GM Crop Producer Monsanto Using Data Analytics To Expand Its Footprint 128
Nerval's Lobster writes "Monsanto is more infamous for growing its genetically modified crops than its use of software, but a series of corporate acquisitions and a new emphasis on tech solutions has transformed it into a firm that acts more like an innovative IT vendor than an agribusiness giant. Jim McCarter (the Entrepreneur in Residence for Monsanto) recently detailed for an audience in St. Louis how the company's IT efforts are expanding. Monsanto's core projects generate huge amounts of bits, especially its genomic efforts, which are the focus of so much public attention. Other big data gobblers are the phenotypes of millions of DNA structures that describe the various biological properties of each plant, and the photographic imagery of crop fields. (All told, there are several tens of petabytes that need storage and analysis, a number that's doubling roughly every 16 months.) With all that tech muscle, the company has launched IT-based initiatives such as its FieldScripts software, which uses proprietary algorithms (fed with data from the FieldScripts Testing Network and Monsanto research) to recommend where to best plant corn hybrids. 'Just like Amazon has its recommendation engine for what book to buy, we will have our recommendations of what and how a grower should plant a particular crop,' said McCarter. 'All fields aren't uniform and shouldn't be planted uniformly either.' Despite its increasingly sophisticated use of data analytics in the name of greater crop yields, however, Monsanto faces pushback from various groups with an aversion to genetically modified food; a current ballot initiative in Washington State, for example, could result in genetically modified foods needing a label in order to go on sale here. The company has also inspired a 'March Against Monsanto,' which has been much in the news lately."
Re:Farmer types, a question for you (Score:5, Informative)
Why stick to a single crop and not rotate like days of old?
What makes you think that modern farmers don't rotate crops? I grew up on a farm. My parents and all my neighbors rotated crops regularly, and still do.
Re:schitzophrenic summary. (Score:4, Informative)
Quite frankly the beef(s) *I* have is that is with suing farmers whose crops show the "patented" gene through cross pollination
Perhaps before you have a "beef" with someone, you should spend a few minutes looking at the facts. This mythology about Monsanto suing farmers for cross pollination comes up regularly on Slashdot, and no one is ever able to cite a single case of Monsanto actually suing anyone for that sort of unintentional infringement.
Re:Farmer types, a question for you (Score:2, Informative)
Why stick to a single crop and not rotate like days of old?
Because we feel like it? What's it to you?
Different crops take different nutrients from the soil. Rotation allows the soil to recover, leaving it fallow allows further recovery and feeds livestock. This has been known for around 700 years, and was the case until a few decades ago. So, other than lining chemical companies' pockets, adding back what's been over-farmed, it's worth asking those that actually know what they're talking about.
Re:great (Score:2, Informative)
Non-GM foods that come through random mutation via evolution have been tested... over millions of years tested.
Except that evolution doesn't select for plants that are deliciously edible and nutritious. It selects for the opposite: plants that use poisons, bitter tastes, or other strategies to avoid being eaten.
This is actually a misconception. The reason that many plants produce "deliciously edible and nutritious" fruit is that they use the animal eating the fruit to spread the seeds (critter eats fruit, goes somewhere, seeds leave the digestive system). This is where most of our food crops come from, and why we use them as food crops in the first place. Bitter and poisonous plants either use another method to spread their seeds, like having them blow away in the wind, or use the taste and poison to select which animal spreads it's seeds, like how the capsaicin in peppers is painful for a small mammal to eat, but does nothing to birds, meaning birds would eat the peppers, and spread their seeds farther than a small mammal could.
GE food labeling news... (Score:4, Informative)
TFA mentions that Washington state has a ballot initiative to label genetically engineered foods. Perhaps more importantly, Connecticut just passed a labeling law (http://grist.org/news/connecticut-will-label-gmos-if-you-do-too/).
The Connecticut bill includes a crucial requirement: the labeling requirement won’t actually go into effect until similar legislation is passed by at least four other states, one of which borders Connecticut.
Also note that 37 labeling proposals have been introduced in 21 states so far this year.
Re:Farmer types, a question for you (Score:5, Informative)
Most corn acreage isn't rotated sustainably. 30% of U.S. cropland is planted in Corn, and there are counties in the U.S. where corn has been planted on 64% of the acres for 4 or 5 out of 5 years (source = satellite data analysis by USDA). 5% to 10% is the maximum acreage in the U.S. that should be planted in corn at any one time. Corn planted year after year degrades the soil, and results in much greater use of fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation water and other inputs. As corn is one of the least-efficient at utilizing fertilizer, about 2/3rds of the fertilizer runs off into waterways, creating all kinds of problems that farmers say are just not their problem.
