Corporate Crops: Biotechnology, Agriculture, and the Struggle for Control

6. From When Cotton Was King to King Monsanto

CHAPTER 6 From When Cotton Was King to King Monsanto A lot of folks in Mississippi, two generations ago, were living on very hard scrabble farms, doing everything by hand. I’ve got kinfolks who are long removed from farming, but they grew up in it, and couldn’t wait to get out, and they still think only in terms of every new technology that has ever been available to agriculture—from tractors, herbicides, anything that comes down the pipe—its only possibility is in being a wonderful thing that will help you from having to work as hard. . . . Intense back-breaking labor is bad; therefore all technology is good. MS#23, Media/orGanic Producer That’s the least of my worries, is agriculture biotechnology. MS#30, MiSSiSSiPPi dePartMent of aGriculture and coMMerce I don’t see it as any different of a tool of conventional crop breeding or inorganic fertilizers that came on in the probably early twentieth century. Or moving from a mule to a tractor was technology. Or moving to an airplane was technology improvements. I don’t see that it’s any different. You have to continue to evolve. That’s just part of it. MS#3, GM Producer Introduction The United States is the leader in biotechnology with respect to its early experience, its GM-dedicated acres, and its extent of adoption in key agricultural crops such as soybeans and cotton; as a whole, it is indisputably pro-biotechnology. There is considerable differentiation within it, how- From When Cotton Was King to King Monsanto 173 ever, given its immense geographic and cultural domain. Anti-GM protests and local initiatives to ban GMOs—in Mendocino County, California , for example—are on one extreme. The state of Mississippi would seem to occupy the opposite extreme. Mississippi is in the U.S. Deep South, its southern end bordering the Gulf of Mexico. The state has a population of 2.8 million spread over 30 million acres, much of which is forested. Average monthly temperatures range from a low of 34.9 to a high of 92.5 degrees Fahrenheit (Netstate .com, “Mississippi”). Summers are long and hot, and winters are short and mild, allowing for an extended growing season. At one time, when slaves were considered property and cotton was king, Mississippi was counted among the richest U.S. states. Now it is the poorest of all U.S. states, though much of the social, cultural, and economic infrastructure of its cotton days is still evident. Almost 40% of the state of Mississippi is farmland (USDA, Economic Research Service [ERS], “State Fact Sheets”). In 2004, Mississippi had 42,200 farms (ibid.). The average farm size is 263 acres, although there is great variation, ranging from the smallest low-resource farms to the massive cotton farms in the delta region. Over 50% of farms are under 100 acres, and 90% are under 500 acres (ibid.). Most of the very small farms are subsistence production for the state’s poorest. The bulk of Mississippi ’s agricultural production comes from a very small proportion of farms, however: in 2002, 5% of farms were accountable for 75% of the state’s agricultural sales (USDA, National Agricultural Statistics Service [NASS], “Mississippi State”). Geographically, row crop agriculture in Mississippi is divided between the delta and the hills areas. Along the west side of the state runs the Mississippi River, providing the rich soils of the Mississippi delta. In the wide, flat delta region, soil is good, water is plentiful , farms are expansive, and cotton still dominates.This region is where the largest farms of Mississippi are located, easily 5,000 to 10,000 acres. To the east of the delta are the hills, only qualifying as such by contrast to the flatness of the delta. Farms are smaller in the hills, more diversified, and broken by forested areas. While not a focus here, inklings of attitude differences toward biotechnology were evident between farmers in the hills and the delta. Post–World War II, agriculture in Mississippi became more diversified, although both row crop agriculture and cotton have remained important to the state economy. Currently, agriculture more broadly speaking— including poultry, forestry, catfish, and cattle, as well as row crops—is the number one industry in Mississippi, worth $6 billion in 2005 (Mississippi 174 From When Cotton Was King to King Monsanto Department of Agriculture and Commerce [MDAC], “Mississippi”). As such, agriculture provides...