 Welcome and thank you for joining the New America Fellows Program for this discussion of Bart Elmore's Seed Money, Monsanto's Past and Our Food of Future. I'm Marcia Chatlin, class of 2017. I'm an Eric and Wendy Schmidt fellow and the author of Franchise, The Golden Arches in Black America. Before we start a few housekeeping notes, if you have questions during the event, please submit them to the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen and we'll get to them in the second half of the event. Most importantly, copies of Seed Money are available for purchase through our bookselling partner Solid State Books. You can find a link to buy the book on this page, just click buy the book. And it's my pleasure to introduce my New America classmate as well as my colleague in the field of history, Bart O. J. Elmore, who was a fellow in 2017 and 2018 and teaches environmental and business history at the Ohio State University. For Seed Money, he received the J. Anthony Lucas Work in Progress Award, as well as a New America Fellowship. His first book about Coca-Cola is an exploration as well and he lives with his family in Columbus, Ohio. Welcome Bart and congratulations on your new book. It's a pleasure to be with a friend as well as a colleague and also a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, what a great chance to talk with such an awesome scholar as well. So thank you for doing this with me. Absolutely. So I'm a big fan of your work and I wanted to make sure I got the correct title of your first book, Citizen Coke. So, Bart and I before we started, I was talking about how I'm a new parent, and I got Seed Money and I finished in three days, like every morning I would wake up and say like today kid is the day you should sleep in. Mommy can sit and read this beautifully written, narratively driven story of the 20th century from the viewpoint of Monsanto. And what's fascinating about your book is you organize it under these subheads, seeds, roots, plants, weeds and harvest. And as I walked away from the book, I thought this could also be organized as saccharine, caffeine, phosphates, pesticides, agent orange and roundup because you were really exploring the way that Monsanto is shapeshifting based on the consumer and chemical needs of our nation. So I want you to share, you know, with this audience, how you are viewing the relationship between Monsanto and its products and the growing complexity of American, you know, domestic and foreign policy. That's great, Marcia. Yeah, you know, I kind of stumbled on this project in so many ways. I was writing this other book on the history of Coca-Cola, Citizen Coke. And that book really was an ingredient-based kind of journey where I used the back of a Coke can, made that my table of contents, and I tried to kind of travel around the world, looking at, well, how did Coca-Cola get its coca leaves, which was one of the weirdest chapters actually. And how did it get its sugar? And it was when I was trying to figure out how they got their caffeine that I started realizing, wow, I have no idea where Coca-Cola gets their caffeine from. And I want to dig in more. It was un-googleable in a time where almost anything is. And so I put that in and I couldn't figure out where that spy chain went to. So I did a lot of digging and it turned out it was Monsanto. And that was really the origin story for this book that there was this chemical company in St. Louis, Missouri, started in 1901 that was, from the very beginning, not producing anything related to seeds, even though it would become the largest seed producer in the world by the end of the 20th century. At the beginning, it was just producing chemicals and mostly for just Coca-Cola. It was producing this artificial sweetener and caffeine. And so I put a pin in that. You know, I got access to the corporate records of Monsanto. At the time, Monsanto had to approve access to those records and I said, okay, this is a treasure trove of documents. I want to go into this. And to your point, it struck me that, you know, since they provided caffeine and saccharine to Coca-Cola, you know, I didn't know how it was going to shape up organizations. But I thought it was a great foil to Coke. You know, Coca-Cola is everywhere, much like McDonald's, you know, this franchise that you write about. You think about these things that we see every day and they're kind of quotidian in so many ways. And we know they're there. Monsanto was different. It was everywhere, you know, in the synthetic fibers and the clothes in our clothes, the synthetic rubber in our shoes. It was all over the place. I'm looking around my desk. I actually can't think of a non-Monsanto related synthetic product. But we don't really acknowledge that, right? It was kind of there but hidden in plain sight. And so for me, that was the story I wanted to tell. And one last thing on that. You know, I think what was interesting about their business model is they got that. They sold to industry. You know, their slogan was serving industry which serves mankind. And the idea for them was always, if we can convince a few farmers to buy our seeds, if we can convince this company to buy our plastics, well, then the market will explode for this stuff. And I think part of the story is about tracing those stories of those business partnerships that led to this tremendous growth over the 20th century. One of the reasons why this book is so excellent is that it's able to do many things with one topic. It is in some ways a biographical sketch of the various men that ran Monsanto during these different periods of time. It's about the rise in the US as a leader in global capital. It is also a very important environmental history because for I think people who are engaging this book today, when they think of Monsanto, they think of a force that is representative of kind of big agriculture of, you know, the producer of pollutants. So let's start the book with a scene of peach growers in Missouri who are kind of, you know, trying to punch towards the giant corporate bad guy. And so there's a way that this book is engaging a lot of different types of forms to tell this story. And there's a lot of science in it, which is really hard to write for a general audience. And so in terms of your process, how did you imagine explaining the science to people in order for them to understand the story of people. Yeah, that's a great, great question. I think, you know, a plug for New America I really have to say this as a historian I think arriving in the class of 2017 with such distinguished journalists and writers. That was transformative for me, you know, I really think it got me to think about narrative in a way I had thought before about building characters. To your point, realizing that if I was going to talk about the hard science. I needed to ground it in real