have been published describing movement between Monsanto and Government. But all of the sources you have cited are advocacy and or editorial in nature. I've never heard of any of these sources before today. Doe the fact that someone, somewhere, at some time suggested that something nefarious was going on justify 550 words of content? If so, I suggesting we than add an equal size section about Monsanto's plan to patent human beings and take away your children. It can be supported for inclusion because "some have expressed concern" that this is going to happen. www.naturalnews.com/041518_biotech_body_snatchers_gene_patents.html. [unreliable fringe source?] But this strikes me as being far too facile of a gambit for making insinuations about situations in which there is no direct evidence of unlawful or even unethical behavior.
Go ahead and revise it back. But as a liberal who has never voted for a Republican in 30 years of voting, I think its sad the way so many of my fellow liberals have taken to using Wikipedia as a pulpit to express their political viewpoints. This sort of thing does not belong in an encyclopedia 98.155.21.76 (talk) 13:02, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
Monsanto has not ignored such assertions. The company hosts a couple of webpages giving their side of this issue:[13][14]. In 1998 the company forced the printer to destroy all remaining copies of The Ecologist September–October issue containing Jennifer Ferrara's article "Revolving Doors: Monsanto and the Regulators" (see Paul Brown's "Printer pulps Monsanto edition of The Ecologist" in The Guardian, September 29, 1998: "Penwells of Saltash, Cornwall destroyed the 14,000 print run without notice.") Nevertheless, Ferrara's article was seen by a few readers and also released digitally, and it has been cited many times since: [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]. This issue is a hot potato for Monsanto and its critics, and we would be remiss not to cover it. Binksternet (talk) 14:42, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
In the interest of seeing whether there was something that should be included in our Wikipedia article, on the controversy around the Ecologist issue being pulped, I went looking for sources on the pulping. The original Guardian article you cite doesn't seem to be available on their website anymore, but organicconsumers.org posted what they claim is a copy of it here. Goldsmith, who runs the Ecologist, is quoting as saying "The fact that Monsanto had nothing to do with the decision to pulp is, if anything, more scaey than if they had made some kind of legal threat. It goes to show what a powerful force a reputation can be". And in this piece in the Guardian, Goldsmith does not blame Monsanto either. In this piece both the printer and Monsanto are quoted as denying having discussed anything and with respect to Monsanto's involvement, Goldsmith is quoted as saying "I'm quite sure of it, but I have to take the printer's word for it....I have no evidence to support this". The pulping seems to have arisen more from concern by the publisher and booksellers about the UK's onerous libel laws than any actual threat or legal action by Monsanto. So what you wrote above -- "In 1998 the company forced the printer to destroy all remaining copies" -- appears to be unsupportable. Jytdog (talk) 09:14, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
The criterion for conclusion is not that it is illegal or uncommon. The fact that it is common is significant. It only creates an impression of impropriety if one believes it to be so. One could also take the view that the reason for these connections is the competence of both government and Monsanto staff. TFD (talk) 16:25, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
I submit that your use of the value loaded word "abuse" in your explanation for your reversion belies your contention that the inclusion of this material is neutral. You feel strongly about its inclusion precisely because you feel it supports your personal value judgments.
I would agree that this material could be construed as "a high level of comnpetence is required both at Monsanto and in Government" if the context was a "puffery" piece praising Monsanto. But it's imnplications in the current context of an article that is far, far out of compliance with NPOV is obviously that there is something nefarious going on.
My choice of the word "leading" was not intended as praise, but simply to note that the controversy around Monsanto follows from the fact that it has been the first and most prolific (thus "leading") in applying biotchnology to agriculture. I believe this is a fair and NPOV description of this part of the controversy around the company.
Tell you what: The article is yours. You obviously feel very strongly about this (in my view this is a red flag with respect to NPOV) and are much more willing to put out effort to control the content of this article than I am.
Your statement assuming bad faith editing on my part in your explanation of your most recent reversion was completely inappropriate. Generally life is full of differences of opinion, and not everyone who disagrees with you is naive, dishonest, or a shill. Losing that assumption makes life more complicated, but it allows one to see the world more clearly. 98.155.21.76 (talk) 19:06, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
OK then #98, if you're done with your advice about how to see the world more clearly and such, feel free to move on and advise other editors. Gandydancer (talk) 22:35, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
