Monsanto Company Summary

Words: 1785
Pages: 8

Company’s Background

Founded in 1901, Monsanto Company is a publicly traded American multinational agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology corporation headquartered in Creve Coeur, Greater St. Louis, Missouri. The Monsanto Company, along with its subsidiaries, is a leading global producer of agricultural products for farmers, genetically engineered (OGM) seed and glyphosate-based herbicides, primarily through its Roundup® brand. It sells 90 percent of the world's genetically engineered seeds. The Seeds and Genomics segment of the company produces leading seed brands, including DEKALB (corn seed), Asgrow (soybean), Deltapine (cotton), Seminis, and De Ruiter (both are vegetable seeds).
The company is also a worldwide distribution, sales, and marketing company for seeds, Crop protection chemicals biotechnology trait products, and herbicides that enable crops to protect themselves from borers and rootworm in corn, certain lepidopteran insects in soybeans, and leaf- and boll-feeding worms in cotton, reducing the need for applications of insecticides. Plus, they enable crops, such as corn, soybeans, cotton and canola, to be tolerant of Roundup and other glyphosate-based herbicides they produce. Through distributors, independent retailers and dealers, agricultural cooperatives,
…show more content…
Protesters, members of farmer unions, and environmental non-profit organizations accused the company to fight efforts in states all over the country to mandate the labeling of GM foods; that organic crops were being polluted by GM pollen blown in on the wind, only for Monsanto to sue the organic farmers for intellectual-property theft; that Monsanto had developed a “Terminator” gene that made crops sterile. What’s more, some studies have found a connection between the colony collapse die-off of honeybees and a common class of insecticides called neonicotinoids incorporated into some of MONSANTO seed