human stories, because I think people will get lost if you're talking about chemicals like wonkily named two four five T, or two four D you know after a while you start seeing those compounds and you think your eyes start kind of blurring. So I tried to ground those story, you know those chemicals in a story about James rape August, you know this guy who actually produced those chemicals in a plant in nitro West Virginia, and develop these chloractomy lesions as a result of trying to manufacture these compounds. So, and I really wanted to, to, to find people that could help me show what Monsanto knew about the toxicity of its products. Going back to the 40s and 50s, you know two four five T and two four D would end up in Agent Orange. But as I write in the book, you know as early as 1949 the factory workers in West Virginia that were making those compounds were completely tore up. James rape August had his face peeled off five times he had to use a solvent to try and get rid of this acne that was developing because of his exposure to dioxin. And this is years before Agent Orange is going to be sprayed in the Vietnam war and affect millions of people. So part of the story was about trying to get at not only the science but when did they know about the toxicity of these products, being accurate about that and saying, you know, people will argue what was a different time they just, I didn't really understand on this. You know, I really wanted to try and to show what they knew. And in some cases they knew about the problems with their products, long before they pulled them off the shelves. So for me that was important and the last thing I'll say is, when I went to undergrad I was biochem major, which I don't think I've really talked about but I was super fascinated with chemistry and biology. So, environmental history, which is kind of my sub discipline has been a great home because we're encouraged to really delve into the deep science to talk to scientists, and to get to the bottom of all this. And I'm at Ohio State University with some of the best weed scientists in the country, just literally I can see their office out my window. So just being able to walk over and have those conversations I think really enhanced the book. So a lot of people to thank a lot of people help make this the book that it is new America was certainly part of that. But so is the AG department here as well. So it was a real team effort in many ways. The other thing that makes this such an important contribution is that this is part of I think a growing and evolving body of work on the history of capitalism of how a company can go from product offering to product offering in a very short period of time. If you can imagine Monsanto can go from saccharine and caffeine to pesticides and, you know, genetically modified seed in a rather short period of time and it's because of and tell me if I'm wrong but what I believe from your look is that we have all of these institutions that are propping up corporate innovation with very kind of little accountability or exchange so they're the universities, the land grant institutions remote Santa was able to handpick researchers you know confirm or deny their allegations there's the federal government that is also incredibly compliant to this corporation, even when it is caught, you know, doing the wrong thing their courts that are very sympathetic and juries of working even that are sympathetic to Monsanto and so I think that what you bring to light is how our ideas of corporate access, how it's enabled and facilitated not just by consumer need, but all of these institutional structures that you know I would say, don't step up to the challenge about those relationships. I think you said it better than I could I mean I think one of the big takeaways of the book, one of the things that kept coming up over and over again and that should be clear I started with a clean slate. I knew that Monsanto was known as kind of Monsat and in fact my brother in Alaska sent me this bumper sticker when I started this project that had a. He said Monsat and I said good luck, you know, and from the very beginning I wanted to say okay well we know this, but let's start clean what happened in the firm like what what were the ethical choices may what were some of the unethical choices. And the thing that kept coming up is something that you saw as well. And I'm glad you did because I really wanted that to be a takeaway that just just how much of an information information gatekeeper Monsanto was you know how much how many times their studies were used to approve chemicals. I filed. This was probably one of the more scarier days as an untenured faculty member at the time. I might have, I might have had tenure at the time either way it's it felt a little sketchy because I, I filed a FOIA with Ohio State University to figure out how much, you know, Monsanto money was actually coming in to the institution here. Of course it was baffling you know it was just it was astonishing and to actually trace where that money was going it was going to look at the efficacy of various herbicides, and to perform studies that ultimately are going to be used to decide about the efficacy of these herbicides. And to me that just felt, you know, as much as I think there's incredible integrity with the scientists that I met in terms of trying to do good science. The fuzzy boundary that I felt was really, really disturbing when thinking about this so whether the public university level, whether it be the EPA relying on a lot of data that Monsanto was producing about its chemicals to decide whether it's healthy or not. Clearly one of the takeaways of this book is we need a firmer firewalls, you know between the regulated and those who are doing the regulating. And, and to me that was a big deal. The other thing I would say is, you know, to your point about like their ability to make all this stuff and just seemingly switch and make all this stuff. Environmental history mattered there. You know what I saw was that they were making all this stuff essentially from the excess of the oil industry, you know, and to me it was just startling all the things I mean again I'm looking around the room and I challenge anybody who's listening to just look around the room, think of anything that doesn't come from a petrochemical feedstock like we talked so much now and the air of climate change about how do we fuel our cars, you know without gasoline how do we power our power plants without fossil fuels. And after this book, I'm thinking about everything else, how do we make everything that they made in that period of excess. And I think to your point. I'm sorry, can you help me understand just like, I mean we're talking about laundry detergent we're talking about insulation for light bulbs I mean, it is everywhere that even attempts to