Crop rotation systems are scalable and work well, however the U.S. subsidizes commodity corn in various ways (crop subsidies, insurance subsidies, demand mandates such as the Ethanol mandate which as 40% of our corn production going to ethanol, etc). But there are basically no subsidies for livestock, which are essential for sustainable agriculture. See the Union of Concerned Scientists recent report at http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/solutions/advance-sustainable-agriculture/healthy-farm-vision.html .
Scientists get it. Consumers get it. The only people who don't seem to get it are those who are captive to the system and benefit from the externalized costs such as pollution and the loss of topsoil...which won't effect this year's Profit and Loss statement, but will affect all our children. Buy local, support farmers who are using sustainable agriculture, support a level playing field for federal subsidies (either eliminate them or at least make them support sustainable agriculture) and call B.S. on those that say monocropping is the only way to feed the world. The only people it feeds are their short-term shareholders.
Re:Farmer types, a question for you (Score:4, Informative)
For the last 4 years I have lived right next to two crop fields that are worked, but not owned, by a local family that has been farming here for many generations. They have never rotated crops in the time I've been here. One field is always corn, and the other is always squash. Every year they plow in fertilizer, flood irrigate, and spray who-knows-what on everything. What's more, they rarely harvest any of it. At the end of harvest, they always tell us we are welcome to pick whatever we want. Did that once and never did it again; everything was completely flavorless. Then they plow it all under and do it again the next year!
I can think of only two possible reasons for this behavior. One is that they would lose subsidies and the land owner would lose tax discounts if they don't grow anything on the land. The other is the big increase in deportations since Obama got in office and tougher state level regulations have made getting farm labor to pick stuff more difficult.
With millions of pounds of food uneaten and wasted every day around the world, I don't think crop yield is a problem. Economics and logistics are the problems in getting food from the field to the people that need it, when they need it. The business model of companies like Monsanto, getting rid of small local farmers in favor of big industrial farms and prosecuting seed savers, makes those problems worse, not better.
Re:Farmer types, a question for you (Score:4, Informative)
In fact I do. I farm roughly 3000 acres. We religiously stick to a 4 year rotation. Spring wheat, Canola, Winter Wheat, Legume. Any tighter of a rotation leads to massive disease problems (which, by the way, have nothing to do with GMO crops). My rotations are limited by several factors: soil type, total heat units, availability of water, labor, and most importantly, machinery investment. There are some crops I simply cannot grow because they would lead to massive soil erosion either in spring before the crop overs the ground and in the winter when only residue is left. Other crops I can't grow because they are too labor intensive for my operation. I currently don't have any row-crop equipment, so that precludes beats, potatoes,corn, etc. But my current equipment allows just a small number of people to effectively manage the crops I do grow.
In days of old, in my area, rotation really wasn't possible at all because it was too dry to grow anything but wheat and rye. Now with high-efficiency irrigation, everything from corn, potatoes beans, peas, wheat, canola, onions, dill, mint, and many other crops are grown. On a large scale, there is now more diversity in crops in my area than there ever was. However, these crops are grown in large fields (no smaller than 130 acres), so that leads to local monoculture, and also a difficulty in controlling weeds.
I do happily grow roundup-ready canola, and sometimes soybeans. I have relatively few qualms (except those I list below) with growing roundup-resistant broad-leafed crops. However roundup-ready wheats or grasses would be a very bad thing. The reason is that broadleaf weeds are easy to control with standard, relatively benign chemicals even if they are resistant to round-up, whereas grassy weeds not so much, especially wild oats. Likewise, I strongly oppose the current research into 24D-resistant soybeans because such plants, when volunteer weeds, would be much more difficult to control.
Re:Farmer types, a question for you (Score:4, Informative)
Excellent points. Sometimes I forget how things are down there in the corn belt. Even here in Canada, my neighbors to the east (next province over) are now starting to come to terms with the consequences of not rotating Canola like they should.
Just to help people understand why crop rotation is often cheated on, consider that corn is a very lucrative crop. Soybeans, the second choice, is about 2/3 of the profit of corn. And wheat is possibly 1/2 of corn. A heavily-leveraged farm is going to be sorely tempted to to maximize short-term profits. Yes it will come crashing down eventually.
On my farm, multiplying seed canola brings me more than double the income per acre of any of my other crops. We joke about rotating snow canola snow canola, but we know we can't do that and so we have to be careful and plan things out as best we can. We constantly look for alternate crops to try, that we can grow with our current equipment. Some work out, some don't. This year we're trying dry beans and faba beans.