Disney version of the Monsanto Corporation story please.
December 17, 2009 1:25 PM Subscribe
How would you explain to an 8 year old the practices of Monsanto?
Basically need a kids-friendly, Disney / fairy tale / bedtime story version of Monsanto Corporation without mentioning the farmer suicides and keeping the politics to a minimum.
Basically need a kids-friendly, Disney / fairy tale / bedtime story version of Monsanto Corporation without mentioning the farmer suicides and keeping the politics to a minimum.
They make changes to the corn and soybeans that let them grow where there's less water, or make bugs like to eat them less. This helps farmers grow more food so that we can eat it. Some people don't like them because they charge farmers a lot of money.
posted by chrisamiller at 1:33 PM on December 17, 2009 [1 favorite]
posted by chrisamiller at 1:33 PM on December 17, 2009 [1 favorite]
Monsanto is a large company that engages in many "practices." To which practices are you referring?
posted by jingzuo at 1:45 PM on December 17, 2009
posted by jingzuo at 1:45 PM on December 17, 2009
Best answer: I would put it like this:
Start by explaining simply how growing something like corn used to work--plant seed, wait for the seed to grow, harvest at the end of the year and save part of what you've harvested to plant next year.
Scientists can make seeds that grow plants that are better for crops in a lot of different ways. The companies those scientists work for are considered to own those new types of crops. The new crops are very nice, and they can do a lot to keep poor people from being hungry.
But in order to use those new seeds, farmers can't save them each year. They have to buy them new every year, or else they're called criminals. And sometimes those plants spread into neighboring farmer's fields, and that makes those farmers criminals, too if those farmers don't buy the special seeds. And the company watching to be sure its seeds aren't saved means that nobody else can save seeds, either, even if they aren't using those special seeds.
So there are good things--the special seeds--and bad things--the way farmers have less freedom to work the way they want to, both of which come from the same company. The good things can still be good if we disagree with the way the company behaves, and we're doing X, Y, and Z because we want the company to know we don't like it.
posted by larkspur at 1:56 PM on December 17, 2009 [9 favorites]
Start by explaining simply how growing something like corn used to work--plant seed, wait for the seed to grow, harvest at the end of the year and save part of what you've harvested to plant next year.
Scientists can make seeds that grow plants that are better for crops in a lot of different ways. The companies those scientists work for are considered to own those new types of crops. The new crops are very nice, and they can do a lot to keep poor people from being hungry.
But in order to use those new seeds, farmers can't save them each year. They have to buy them new every year, or else they're called criminals. And sometimes those plants spread into neighboring farmer's fields, and that makes those farmers criminals, too if those farmers don't buy the special seeds. And the company watching to be sure its seeds aren't saved means that nobody else can save seeds, either, even if they aren't using those special seeds.
So there are good things--the special seeds--and bad things--the way farmers have less freedom to work the way they want to, both of which come from the same company. The good things can still be good if we disagree with the way the company behaves, and we're doing X, Y, and Z because we want the company to know we don't like it.
posted by larkspur at 1:56 PM on December 17, 2009 [9 favorites]
Also, it's really cool that we can make seeds and plants grow in different ways [feed people in drought areas, yada yada]. But plants are just one part of our world and ecosystem. Animals eat plants and then we eat animals. Some plants grow best around other plants, and some plants require special conditions or else they can't reproduce naturally like [God, nature, the FSM] intended.
So when we change how that plant grows, or what it does or tastes like, it has an effect on all of the other living things around it.
posted by Madamina at 2:35 PM on December 17, 2009
So when we change how that plant grows, or what it does or tastes like, it has an effect on all of the other living things around it.
posted by Madamina at 2:35 PM on December 17, 2009
Best answer: Since humans learned how to grow food -- in other words, for thousands and thousands of years -- people have saved seeds from one year's crop in order to plant the next year's crop. That's how we've survived, like, forever. But Monsanto came along and started making seeds that would make plants this year but wouldn't grow next year. And then they pushed out all the other companies so that the only seeds that people in poor countries could by were these seeds that would only work for one year. They did it so that the poor people would have to buy new seeds from them year after year after year, and so Monsanto could make money off of the poor people who were growing their own food in order to survive.
posted by mudpuppie at 2:51 PM on December 17, 2009 [4 favorites]
posted by mudpuppie at 2:51 PM on December 17, 2009 [4 favorites]
You could also tell them that without the money coming from the sale of these seeds, the groundbreaking biological research that went into making better plants would have never been possible: there is a reason Monsanto is taking money from the farmers. And that Monsanto is not the only company doing this kind of work work, but despite all the competition it has one of the lowest profit to research ratios in the industry.
posted by halogen at 3:45 PM on December 17, 2009
posted by halogen at 3:45 PM on December 17, 2009
Get a tin of old-time wooden Lincoln Logs, and some Lego building blocks.