Well Gandy, Thanks for your comment. I do see the world pretty clearly I think, because I try to be open minded and consider other people's point of view. That allows me to be sufficiently confident in my viewpoints that I don't need to react in a hostile manner when someone expresses a viewpoint that I disagree with. 98.155.21.76 (talk) 00:54, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
Yes, we are fortunate indeed to have such an open minded, clear thinking, non-hostile editor; and if I may add, an editor that's not afraid to blow his own horn, either! Hopefully Binksternet has taken your good advice and is ready to change his ways. Gandydancer (talk) 01:49, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
Gandy, you are fortunate indeed. Unlike others here I did not undo anyone's edits with the explanation that they were engaging in bad faith editing. Nor did I jump in to tell anyone that their opinion was of no account and simply wrong. But when I respond to these personal attacks by stating that I try to look at things with an open mind instead of responding with insults of my own, you call it "self-promoting". None of this really fits with the Wikipedia guidelines calling for consensus forming.
And whether you choose to acknowledge it or not, I've shown considerable restraint here, following the rules and avoiding an "edit war". My in response to my edits being deleted, with no attempt to engage and find common ground, and those same deletions being accompanied by accusations of bad faith editing, I have not responded in kind. I can certainly click the "undo" button just as fast as you can if I chose to go that route. 98.155.21.76 (talk) 15:23, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
All snark on both "sides" aside, I added a sentence to address the concern about POV, with sources, on the positive aspect of the revolving door, as well as methods used to manage potential COI caused by individuals moving between government and the private sector.Jytdog (talk) 08:46, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
I appreciate your input Jytdog, but I don't think this really addresses the issue. Readers coming to this site to learn about the company are for the most part not interested in these lengthy exchanges along the lines of "Company X provided drilling equipment that was used in exploring for oil in the Arctic, which eventually led to the spills that destroyed pristine wilderness. But others have argued that someone else would have supplied the equipment anyway, and that reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil reduced the risk of war in the Middle East. On the other hand, Will Simpson of the Econonist argued that the risk of war in the Middle East is independent of U.S. oil import volume. But a recent study found that....." It seems to me that the point of NPOV is not to engage in a protracted debate about the extent to which a company is "evil", but simply to state the objective facts and point out what issues have caused controversy. I don't think it is necessary or desirable to try to hash through the controversy and present both sides of each and every argument in painful, "balanced" detail. One simply ends up with a painfully unreadable article that reads like a word for word transcript of a multi-hour debate in a university ethics class.
This article is followed by four non-ideologically oriented Wikipedia interest groups, all of which have assigned it a "C". This is pretty damning considering the sheer size of the article and the amount of time that has been put into it. The only lower scores are "stub" and "start" which indicate articles that are only a few sentences long. Ultimately the only way to improve it is to remove undue weight material rather than adding alternative explanations and/or additional undue weight material in order to achieve "balance".
As for "snark", I plead not guilty. I made an effort to debate the issues and express my concerns honestly. Not only were my remarks summarily removed, but it was done in an insulting manner that was intended to convey that my position was simply wrong and of no account. Others went out of their way to step into a conversation in which I was attempting to honest express my concerns and debate the issues by taking potshots, even though my remarks were not addressed to them. I expect similar remarks will be made in response to this post as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.155.21.76 (talk) 14:45, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
98, this article is the product of a lot of conversation over a long period of time. There is a lot of BS floating around out there about Monsanto (two examples of which you can find in discussions above) driven by a lot of strong negative emotion about Monsanto. I have done my best to carefully review all the statements, good and bad, in this article and revise them and their sourcing so that they are factual, neutrally stated, and reliably sourced. There is little chance, IMO, that wholesale deleting of material is going to fly here. It may be possible to edit some parts down to give them less weight, but even that will be difficult. If you want to stick around and improve the article, I recommend making incremental changes, slowly, and make sure they are very well grounded in Wikipedia policies and guidelines. With respect to the ratings by the 3 groups, I don't think the grade given by any of them is very recent - not in the past year and a half, at least. Best regards.Jytdog (talk) 15:17, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for your response. I'll take it under consideration.98.155.21.76 (talk) 15:26, 27 December 2013 (UTC)