kind of resist a kind of a chemical laden life. How do you do it. You don't I don't know either, you know I walked away feeling completely like, wow, I mean how do we make any of this stuff work so you're absolutely right I mean, and that was the challenge as a writer I mean they were literally making everything. So where do you, you know my cookbook had these discrete ingredients people say wow the secret formula has, you know, 24 different ingredients well that's nothing compared to the entire economy in many ways. In the book, you know, Monsanto saw this in the energy crisis of the 1970s. That's why they pivoted to biotechnology that was one of the biggest finds I think for me as a scholar was trying to figure out okay well how did they pivot to becoming a seed company why did they have this bold move to being a life sign more of a life sciences firm. And it was the energy crisis of the 70s, which really increased the price of all their natural gas and oil inputs. And the percent, you know, was of their stuff that they were making was coming from these fossil fuel feedstocks. And that was when they began to pivot they said okay we need to we need to figure out a way to reduce our dependency on on this kind of scavenger capitalism as I call it, you know, scavenging off the, the excess of the oil industry. And that's where we start seeing in the 80s that pivot to seeds and biotechnology. It's a weird pivot, almost no other company has done something like it. And I think that raw material story of fossil fuels was really key to that pivot. One of the, and before I ask my next question I encourage the audience to make sure to log in their questions for Bart on this fantastic book. One of the things that you touch upon in the book and I'm curious where you see this is that of Monsanto was this kind of, you know, silent generator of multiple industries to Monsanto is the bad guy. The environmental movement of the 1970s, Rachel Carson Silent Spring as really turning the tide in terms of a kind of a broad base consciousness that there might be stuff in the environment that's hurting people. I remember hearing Monsanto's name for the first time as an undergraduate at the University of Missouri, where students, you know, who were from family farms were talking about this company, and a university leader was a board member. And this, you know, they felt like was a real front to the fact that this was a, you know, an agricultural school and so when do you think the public consciousness about Monsanto as the generator of market and life problems really shifts and what does that say about perhaps the expansion of reporting on the environment or the environmental movement. Yeah, I think you're right. I think you nailed it. The 60s and 70s is where you start seeing this kind of real push to hold Monsanto more accountable for what's happening. The big crises at that time late 60s for Monsanto was a chemical compound called PCBs polychlorinated by phenols. And what made that so problematic PCBs for Monsanto was that they were the sole producer of this compound in the United States, they created two facilities one in Sauget, Illinois, which was interestingly called Monsanto Illinois and this is to your point, it was called Monsanto Illinois up to the 60s. And then as you know there's this kind of awareness about the toxicity of some of these compounds, the town changes its name Monsanto gets its name off the town and it's now Sauget. And they say there were reasons they did that they had to do with post office and all this stuff but it's very clear that they're facing this intense pressure. And I think in some ways they're trying to some of these plants distance themselves from some of these facilities. And you know in 1969 there's this meeting internally at Monsanto about what to do about PCBs and the document you'll see in the book. It's a confidential document in this kind of meeting. And at the top it says, the problem is snowballing, you know, and they do reference Rachel Carson they say there's all these fanatic environmentalists who are coming at us. They know these PCBs are toxic, which we now know of course they are extremely toxic compounds. They were in everything to your point this was a chemical that was in carbonless paper. It was in artificial Christmas trees. It was in the linings of pools. It was in the paint that that line silos in the paint that goes on highways. And all of our transformers, most of our electrical equipment, I mean it was just astounding how pervasive this pollutant was, and in that meeting they're saying this is snowballing environmentalists are surrounding us. So what should we do with alternatives what should we do internally and a kid you're not in the handwritten notes the first option was well we should maybe we should go out of the business maybe we should stop making PCBs given how toxic we know this is now. Alternative two was the one that made my jaw drop. And Henry notes it says, sell the hell out of them as long as we possibly can. So to get that in the book. I want to emphasize this I didn't emphasize in the book you'll see that there's like a little arrow where the person came back and added the hell out of them, which goes to your point I mean I think in this moment. There's this kind of corporate culture that's about, you know, pursuing profits at all costs in that moment, regardless of the effects on people. And years later in the 90s and and some court cases related to PCBs. When these documents are released, and people are seeing this for the first time. The, the activism of the 60s and 70s will pale in comparison the kind of fervor with which people attack Monsanto now that those documents are now, you know readily available. And I have to say, even for me as a scholar reading those documents it was just, it was just stunning to see that those kind of conversations happened inside the company as I said I started out wanting to have a very fair and balanced approach to understanding what was going on inside the company there were moments that were an ethical line was crossed, you know, and that was one of them for sure. One of the best parts I think of the book is that we go to a lot of places you know we travel to St. Louis, which, you know is the home of Monsanto, and we go to Vietnam, which I would, I would say is the place that bore the greatest toll of Monsanto's, you know, creation of Agent Orange, we go to Nitro West Virginia we go to sodas, sodas. We go to all of these places and what you do in each of these locations is we get to meet people who are not theorizing about kind of a global order where chemical companies are harming people. We meet people who are deeply harmed by Monsanto's choices and one of the things that comes up in a lot of this is that the people who are trying to sue Monsanto the people who are sick. They have such