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Monsanto

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Microeconomics Term Paper The topic of my paper that i have chosen to write about involves the agricultural industry, as it stands today, and the trend that has been taking place over the last couple of decades in the industry. More specifically companies like Monsanto, DuPont, and Dow and their growing takeover and market power of the industry in the United States and globally. As we learned in class compared to other industries like the automobile industry or steel industry, the agricultural industry best meets the characteristics of perfect competition. Though this is probably true as far as selling produce to grocery stores and consumers directly, my focus is on the seed supply that farmers are using to produce things like soybeans, corn and cotton. My interest in this topic stems from articles and news that i had caught my attention. I first heard of Monsanto in regards to large numbers of farmers committing suicide over in India. Since 1995 nearly 300,000 Indian farmers had committed suicide because of insurmountable debt due largely to the introduction of Monsantos (bt) cotton in the country. The (bt) refers to bacillus thuringienis, which contains 200 different proteins which naturally produce chemicals harmful to sellective insects. This is considered genetically modified seed and Monsanto has patent technology on this seed. During this period of "suicide economy" in India there was an increase in price per kilogram of cotton seeds from 7 to 17000 rupees. From this story i had read a little on Monsanto and learned that they were actually the producer of the lethal defoliant, Agent Orange, stemming from the Vietnam War. On top of questions regarding how a company specializing in chemicals made the transition into the agricultural industry, i also wanted to know why so many farmers in the United States had such a distain for the giant company that

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