Have him play with the Lincoln Logs for a while. Then offer the Legos. Tell him if he uses the Lincoln Logs, he can't use them with the Legos, and must keep them separate, and for each bag of Legos he uses, he has to give up one his toys as payment. Then tell him he only gets the Legos for a month, and his toys aren't coming back.
Tell him can make his own Lincoln Logs from wood, but he can't make his own Legos.
Then tell him that there is a small possibility that the Legos might hurt someone he loves, and this is just a ploy to get all his toys.
On second thought, this is a poorly thought out answer, and will probably just mess him up a lot down the road, and this is just reminding me of a Jack Handey 'Deep Thought' -
One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my little nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. "Oh, no," I said. "Disneyland burned down." He cried and cried, but I think that deep down, he thought it was a pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but it was getting pretty late.
posted by chambers at 5:41 PM on December 17, 2009
Have him play with the Lincoln Logs for a while. Then offer the Legos. Tell him if he uses the Lincoln Logs, he can't use them with the Legos, and must keep them separate, and for each bag of Legos he uses, he has to give up one his toys as payment. Then tell him he only gets the Legos for a month, and his toys aren't coming back.
Tell him can make his own Lincoln Logs from wood, but he can't make his own Legos.
Then tell him that there is a small possibility that the Legos might hurt someone he loves, and this is just a ploy to get all his toys.
On second thought, this is a poorly thought out answer, and will probably just mess him up a lot down the road, and this is just reminding me of a Jack Handey 'Deep Thought' -
One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my little nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. "Oh, no," I said. "Disneyland burned down." He cried and cried, but I think that deep down, he thought it was a pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but it was getting pretty late.
posted by chambers at 5:41 PM on December 17, 2009
But Monsanto came along and started making seeds that would make plants this year but wouldn't grow next year.
Non-reproductive hybrid seeds have been around for a long time, FYI.
posted by delmoi at 5:58 PM on December 17, 2009
Non-reproductive hybrid seeds have been around for a long time, FYI.
posted by delmoi at 5:58 PM on December 17, 2009
More than just saving seeds, people have been breeding all kinds of new varieties of plants for thousands of years. I mean: broccoli and cabbage and kale are all the same species and were bred from the same wild mustard plant.
Farmers are lured in by Monsanto's promises of technologically superior seeds -- promises which don't always pan out -- and in the process lose their traditional seed resources and knowledge. You can't legally save these seeds, nor breed new varieties based on them. Traditional breeding is abandoned in favor of the supposedly superior patented seeds. So it comes to be that the role of "making better plants" is taken upon by companies like Monsanto and away from the community.
It's not just the ability to save your own seeds that is lost, but also the knowledge and ability to create new varieties, and the diversity of existing seed varieties. Instead of the hundreds or thousands of varieties available locally and cheaply to farmers, farmers are left with a choice of only a handful of varieties bred by a handful of companies.
posted by parudox at 7:10 PM on December 17, 2009 [1 favorite]
Farmers are lured in by Monsanto's promises of technologically superior seeds -- promises which don't always pan out -- and in the process lose their traditional seed resources and knowledge. You can't legally save these seeds, nor breed new varieties based on them. Traditional breeding is abandoned in favor of the supposedly superior patented seeds. So it comes to be that the role of "making better plants" is taken upon by companies like Monsanto and away from the community.
It's not just the ability to save your own seeds that is lost, but also the knowledge and ability to create new varieties, and the diversity of existing seed varieties. Instead of the hundreds or thousands of varieties available locally and cheaply to farmers, farmers are left with a choice of only a handful of varieties bred by a handful of companies.
posted by parudox at 7:10 PM on December 17, 2009 [1 favorite]
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posted by Gungho at 1:33 PM on December 17, 2009 [2 favorites]