reasonable desires they want, you know, they, they're not asking for $40 million apiece they're saying can we get help testing. Can you test the soil, can you make sure most more of us won't get sick. And in many ways that this is a, this is a story about labor and unions as well, who are trying to, you know, on one hand, not bankrupt the industry that people are working in but they're saying, you know, something's wrong people are getting kind of sick. And I think that in our deep desire, you know, especially in the past six years in this political climate, you know, to kind of talk about people who feel dispossessed and disconnected. And these stories of this kind of labor force that is so vulnerable because it's not just where they work it's where they live are really, you know, are so, are so vulnerable. And so I just want to hear from you like your decision about the inclusion of those voices and what you think it does for the larger story. If we're to think of this as a corporate history. Yeah, that's such a great question. And a couple of things come to mind that I really want to point out. I don't know if it was the right choice. And I mean this and I would love because I the new America community is a feels like a family in some ways I feel like a writer so you think about these things. I made the conscious choice not to be in the story. You won't see me flying to Vietnam even though I did fly to Vietnam, you won't see me camping out at the super fun site, and all the backstory of me getting harassed by various people and the story of getting the story, because I intentionally didn't want to be the person telling the story. I wanted to flip it and let the people, both in history that my historical actors but also the people I was meeting. Tell the story and that included people inside Monsanto people who worked at Monsanto. Who I think you nailed it the soda spring story for me it was the one where your point about them having very reasonable expectations was just like kind of hit me in the face, and I think as a writer what I learned during that process is, you have to go to New America as if you're going to write about them I think it's historians, and this may not seem odd at all to New America. But like for historians we're so often in the archives, and we don't venture out from that space I think what New America did was spur me to go get the story to listen to what people were saying on the ground. And as a matter of fact, I expected to show up this by the way is a town of 3000 people in Idaho. It's almost no one knows it but it's the location where Monsanto manufacturers, it's roundup. And as someone who's always been interested in supply chains, I wanted to go to the source of roundup not to talk about the effects of producing of using roundup, which I do talk about in the book, but I wanted to get to the story of how it's actually made in Soda Springs. It's an active super fun site, which is rare. A site that has toxic pollutants still emanating from the facility there. And it's, they basically make roundup by by processing phosphate rock into elemental phosphorus. And as a result it creates radioactive waste that now is piling up just on the south side of the facility there in Soda Springs went with a photographer we documented all this. But what's really wild is for years that waste was actually sold to the town of Soda Springs, and people built their homes their roadways, their basements, you know, out of this aggregate, and in the 80s and 90s the EPA came in and said whoa whoa there's like elevated level levels of gamma radiation coming out of all this in the town. And so I thought when I arrived in Soda Springs it was going to be a kind of love canal story, you know I was going to meet people who were saying, you know, man, Monsanto is really wronged us and we're upset about this, but it was really the opposite. And so the story of EPA get out of here, you know, Monsanto is being good to us, and then looking at the employment numbers and kind of to your point about vulnerability you start realizing oh my gosh you know this is the industry that keeps this town alive. And, you know, that expectation was was not the way it was they wanted the regulators to leave they didn't want to be designated as superfund site. They didn't want the town to be designated that their homes, you know, the most important things they have as an asset, but be devalued and all these things and getting that story of, you know, and this went to the central question of the book which is, well how did Monsanto survive all of its all of its toxic past to be a seed company and the answer here was, in some places, the town didn't rebel, you know, people had very reasonable reasons, given their vulnerability to not speak up. And in fact, to try and push back against regulators who would come into their town. So that trip to Soda Springs was really, really eyeopening and I think it set the tone for the other journeys to other parts of the world. Yeah, you know, I noticed in Citizen Coke, we follow you to Brazil and India and all of these places in which copes products are, you know, are gathered so that they can make a refreshing drink. Look, one of the places you, you also go is, you know, this transformation of a chemical company into a tech company which I thought was real, really irritated me because you know, the slight of hand that genetically modified seed, it has to do with food but it really has to do with tech. You know what you're also charting is the kind of the corporate rhetoric of service to humanity of safety of others and so Monsanto is going to feed the world and, you know, address global hunger. Monsanto is going to use new technologies to make a smarter in the way we produce things. You know, in an earlier period, Monsanto was going to contribute to the World War Two effort. And so the kind of the tech culture and agriculture sector coming together I think is really fascinating because when you engage the part of the story about genetically modified seeds. I remember the early days of GMO questions right like I think both of us were in college around the time where people, you know, do you know, is it safe to eat is it not safe to eat. And again, the kind of like a scam is not the word I'm using but the, the, I don't know, what do you call it when a company is just just like completely misleading you into actually what's going on and does it so well. Yeah, I think it's a fun way to think about I am. I'll say a couple things about this. Let me try and answer that question directly first before going to some of these other things that you made me think of as you mentioned that I actually think that Monsanto in the long run, weirdly, and they probably wouldn't see it this way. They benefited from the kind of black and white GMOs are bad. They're going to cause you to have a