Even as it bombards the airwaves and magazine ad pages to tout its commitment to “sustainable agriculture,” GMO seed giant Monsanto has been having a rough go on the PR front of late.

First came a report
(PDF) from the Organic Center showing that the company’s core Round Up
Ready products have sparked a veritable monsoon of herbicide use.
According to the report, since the introduction of “herbicide tolerant”
corn, soy, and cotton in 1996, farmers have sprayed 382.6 million more
pounds of herbicides than they otherwise would have—the overwhelming
bulk of it Monsanto’s “Roundup” brand glyphosate.

And the gusher is only growing larger. As farmers have come to
increasingly rely on Roundup applications, glyphosate-resistant
superweeds are spreading—inspiring farmers to both spray more Roundup
and add other toxic chemicals to create herbicide cocktails. “Herbicide
use on [herbicide-tolerant] crops rose a remarkable 31.4% from 2007 to
2008,” the report states.

Now
that’s sustainable agriculture!

Meanwhile, Monsanto’s dominance over the GMO seed market—and thus
over U.S. corn, soy, and cotton production—has become so intense and
obvious that “U.S. Department of Justice lawyers are seeking documents
and interviewing company employees about its marketing practices,” AP reports.

The DOJ is also gearing up
for a public workshop on competition in the seed industry, to be held
in Iowa next March 10. The workshops, designed to hear farmer concerns
over consolidation in the agriculture industry, will be co-directed by
the Department of Agriculture. If U.S. authorities actually did crack
down on companies that use their market power to squeeze farmers, it
would would mark an epochal shift in antitrust policy, as Barry C. Lynn
shows in this classic 2006
Harper’s essay.