My organic garden, 2009

[GeneW]

Originally Posted by BailOut

AFAIK Monsanto doesn't sell seeds in the consumer segment, just their newest flagship pesticide, Roundup (their previous flagship product was Agent Orange and we all know how that turned out).

That's non-sense, Brian. Agent Orange and Roundup are as different as gasoline and ethanol. What's more, glyphosphides are now available in "generic" forms, which kind of demonstrates their age on the market.

Agent Orange (a blend of the agents 2,4,5 T and 2,4 T) was produced by Dow Chemical and Dupont, not Monsanto. The most toxic part of it was not really part of the specified chemicals but was the product of an unwanted "side reaction", that produced "dioxin". Sloppy processes, probably because of the volume needed for LBJ's dirty little war, lead to dioxin being sprayed onto US troops, Vietnamese people and vast areas of Viet Nam. This came to light when a producer of 2,4,5 T had a thermal issue, lost control, and contaminated areas of Italy with dioxin. At that point Dow and Dupont couldn't bluff and BS their way out of it.

Roundup is one of the "glyphosphide" class of herbicides. The stuff is used as part of a "no-till" mode of agriculture that reduces soil erosion. There is no way in hell that farmers could put Agent Orange on crop lands due to its persistence. Monsanto loves the stuff because they can market "Roundup resistant" seeds to farmers.

The two do not even share the same mode of attack - Agent Orange burns out plants by forcing them to over grow. Roundup interferes with protein synthesis.

I've never seen Monsanto seeds for non-commercial sales but I would not be surprised if they have a consumer division out there. Monsanto is sneaky.

Gene