third ear, and you know all these other things, conspiracy laden kind of approaches to to to rejecting GMOs, because it made it sound like those people were anti science, and all those types of things. And you know look, when I started this book, a lot of people would ask me are you anti GMO and I said, look, genetic engineering, I even did genetic engineering, you know, as you were saying this was the era of PCR machines and things and as a biochem person I was working with it so of course I think these technologies and have incredible potentials interesting stuff. But my job as a historian is to say well what happened what what actually is problematic about GMOs or what is good about them. And so I what I what I kept seeing is that you know the kind of crazy routes that people went down I think actually aided Monsanto and seeing look at these people you know they're just. And don't look over here, because our technology is actually failing a lot of ways, but we're not talking about that like these crops are actually not necessarily producing higher yields, but that never really became part of the conversation because we were caught up in these silly in some ways controversial conversations that that really went nowhere in some ways. So I wanted to kind of focus on what on those stories that they didn't want to talk about that the distractions in some ways prevented us from talking because, well, do they actually work. You know and that's where I got into the data, the data on yield and what was so surprising as well genetically engineered crops. You know, and this is coming from the National Academy of Sciences Sciences they did a massive study of this I interviewed the top scientists there the National Academy of Sciences. And the yield for genetically engineered crops for corn soybeans things like that, compared to conventionally bred non GMO crops, the yield trends were they mapped on very closely there was no massive new Green Revolution as a result of this, but we weren't having that conversation I felt like this book could kind of bring us back to ground to have that discussion about. Okay, let's get rid of all this conspiracy theory stuff what did these crops do. Let me just say one more thing to you said 90s, you know, I got a chance to interview people that were at the highest levels of the company. In many cases off the record that were part of that journey in the 90s. And I again have to shout out to Phil sands who was in our class 2017. I still remember it in whole foods I'm walking around my earbuds and, and I'm talking to him about how do I have these off the record conversations how do I protect my sources and all this stuff and and it was just amazing to have people in our, and our fellowship class, who could talk me through the the ins and outs of doing things that as a historian I don't think we're trained to do you know. And those conversations really showed me that story you're talking about it made me realize oh my gosh they were living in the dot com boom. You know, it was all about the Internet, it was all about if you can put anything like calm behind your name. And that basically what Monsanto was doing calling themselves the Microsoft of Agriculture. You know, it was a way to sell yourself to shareholders and, and it did it was totally, you know, the promises were just fantastical you know a Bob Shapiro CEO of the company says, we're going to stop selling stuff we're only going to be selling information. And you know it's like, well, that's not what happens at all we sell a lot of roundup as a result of these genetically engineered seeds and again, that's part of what I wanted to point out is okay what can we say. Wow, our petrochemical dependency didn't decrease which was the promise these plants are going to be smarter we're not going to need as many chemicals. The charts you see in the book are astounding you know just how much, how many herbicides came back and how many old toxic herbicides have come back to produce our food in recent years that was really startling to me. There are several moments in the book where you start to see kind of the book ends a story about a company that is not going to do this and then returns to this in so many ways and it's so beautifully written you know, moving away from herbicides, because, and then you know that where we deeply need herbicides but one of the things that your book also talks about is this idea that we are now at a moment because of Monsanto's technology and the ways that they've created seed and herbicide that everyone that people who tried to opt out of it are now having to do what they did and there's a way that you know so much of the story of American capitalism is about free choice and markets, but you're showing us a model of capitalism and innovation, where you have no choices, and I think that this is something that is really illuminating when you go to the latter part of the story, and you talk about these farmers who are not buying Monsanto's seed and herbicide, but because of drift, because of contamination, they are now engaged in the relationship with a company that they might have chosen differently So, you know what happens when this, not only from an agricultural standpoint but what does it do, do you think from a corporate standpoint, when you have these moments where people are now compelled to use products and processes that are not the desire or the goals of their, their own kind of, you know, outfit. It makes for very good business for a company like Monsanto. What I started realizing when I was writing that, that's the final section was, wait a minute, if Monsanto solves farmers weed problems, they're out of the job, you know, that solving the problem was ultimately not necessarily in their best interest. You know, what what is in their best interest is the kind of cycle that farmers are in, where they're constantly having to buy a new set of seeds that are designed to fix the problems that the old set of seeds helped create. And just to be clear on that, you know, the 1996 kind of roundup ready revolution this 1996 was the first year that we started seeing the introduction of these large scale commodity crops that were genetically engineered to resist Monsanto's blockbuster herbicide roundup. If you go back to the 90s and I did back to the internet, the way back machine and as I was going through there I did make the sounds that just to like remind myself. Young people that's how we used to connect to the internet. Exactly. And I would because you'd see this terrible graphics and things but when they were pitching those roundup ready seeds, the slogan at the top of Monsanto's website was, and I kid you not it said, the system that sets you free. Right. And you're right that there was this. It was all these things were sold in this language of liberation. But as what happens of