Seed Money, Bartow J. Elmore
Seed Money, Bartow J. Elmore
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Seed Money
Monsanto's Past and Our Food Future

Author: Bartow J. Elmore

Narrator: Sean Patrick Hopkins

Unabridged: 10 hr 16 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/12/2021


Synopsis

An authoritative and eye-opening history that examines how Monsanto came to have outsized influence over our food system.

Monsanto, a St. Louis chemical firm that became the world’s largest maker of genetically engineered seeds, merged with German pharma-biotech giant Bayer in 2018—but its Roundup Ready® seeds, introduced twenty-five years ago, are still reshaping the farms that feed us.
 
When researchers found trace amounts of the firm’s blockbuster herbicide in breakfast cereal bowls, Monsanto faced public outcry. Award-winning historian Bartow J. Elmore shows how the Roundup story is just one of the troubling threads of Monsanto’s past, many told here and woven together for the first time.
 
A company employee sitting on potentially explosive information who weighs risking everything to tell his story. A town whose residents are urged to avoid their basements because Monsanto’s radioactive waste laces their homes’ foundations. Factory workers who peel off layers of their skin before accepting cash bonuses to continue dirty jobs. An executive wrestling with the ethics of selling a profitable product he knew was toxic.
 
Incorporating global fieldwork, interviews with company employees, and untapped corporate and government records, Elmore traces Monsanto’s astounding evolution from a scrappy chemical startup to a global agribusiness powerhouse. Monsanto used seed money derived from toxic products—including PCBs and Agent Orange—to build an agricultural empire, promising endless bounty through its genetically engineered technology.
 
Skyrocketing sales of Monsanto’s new Roundup Ready system stunned even those in the seed trade, who marveled at the influx of cash and lavish incentives into their sleepy sector. But as new data emerges about the Roundup system, and as Bayer faces a tide of lawsuits over Monsanto products past and present, Elmore’s urgent history shows how our food future is still very much tethered to the company’s chemical past.

About The Author

Bartow J. Elmore teaches environmental and business history at The Ohio State University. For Seed Money, he received the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award and a New America fellowship. He lives with his family in Columbus, Ohio.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Tristan

Seed money is the second book I’ve read on Monsanto, the first was The World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Corruption, and the Control of the World's Food Supply. This book is better in that it takes a more balanced view of genetic engineering and is more readable in places. It does however comp......more

Goodreads review by Katie

Summary: This was an incredible look at how the history of a powerful corporation shaped the world we live in today. I recently read The Monsanto Papers, a book that primarily focused on the first court case to result in a judgement against Monsanto for selling the carcinogenic herbicide RoundUp.......more

Goodreads review by Margie

Absolutely infuriating. I come away hating Monsanto even more than I had previously, which is saying something. Decades of refusing to accept responsibility for poisoning workers in their chemical plants, poisoning people with their Agent Orange, for cleaning up Superfund sites, and for creating dep......more

Goodreads review by Mark

this book is very well written and researched. It gives a very detailed history on Monsanto and it’s troubles throughout it’s existence. It’s incredible how much harm a Company can inflict on civilization and face no retribution. It’s interesting to me that Company’s are viewed almost as their own i......more