Books

Personally I don't mind the list as it is since it isn't that lengthy. That most/all books on monsanto presumably have an overall negative image of Monsanto is not WP's problem, WP reports as it is. However if somebody wants to shorten the list a bit please pay attention to reputation of authors and publishers and of course book reviews if available. At first glance the 2 university press publications and Shiva and Robin (as well known authors) should stay in any case. Of the rest the CreateSpace publication seems to be the most appropriate candidate for a removal.--Kmhkmh (talk) 00:58, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

P.S. I also don't see reason for having to book sections ("books critical of monsanto", "bibliography"), all relevant/appropriate books should simple be listed under a neutral heading such as "bibliography" or "further reading".--Kmhkmh (talk) 01:03, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
  • I have added back the largely deleted list, and strongly suggest we discuss the books and the section in an effort to seek consensus. Thanks. Jusdafax 04:15, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
    • Personally, I feel the list is excessive, and includes some pretty dubious entries. Please don't edit-war; WP:BRD. bobrayner (talk) 05:22, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
      • Excessive and dubious are pretty vague terms. What exactly is it about the books you find objectionable, and how many do you feel it takes to be excessive? By the way that's your third revert in eight hours. Jusdafax 06:10, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
      • @bobrayner: the only "edit warring" editor here was you. I'll give you the bold edit, but then you reverted repeatedly without proper reason and without using the discussion page. That is you did exactly not what WP:BRD recommends.--Kmhkmh (talk) 07:38, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
hey guys, I don't care a lot about this issue, but I want to point out that the list was boldly added, bobraynor reverted, and the right thing to do is discuss before the list is added back. the adding-back is not kosher. The relevant policy is WP:FURTHER which is short enough to copy here: "Contents: An optional bulleted list, usually alphabetized, of a reasonable number of editor-recommended publications that would help interested readers learn more about the article subject. Editors may include brief annotations. Publications listed in Further reading are cited in the same citation style used by the rest of the article. The Further reading section should not duplicate the content of the External links section, and should normally not duplicate the content of the References section, unless the References section is too long for a reader to use as part of a general reading list. This section is not intended as a repository for general references that were used to create the article content." IMO reasonable people can differ on what a "reasonable number" is.
There seems to be possible consensus on a smaller list following Kmhkmh's recommendations, perhaps:
* Charles, Dan, "Lords of the Harvest: Biotech, Big Money, and the Future of Food" Basic Books, 2002. ISBN 073820773X
* Love, Dennis, "My City Was Gone: One American Town's Toxic Secret, Its Angry Band of Locals, and a $700 Million Day in Court" William Morrow, 2006. ISBN 0060585501
* Park, John, "The Last Farmer: How One Man Took on Monsanto to Save the Future of Food" Da Capo Press, 2013. ISBN 0306818493
  • Pechlaner, Gabriela, "Corporate Crops: Biotechnology, Agriculture, and the Struggle for Control" University of Texas Press, 2012. ISBN 0292739451
  • Spears, Ellen Griffith, "Baptized in PCBs: Race, Pollution, and Justice in an All-American Town" The University of North Carolina Press, 2014. ISBN 1469611716
* Wilcox, Brett, "We're Monsanto: Feeding the World, Lie After Lie" CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013. ISBN 1492312916
I also want to point out along with Kmhkm that the article for some reason has a "Bibliography" section at the very bottom with two other books, which I recommend we delete as they are both pretty old.
  • Forrestal, Dan J. (1977). Faith, Hope & $5000: The Story of Monsanto, Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-22784-X.
  • Monbiot, George (2000). Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain. Pan Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-330-36943-5.
can everybody live with that? Jytdog (talk) 14:11, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
It can live with that in a sense that this seems to be the bare minimum. Personally I'd probably still include Forrestal as it might contain a lot of info about the early Monsanto and might paint a less negative picture.--Kmhkmh (talk) 21:16, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
no objection to including forrestal on my part.Jytdog (talk) 22:02, 1 February 2014 (UTC)


Quick Edit

Hello, haven't done an edit before, but I felt I should let you guys know about an alteration I made to the Monsanto Inc. article. An impassioned individual edited the name area above the Monsanto infobox to read "Monsanto Inc. DEFORMING BABIES SINCE 1968 WITH AGENT ORANGE, NOW FEEDING AMERICANS THEIR CANCER INDUCING GMO FOODS! (LAB RATS HAD TUMORS, INFERTILITY, AND HIGH MORTALITY RATES AFTER CONSUMING A DIET OF MONSANTO'S GMO'S!)"