course is farmers by these roundup ready seeds they work really incredibly in those first couple of years, all farmers have to do is spray one herbicide roundup. Their crops don't die because they're they're genetically engineered to tolerate that herbicide, but all the weeds are cleaned away and it looked great. But of course spraying all that roundup led to roundup resistant weeds, which Monsanto denied was happening in the early 2000s and the weed scientists here say you'll you'll see them in the story they're just banging their fist on the table saying Monsanto there is resistance. You have to tell farmers, but Monsanto doesn't and ultimately they the gig is up by 2005 2006 roundup resistant weeds are everywhere glyphosate stops working on them. And so Monsanto is there to provide a new set of seeds. In this case, extend X T E N D seeds. And these are designed to be resistant not just to one herbicide roundup, but also to die Canva. And you mentioned this but I just think it's so important for people to note that die Canva is an old old chemical goes back to 1958, when it was first invented, which is part of the story, our food future is actually our past we're going back to older and older products. And in this case, the reason it was not very widely used is because it's dangerous. When you spray die Canva and hot climates and hot temperatures. It drifts it vaporizes it jumps off the target farm and spreads from a long distance to other farms nearby. If you do not buy Monsanto is extend seeds. You have no protection. And you can get hit with that vaporized herbicide. And there's, you know, there's nothing you can do about it. Oh, and also you can get in trouble for that drift as well with the if seed, if Monsanto seed is found on your property and it drifts on there, you can be kind of accused of kind of violating the intellectual property agreements of Monsanto. Well, but what's interesting Marsha is is I looked into that very closely and there aren't cases where there's that kind of pollen drift that caused that what we do see is farmers that who knows how they get a hold of it, get a hold of some of Monsanto seed plant that seed on their property without any technology use agreement, and you're absolutely right they get sued as a result of that. But that pollen drift one is when I looked at really closely and that's part of the story you know was trying to get at some of these stories is, is this true is this not other other actual cases of just random drift where that happened. Most of the cases that I saw were cases where it was somebody saving seed maybe they got it from a from a seed cleaner or someone else. Sometimes it's unclear where it came from. That that happened but in this case with Dicamba, you know that drift is happening it's hitting these farms, and I went to the court case, where a farmer stood up and said this is unconscionable. You know, I don't want to be hit with this herbicide I don't want to be a part of the system, but they have no choice. And in that court case the last thing I'll say here on this is, I mean I'll tell you, back to New America, I probably wouldn't have been at that court case. Had it not been inspired by journalists who go and get the story you know and I sat in the gallery. We didn't know if some of these documents were going to be available after the court case was there we couldn't even have recording devices so I scribbling notes, you know feverishly. And I kid you not I'm sitting there and one of the first documents they released was one I expected maybe they would have that would be inside the company, and it was this. There was a change where they openly talked about that that drift was going to happen, and that they could sell their seeds more effectively their new dicamba tolerant seeds by quote, pushing protection from your neighbor. So back to the ethics of this right it was another one of those moments where you were saying, Wow, they knew that it would drift. They even saw it as an advantage for selling their seeds. What's wrong, right. I have to have to have to write this and get this out. And it was during the pandemic that this was happening right that was right when the pandemic hit I remember people saying, You know what, push back your publication date. It doesn't matter you know you can you, you don't have to get it out right now. But I really worked with hard to that pandemic in parts I felt like it needed to be part of the conversation, you know, this was happening now. The court cases and on appeal right now. And it felt like it needed to be the kind of history that need to be part of the conversation so I'm glad it got done with two kids in tow and you know a little bit about that parenting and writing at the same time so Well, you know, I will say this as my last question before I open up to the audience observations, you know, throughout the, I thought there was nothing worse than having a book come out and then the pandemic happening, but you were finishing the book at the start of the pandemic so throughout the book there are these, you know, there's these really kind of chilling comparisons between, you know, Monsanto Monsanto during the great flu, and Monsanto which is now, is that quite a subsidiary of bear. Yeah, it is bear yeah. And you know, which is a drug company. You know will Monsanto, you know, be in the business of COVID vaccines will they be in the business of cancer treatments for you know the cancers that may have been exacerbated by some of this, you know pollutants and so they were something really kind of searing about those comparisons So as as a historian and as a writer, you know how did COVID-19 the crisis and the conditions for access, you know, shape this book. Well destroyed a trip to Germany. That's the first thing that comes to mind, because I had bought a share of bear stock bear ended up buying Monsanto in 2018. So bear is now the face of Monsanto, which is ironic, because the whole point of Monsanto when it was created 1901 was to be this American chemical company that was independent of the Germans, specifically bear. And so the end of the story is a kind of historical, there's a certain irony that that joint the Germans are in control. The one could argue, having consumed the liabilities of Monsanto they might have consumed a poison pill. The bear stock has just plummeted in recent years as a result of this merger. But, you know, I think, to some degree, you know that Germany trip never came to be. And I had plans to to interview people in Leverkusen the headquarters there. And I think it would have been a better book for it. What I will say was helpful was that the shareholders meeting ended up being on zoom. And weird times and I still remember it I was I was hunkered down in the, in basically my, my bathroom because we had a baby that was sleeping and I don't know what