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	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
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Politics & government

SEED MONEY

Bartow J. Elmore

Monsanto's Past and Our Food Future

A deeply researched and eye-opening history that shows how Monsanto came to have outsized influence over our food system.

This is the definitive history of Monsanto, a St. Louis chemical firm that became the world's largest genetically engineered seed enterprise. Monsanto merged with German pharma-biotech giant Bayer in 2018, but its Roundup Ready seeds, introduced twenty-five years ago, are still reshaping the farms that feed us. Incorporating global fieldwork, interviews with company employees, and untapped corporate and government records, award-winning historian Bartow J. Elmore traces Monsanto's astounding evolution from a scrappy chemical startup to a global agrobusiness powerhouse. Capitalizing on deals with customers like Coca-Cola, General Electric, and especially the US government, Monsanto used seed money derived from toxic products - including PCBs and Agent Orange - to build an agricultural empire, promising endless bounty through its genetically engineered technology. As new data emerges about its blockbuster Roundup system, and as Bayer faces a tide of lawsuits over Monsanto products past and present, Elmore's urgent history takes a penetrating look at the company's past. Bartow J. Elmore teaches environmental and business history at The Ohio State University. For this project he received the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award and a New America fellowship. He lives with his family in Columbus, Ohio.

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Book Published 2021-10-12 by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. - New York (USA)

Comments

Comprehensive and thought-provoking, this is an essential history for understanding the impact of a major player in modern agribusiness.

A fast-paced and vivid account of the global threats to food production and public health from the agrochemical industry's widely marketed herbicides - a must read for all who wish to better understand the workings of 'scavenger capitalism.'

Authoritative... Elmore details how [Roundup] became the best-selling agricultural chemical in history, dousing the corn, soy and cotton fields of middle America for decades... [Seed Money] demonstrates that the Roundup debacle was part of a larger pattern of unleashing half-baked chemical solutions to problems - solutions which, all too frequently, created even bigger problems down the line. Read more...

An astute, evenhanded history of a business often portrayed, with good reason, as a villain.

A book of immediate relevance and enduring significance. Elmore's powerful narrative uncovers evidence long hidden in corporate vaults, reveals the global consequences of decisions made in distant laboratories and boardrooms, and finds connections among science, agriculture, technology, politics, and business never seen before. This is history that matters.

Elmore's substantial research and outstanding attention to detail makes this investigation of the Monsanto chemical and agribusiness corporation riveting from start to finish... Combining elements of the film Erin Brockovich, Robert Bilott's Exposure (2019), and Patrick Radden O'Keefe's exposé of the Sackler family, Empire of Pain (2021), Seed Money is a galvanizing achievement that will leave readers deeply impressed, impassioned, and infuriated.

If you want to know just how Monsanto became so reviled by the sustainable food movement, this gripping tale of greed and corporate power tells all.

I expect this will become THE book on Monsanto.

Chinese (simpl.): Tao Zhi Yao Yao

A timely, powerful, and totally engrossing book. Through stories of farmers, chemists, entrepreneurs, workers, patients, lawyers, and judges, Elmore recounts a devastating history of how chemicals have seeped into almost every cranny of the national and global food supply. We will not fix our health until we fix our food; fixing our food, as this book makes clear, is a tale of politics and power.

New America + Future Tense, book talk with Marcia Chatelain Read more...

Seed Money illustrates the danger of placing profit over people and how not protecting our environment from dangerous chemicals threatens the health and welfare of all of us.

Ohio State University environmental lecturer Bartow J. Elmore's Seed Money is a fair-minded indictment of Monsanto. ... Read more...