I figured this edit was in violation of NPOV thing here, so I changed it to "Monsanto Inc." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2607:EA00:104:1800:C5F4:FC1E:1FE:77F3 (talk) 22:25, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for that. You spotted it only a couple of minutes after it was added. SmartSE (talk) 22:28, 31 March 2014 (UTC)


Possible untruthful information in article regarding Saccharin

The Wikipedia article on Monsanto claims that Monsanto was started in 1901, and that their first product was Saccharin. The Wikipedia article on Saccharin claims that Saccharin was invented in the 1800s and does not once mention Monsanto. If Saccharin was invented in the 1800s, it could be that Monsanto purchased it from its inventors, but the Monsanto article makes it seem as if Saccharin was a creation of Monsanto, and if Monsanto did purchase Saccharin, why is that not mentioned in the Saccharin article on Wikipedia? The articles contradict each other, both cannot be true, and I suspect that Monsanto was not involved with Saccharin being that Saccharin was invented prior to Monsanto's existence. --72.174.176.251 (talk) 02:19, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

there is no contradiction between the articles. the saccharin article is silent on the history of the commercialization and manufacturing of saccharin - the article devotes a lot of space to saccharin's discovery and its regulation, but not to what companies made and sold saccharin, at various times. This article on Monsanto, happens to kick off with saccharin because that happened to be Monsanto's first product. Saccharin was indeed invented and patented in the 1870s and so by 1901 saccharin was off-patent and "generic" - anybody could manufacture and sell it. This article did not say that Monsanto "invented" saccharin and if you are reading the article as though it says that, that is your mistake. Most of the chemical industry at that time (and today) manufactured commodity products, and that is what Monsanto was doing. As to WP:VERIFY, this article had only one source for Monsanto's first product being saccharin, and that was Monsanto's website. In light of your question I went looking for additional support, and found three independent sources that support the fact that saccharin was Monsanto's first product, and I added content to clarify that Monsanto's first products were commodity food additives, and added those sourcesm to this article. I have no interest in the saccharin article, so if you want to develop a section on the history of its commercialization and manufacture, please feel free to develop that. Jytdog (talk) 10:11, 14 May 2014 (UTC)


New article in HuffPo

New article in HuffPo: [27]. Leaving it here for anyone's use in the article. Softlavender (talk) 00:11, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Is there any reason to consider HuffPo a reliable or neutral source? bobrayner (talk) 22:48, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
Perhaps more to the point, is there any reason not to? I am not positive but believe Huffington Post is accounted reliable as a source. I just read the article carefully and find it startling. Jusdafax 23:09, 23 June 2014 (UTC)
Violation of WP:MEDRS primarily. Basically it's a piece of activists making health claims, correlation without causation issues, etc. Seems pretty straightforward as an unreliable source for many of the claims being made in it. Kingofaces43 (talk) 00:13, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
it is a really sad and manipulative story on multiple levels (someone twisted these mothers up, then the author tries to twist up readers using the mothers. awful). but wrt this as a source, it is at base a health-related story and fails MEDRS. fails everything. Jytdog (talk) 00:02, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
The story is basically that two minor activist groups met with EPA officials to provide their views on Roundup. The story is not even by HuffPo staff, but by officers of an environmental group, which makes it an opinion piece rather than a news article, and hence may not meet reliable sources policy. Since the meeting received little if any coverage in the media, there is no reason to include it here. TFD (talk) 17:30, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

El Salvador content

Content was added by IjonTichyIjonTichy and added back by Dialectric after I reverted:Jytdog (talk) 23:06, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

"Farmers throughout El Salvador united to resist a demand in a US financial aid package to the country that would have indirectly required the purchase of Monsanto genetically modified seeds." Source: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/24811-el-salvadoran-farmers-successfully-oppose-the-use-of-monsanto-seeds

  1. I don't see Truth-Out as an appropriate source for anything in a controversial article. I would be happy to take this to RSN if that is required. You will not find other sources like that used in this article.
  2. additionally, the proposed content has the following problems:
    1. no date
    2. it is unclear what the actual event is, that is being reported (unclear in the underlying source as well)
    3. as poor as it is, the article explicitly says that "he US government has not specifically requested the government of El Salvador or local farming coops there to purchase Monsanto products".
    4. I tried to follow the actual story about where even the "indirect" pressure is documented (following the links, etc) and found nothing.