time of day it was. But I'm just like hunkered down watching this five hour shareholders meeting on the floor of the base of the bathroom. And I'll tell you, all the history in the book was just popping out and that shareholders meeting shareholders asking about die camp asking about round up asking about PCBs. How are we going to deal with all these liabilities. This is a history that's still ongoing in a way and I'm still waiting to see what the end of it's going to be. So, we'll see in the next couple months, how some of these things shake out. It's still life. Everyone read this edition first, and then when it comes out in paperback and you write the new prologue or epilogue then we can get some of those questions answered but I'll turn to our audience. The first question is, how much do you feel on Santos success in quotes in agribusiness has relied on or been enabled by corporate concentration and the lack of use of antitrust laws. I think a huge part of the of their story. And, you know, I think we see even going back to the 1920s. It's very clear. Edgar Queenie, who you meet in the book is the son of John Queenie he takes over the firm in the 1920s. One of these people by the way that I when I go to the archives I just I wanted to know everything about him so I just spent time just reading every letter he wrote I figured out how many times he likes to shave in a day, you know how he likes his martinis. I wanted to know this person in and out and when it came to this, this question of kind of this monopoly power that they gain. It's very clear that Edgar Queenie wanted to grow that way that he wanted to grow through acquisition that it was told it was all about this kind of horizontal integration, buying out these struggling chemical companies whenever they were down. And a lot of the chemist and people inside the firm were very much not necessarily on board with that they wanted to do, you kind of grow, grow big by innovation in house, you know, not necessarily by acquiring and diversifying different areas. So Queenie strategy in the 20s, you really sets on Santa to become the kind of monopoly it does, buying out and gobbling up all these different other smaller chemical concerns over time. And again, that also I think to when you have that monopoly power, being the gatekeeper of information I mean we're seeing some of this now with the issues with Facebook and the leaks about the information that's coming out now now that we know what's going on inside. And the conglomerates, you know with Monsanto was just there in many cases like with the PCBs they were the only company that had, you know, health data on their workers about these compounds and the way that they held that information and in many ways controlled that flow of information. I think there's a strong case for antitrust, you know, for why we as a society need to ensure that companies don't have that incredible power to control that that type of information, and aren't consistently providing the studies that are used to regulate the chemicals that we use today so I think it's a huge part of the story and and again it has a long history in some ways you could say that that monopoly strategy of acquiring all these different smaller companies goes back to the 20s really. Someone asks, what advice do you have for someone interested in pursuing a project that takes on a larger controversial stakeholders like Monsanto. I know Norton's lawyer read this very carefully. What are some of the things that you would advise to someone in the position. Yeah, I think a couple things. Last week was a pretty, it was a pretty challenging week actually you know I went on the Joe Rogan experience of all things, which was a really like kind of emotional experience is a three hour interview with Joe Brogan and his audience is like massive all over the place. And as I was speaking I was thinking about all these liabilities you know like oh my gosh you know, they're going to hear it in Germany, they're going to hear it in Australia they're going to hear all what I'm talking about and sure enough, after that conversation I was getting emails from, you know people that work and so And I remember self editing, you know, being like okay, make sure that you're on point when you're saying these things, because this isn't a game. It's real, you know, the, as I said there's, there's a series of litigation around roundup dicamba PCBs that are threatening There's a very viability of Bayer right now. I mean, look at the stock price, where it was in 2016 if anyone wants to go in there and watch how it's plummeted. They've lost a tremendous amount of their market cap. And so, so it's real to them. And I think setting out on this I knew that I needed to have a certain degree of legal protection and I will confess something that There's certain privilege here that my father is an attorney. And when I started the Coke book I thought about this too that I knew that my father and the legal team at his law firm would be there as a kind of pro bono support if something were to go wrong. And not everyone has that that kind of access but for me I will say that was one of the things that freed me up to do the kind of work I did. I mean I'm just being frank and honest that I felt like I had kind of unusual legal support that I could lean on and also advice like when I was talking to some of these sources. I talked to those lawyers, I certainly talked to Norton's lawyers but having people who really have your back, you know, not necessarily the press is back or whoever's back but your back. I think it's part of it so if you don't have that I do think that. And actually some of my sources I encourage them and they did get get their own attorneys. I wanted them to feel like they were getting legal advice that represented them and not me. So, I think that was critical to doing this kind of work it certainly freed me up let me breathe a little bit easier, though, at times, like last week and others. You still feel it. So, so I think that was key I did not do this I did talk to Michael pollen when I was writing the citizen citizen code, and he had mentioned writer's insurance and I've never gotten that definitely. Have you have you gotten it. Um, I was in a situation that involved a project that involved the Baltimore police department and Freddie Gray, and that's when I was first introduced to this type of insurance. Yeah, I hear you know it could be very useful and I didn't really know about it so you know for those who might not. I didn't end up using it again because there's unique circumstances. And the last thing I will say, I didn't get called in for one part of citizen coke. I got called in a couple times for this book. And it was not it was never the lawyers weren't there was no anger anything, we were just really trying to make sure that we were careful