Why Is Monsanto the Most Hated Company in the World?

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/06/08/why-is-monsanto-the-most-hated-company-in-the-worl/

What is GMO?
You probably know something about GMOs, which stands for genetically modified organisms, since it's as closely associated with Monsanto as "IRS" is with taxes. The popular definition of a GMO is (according to Wikipedia) "an organism whose genetic material has been altered using genetic engineering techniques." If you want to get pedantic about this definition, humankind has been genetically modifying organisms ever since the first nomads settled down to grow crops, since virtually nothing we eat today is the same exact plant or animal (or Twinkie) it was 10,000 years ago. But that's not why everyone's afraid of Monsanto. Monsanto is scary because -- in the eyes of detractors -- it's compressing 10,000 years of genetic adaptations into 10 years of mad science.


Fear of a mod planet
A quick search of "GMO" will turn up all sorts of scaremonger websites, with all sorts of frightening claims that when you eat a Monsanto-developed crop, you're consigning yourself to a short, sickly life of gastrointestinal (or just general) agony. Cancer, allergic reactions, liver problems, sterility, and even the unnatural modification of your genes -- these are just the claims I found on the website of the Institute for Responsible Technology, which purports to be a leading anti-GMO advocacy group. I won't go into some of the anti-Monsanto conspiracy theories you'll find bandied about on less reputable corners of the Internet.
It may not be easy to debunk all of these claims, but thanks to extensive national medical records, we can at least see how close to the mark they may strike. Since America was the earliest adopter of GMO foodstuffs, and is now the world's predominant grower and consumer of GMO crops, it should be experiencing the worst of the purported GMO health problems.
Are we more cancerous today than we were in 1996? Actually, not by a long shot:

Source: National Cancer Institute, SEER Cancer Statistics Review 1975-2010.

The results are even more pronounced when focusing on cancers of the stomach, colon, and rectum, which all show a persistent and significant downtrend throughout the entire tracked period across race and gender divisions. If we're eating ourselves to death, shouldn't our digestive systems be the most damaged by these Frankenfoods? Cancer statistics don't back up anti-GMO claims at all, and with more than 16 years in the food supply, you'd expect there to be a statistically significant change. The one statistically significant spike on these graphs, occurring around 1990, is often blamed


Economic benefits?
There has to be a reason farmers keep using GMOs. The most obvious would be that the end product -- that is, the stuff you eventually eat -- would yield more per planting (that is, per acre), which should result in lower costs at the consumer level. To the extent that this is true, it can't be credited to the adoption of GMO seed, as yield improvements and price declines began long before Monsanto got into the seed business:

Source: Prof. Mark J. Perry. 

Soybean yields haven't grown quite as impressively but have still doubled on a per-acre basis over the same time frame. Cotton yields have also soared over the past several decades. GMO crops had nothing to do with it -- old-fashioned hybridization, improved production techniques and infrastructures, and the spread of these two important developments around the world created a modern agricultural revolution after the Second World War. GMO crops might be in the process of extending that revolution today, but they may not. Few processes are so simple that a simple tweaking of one element can completely explain a change in another.
GMOs can't claim to have reduced crop costs through efficiency gains, either. Since commercial introduction in 1996, two of the three major crops planted have nearly doubled in price:

US Producer Price Index: Farm Products: Soybeans data by YCharts

Ultimately, this is probably good for farmers, but bad for everyone else. Not only are you buying Frankenfoods that will wreck your health, but you're also paying twice as much for the privilege. Agriculture can be so cruel. (Yes, that was tongue-in-cheek.)
Monsanto itself claims that GMOs benefit farmers through increased yield, greater insect and disease protection, and drought and heat resistance. The modified crops also conserve the soil, minimize the use of herbicides, and reduce the energy used in the growing process.
I've already shown that yields have been increasing for decades, so Monsanto is at best merely continuing a long-running trend, and at worst piggybacking on other improvements to make disingenuous claims. Herbicides and fertilizers have shipped in more than 35% greater quantities this year over the volumes seen in 1996. Fertilizer, as you might expect, is one significant part of increasing crop yields. Since fertilizers are quite energy-intensive to make (many are derived from natural gas) and can be damaging to soil quality over time, this one factor tends to disprove a number of Monsanto's claims:

US Pesticide, Fertilizer, and Other Agricultural Chemical Manufacturing Shipments data by YCharts.

The increased use of herbicide designed to work with GMOs (and vice versa) appears to be creating strains of "superweeds" that actively resist the chemicals. Nature tends not to sit idly by while scientists try to pound it into submission. The long-term consequences of an arms race between chemical-cum-GMO producers and the invasive species they want to push out of farm fields could very possibly result in damages beyond the circumstantial ones I've already highlighted.
The only real claim that I can't disprove (or at least weigh down with caveats) is that of drought and heat resistance, mostly because it's not easy to find data on the claim in either direction. Reducing water use is no small feat in a world quite obviously enduring a period of abnormal heat and drought. However, this alone can't answer for the fact that something should be done about widespread droughts beyond the creation of GMOs that drink just a little bit less water -- particularly if these GMOs result in the indirect use of more water by herbicide-resistant weeds.


How do you solve a problem like Monsanto?
It's tempting to reduce complex issues into outraged sound bites, like "GMOs are killing people!" or "GMOs are feeding the world!" The truth, as always, isn't quite so easy.
The threat of tainted food -- whether by chemicals or through genetic manipulation -- is a cause that arouses outrage at a pitch few other causes will ever muster. The threat of a shadowy corporation with its fingers buried in the heart of our food supply only heightens this outrage, and Monsanto's heavy-handed efforts at control have done nothing to soften its public image. However, the science of GMOs has been carried out in a highly ideological way on both sides, which doesn't help when all you want is the truth.
It seems that GMOs will inevitably become a larger part of our food supply, because the corporate motivator in the United States has proved to be stronger than the citizen motivator in recent years. A few protests won't change that. It will take concerted, long-running national efforts to change diets and attitudes before Monsanto and its peers are forced to loosen their grip on American farmlands. If you choose to be one of the people on the vanguard of that effort, make sure that you understand the science as it is, and not as you'd like it to be.
Are we less healthy today than we were two decades ago? It's possible, even though most of the statistics don't show that. Is it all Monsanto's fault? Probably not.