What is the actual thing that happened? Where is the actual "demand... that would have indirectly required" anything, actually documented? This all falls apart when you drill down. Jytdog (talk) 23:04, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

In fact, truth-out has been used as a source in this (Monsanto) article for some time for a statement about Haiti, and is used as a reference in a number of major and controversial articles including George W. Bush. If you believe it to be unreliable, let us discuss that further at RSN.Dialectric (talk) 23:24, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
can you answer any of the questions above? Jytdog (talk) 23:27, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
Your rationale for removal was that the source was unreliable, so lets get that out of the way first. thanks.Dialectric (talk) 23:29, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
Dialectric, the questions above go towards the reliability of the source for specific content. The main issue is that it seems like we can't WP:VERIFY what is being claimed in the source. Specifically from WP:QS: "Questionable sources are those that have a poor reputation for checking the facts, lack meaningful editorial oversight, or have an apparent conflict of interest.[8] Such sources include websites and publications expressing views that are widely considered by other sources to be extremist or promotional, or that rely heavily on unsubstantiated gossip, rumor or personal opinion. Questionable sources should only be used as sources of material on themselves, especially in articles about themselves; see below. They are not suitable sources for contentious claims about others." The lack of details Jytdog mentioned above combined with the lack of fact checking in other areas such as using "terminator" seeds to force farmers to buy seed would definitely put it under a questionable source at best. Kingofaces43 (talk) 23:42, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
Also, just as a reminder to some editors who have been reverting here, be mindful of WP:BRD, especially: "Leave the article in the condition it was in before the Bold edit was made (often called the status quo ante). When the discussion has improved understanding, attempt a new edit that may be acceptable to all participants in the discussion." Content about El Salvador was added and was removed by revert. Now isn't the time to be re-adding that content by re-revert since the content isn't status quo. Kingofaces43 (talk) 00:10, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
Kingofaces43, are you of the opinion, then, that truth-out has "a poor reputation for checking the facts, lack meaningful editorial oversight, or have an apparent conflict of interest"? On what do you base this opinion? How does this square with its use as a reference in other articles? The core quote from the article seems to be "The signing agreement was allegedly based upon the condition that El Salvador purchases GM seeds from Monsanto in conjunction with the Millennium Challenge Compact." I can understand the argument that an allegation is not strong enough to weigh inclusion, but I have not yet seen any clear evidence that truth-out is unreliable, and as above, its use in other articles suggests otherwise.Dialectric (talk) 01:56, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
I was specifically referring to the fact-checking portion of QS. If a readily debunked myth like terminator seeds being used wasn't fact checked, that does call into question the source's fact checking ability or lack thereof for this topic. However, that was second to the verifiability issues I mentioned. There are vague claims being made, and particular sources really specifying what was actually said and done aren't apparent from what I've read through so far. These two come back to to WP:QUESTIONABLE where we have views being expressed that are on the fringe side of things on terminator seeds in the article, and we have claims on the content in question here that seemed to be based more in rumor than something supported directly by sources the article is using. If Jytdog's questions can be answered, that would move the source's content beyond being just rumor or a primary source to a secondary or tertiary source. Reliability goes back to where a source is sourcing their content, and that's the question that really needs to be answered. As for other articles using the website, reliability of a source for specific content is determined on a case by case basis depending on the content being proposed. We don't make blanket statements saying a source/organization is always reliable for all content.Kingofaces43 (talk) 03:24, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

Dialectric is focusing on my broad dismissal of the source, which I am willing to withdraw as it was sloppy and broad and I will just say that it is not reliable for this content, as per my questions above. (I do contend that it is crappy to rely on a partisan source in a controversial article. Although I have been painted as a Monsanto advocate, I have never reached for the typical kinds of sources used by GMO advocates - you don't see me citing explicitly pro-GMO cites. Instead, I reach for NY Times and other mainstream, reliable sources...Dialectric and IjonTichyIjonTichy, are there other sources for this content that we could use? (I started looking but the article is so thin on actual hard facts that I had hard time finding anything to substantiate... again - what is the actual event being reported? I also want to note that this content has nothing to do with Monsanto per se - it is not about something they did or haven't done. Jytdog (talk) 10:27, 9 July 2014 (UTC) (copyedit for clarity with underlined text Jytdog (talk) 18:22, 9 July 2014 (UTC))