and I'll say one thing that was really surprising about that it wasn't about Monsanto. And all the other people who are mentioned kind of in passing and companies that were associated like Budweiser is in here, for example, we wanted to make sure that those firms, especially were that we had it right, because it's not just the company writing about, but often the people that come up in the conversation that are part of that story. And I didn't think about that. Yeah, the same kind of vein. So you had access to their internal archive, but I imagine there are some other hurdles and researching and writing the book, other than the pandemic, and then the clearances. What else were some of the challenges and getting this out the door. Yeah, and I should say that this corporate records were great but like any corporate records that a corporation is going to let you see, you know I was very aware that I was not going to be. It was a very helpful story and but it was a great place to triangulate from you know I'd be able to find a name or find a city and then be able to go okay, let's branch out. And let's file FOIAs. So one of the things that I did, and I'm happy to talk with anybody about that process, if people are experimenting with freedom of Information Act request but, you know, I really would find a story or a plant and then I would figure out what agency, would be overseeing that facility and then filed FOIAs. And I have to say the EPA was amazing I mean getting back documents in a matter of weeks, which is some agencies it would take months to get anything back. So a lot of that was pretty smooth actually. I would also say that a shout out to Ohio State we have what are called these gateways around the world at Ohio State, especially for agriculture that are kind of like these embassies, and we have one in Brazil, which was so helpful because I was able to use that to connect to all these top agricultural scientists in Brazil, a place I hadn't spent much time before, and it just opened the door to a research trip that became, to be honest that that end of the book it was supposed to be multiple chapters, we condensed it to like this little section of a chapter. So, to be honest I'm thinking about all the doors that were opened it was so many ways that the institution here really helped me get that international story. I will say talking to sources was probably the hardest part. You'll see in the book there's a story of a person who can't go on the record, but are but in the book, the story is about how he can't go on the record. And that was a, you know, in the book it seems like we just had a couple conversations we talked for months and months to decide what to do, and ultimately decided not to include it but I think that story is actually part of the story. It took me a while to see that but it's in there. I have two more questions for you to run up the event, and I'm just going to make one editorial comment. You talk about the chemical industry throughout the book and, and Dupont and Dow and all of the big players and you know the theme better living through chemistry is one that gives us a lot of pause. But one of the things I can say for sure is better living through the humanities. This is what good history is all about it's informative, it's provocative. It teaches us to think about a different way of engaging with corporations and engaging with our future so this is why we have to support our research universities and our wonderful scholars, who not only teach but also provide this kind of food for thought. That was both for me and for you. So, this is the question that is always such a mixed bag. What's next for your research. Sadly, I was writing a book at the same time as I was writing this one. And I've almost no almost no one knows this but I, but I actually finished the draft of that second. Congratulations. And that was partially again because of it as things happen in humanities. I had to agree to kind of do this project. Years ago, whatever and it just came due I mean it's been, you know, it was it was the time for it to get done so. And I will say I don't know as a writer. I wouldn't necessarily recommend writing two books at the same time. On the other hand, there was a certain that book was like a haven. You know, for your good object when. Yeah, yeah, like I don't want to write about stuff anymore let's let's go have a good day and write about and this book was about FedEx Walmart. Walmart, Delta Coca Cola Bank of America. It was about companies from the American South, or that were headquartered in the American South. That's really fascinating. That had an outside influence on the environment I'm calling it country capitalism, because it's really about how all these companies became so big FedEx and stuff by serving the countryside delta, but you know named after the Mississippi delta. Yeah, largest airline in the world. Tennessee Walmart in Arkansas. This is really fascinating. Yeah, so it will see when it comes out but that's currently the manuscript sitting right there so my I salute you. And then our final final thought that we'd love to hear from you is, is there anything that makes you hopeful for the future of food. Totally, I mean, one thing is is that there's so much pressure on my bear right now that they're really feeling the pain, like I actually think there's this crown swell of realization about the problems with this system. And with some of the compounds and chemicals that are being used to produce our food. I didn't see any of that coming. You know when I started writing this there were no court cases there were no there was no pressure on these firms. You know, they are ultimately lost so much value that they were essentially worth what they paid to buy Monsanto after some of these trial started. I mean, that's how severe the pressure has been. So I think there's hope and regenerative agriculture the emphasis on soil health and all this new appreciation for biomimicry and agriculture that I'm seeing from our scientists over here. So we're getting it, but this chemical fossil fuels scavenger capitalism thing might have worked back in the oil booms of the teens and 20s. But we have got to pivot hard and I'm seeing farmers who are showing us we can do that so I'm actually very optimistic, despite some of the sad stories that are in this book and and I'm excited to see what happens the next decade of farming, we'll see. Well, I am so grateful to you for this fantastic book, everyone get a copy of seed money and then pretend like you are a scientist because you'll become so smart. As a result of reading this and I think more compassionate and more understanding for the struggles of all sorts of people so thank you to our audience for joining us for this wonderful celebration of Bart Elmore's seed money. Bye bye. This is great. Bye bye everybody.