The story is in the New York Times (Malkin, Elizabeth, "El Salvador Ends Dispute With U.S. Over Seeds", 3 July 2014) The U.S. government held back the $277 million Millennium Challenge Corporation aid package because it claimed El Salvador prevented U.S. companies (he article names Monsanto) from providing seeds, saying that the El Salvador government was acting contrary to CAFTA.[28] On its website, Monsanto denies the "U.S. government is pressuring El Salvador to purchase genetically modified (GMO) seeds from U.S. agricultural companies, particularly Monsanto."[29]
The disputed text is "Farmers throughout El Salvador united to resist a demand in a US financial aid package to the country that would have indirectly required the purchase of Monsanto genetically modified seeds." (I note that the wording is so similar to the first sentence in the truthout article that it is a "copyright violation".
To me, the issue is not reliable sources, but "weight". While the effect of the U.S. action is to force El Salvador to buy GMO crops for its subsistence farmers, the State Department and Monsanto put a different spin on it, which should be presented. The truthout article was published before Monsanto responded and so did not included their side. But more importantly we should not be including news that has been sparsely reported. While I think the mainstream media should have given more attention to the story, and interviewed experts, the fact is that they did not. In the course of time, academic sources may carry the story in greater detail, which would warrant its inclusion.
TFD (talk) 14:50, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
Nice find, on the NYT article! Wrt to Monsanto, what the NY Times article says is "In 2012, the Salvadoran government excluded foreign seed companies from a program known as the Family Farming Plan in an effort to encourage local producers. A subsidiary of Monsanto, the world’s largest seed company, had been a major supplier." There is nothing there that says that a) the subsidiary was selling only GM seeds or any GMO seeds at all (Monsanto and its subsidiaries sell lots of non-GMO seeds); b) what other US companies were affected - it says only that the Monsanto subsidary was "a major" supplier, not the only one. I note further that as of July 2013 you cannot grow GM crops in El Salvador - they have no regulatory framework to allow that. (see here). Also, according to this letter, the Monsanto subsidiary doing business in El Salvador is "Semillas Cristiani Burkard" which Monsanto bought in 2008; it sells hybrid (not GMO) and conventional seed. The truthout article and the proposed content are just sloppy exaggeration that falls apart when you run it to ground. Jytdog (talk) 15:16, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

edits by Amytecko

Amytecko made a set of changes in these difs. I reverted, and amytecko asked me on my Talk page why. I will go ahead and explain, (although as per WP:BRD it is for the one being bold, to open discussion!)

  • Article already says "Monsanto spent $8.1 million opposing the passage of Proposition 37 in the US state of California, making it the largest donor against the initiative" and amytecko added "and subsequently spent "$46 million to persuade Californians of the demerits of Proposition 37."
    • Problem: First, the added content contradicts what was already there. Secondly, the source that amytecko brought says "Monsanto and other firms shelled out $46 million". This is what other sources also say. The added content is not true. Reverted.
  • amytecko added "Monsanto is listed as a member of the Grocery Manufacturers Association. (source: articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/01/28/gma-evil-corporation.aspx [unreliable fringe source?])
    • Issue: mercola.com is not a reliable source for anything on Wikipedia, except what mercola.com believes. Please feel free to verify that on WP:RSN.
Problem: This has nothing to do with Monsanto per se. It does have to do with Regulation of the release of genetically modified organisms and this content is already there.

There you go. Jytdog (talk) 20:57, 4 August 2014 (UTC)


Archives

Something is wrong here: all the 2014 links go to 2013 archives. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:34, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Fixed. The template in the archive box was just using the wrong year number. --McGeddon (talk) 10:39, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
thanks for noticing and fixing that! I noticed yesterday that there was no index for the 2014 discussions and realized that the way archiving is set up we have to manually create the index each year. I copied the template and changed only one "2013" to "2014" - my bad. Jytdog (talk) 11:49, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
Thank you! Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:57, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
  1. ^ Case,Adams."Many Countries Ban GMO Crops, Require GE Food Labels."Real Natural.Web.Dec 13.
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