Monsanto suing farmers over piracy issue

SAN FRANCISCO – Monsanto Co.’s “seed police” snared soy farmer Homan McFarling in 1999, and the company is demanding he pay it hundreds of thousands of dollars for alleged technology piracy.

McFarling’s sin? He saved seed from one harvest and replanted it the following season, a revered and ancient agricultural practice.

“My daddy saved seed. I saved seed,” said McFarling, 62, who still grows soy on the 5,000-acre family farm in Mississippi and is fighting the agribusiness giant in court.

Saving Monsanto’s seeds, genetically engineered to kill bugs and resist weed sprays, violates provisions of the company’s contracts with farmers.

Since 1997, Monsanto has filed similar lawsuits 90 times in 25 states against 147 farmers and 39 agriculture companies, according to a report issued Thursday by The Center for Food Safety, a biotechnology foe.

In a similar case a year ago, Tennessee farmer Kem Ralph was sued by Monsanto and sentenced to eight months in prison after he was caught lying about a truckload of cotton seed he hid for a friend.

Ralph’s prison term is believed to be the first criminal prosecution linked to Monsanto’s crackdown. Ralph has also been ordered to pay Monsanto more than $1.7 million.

The company itself says it annually investigates about 500 “tips” that farmers are illegally using its seeds and settles many of those cases before a lawsuit is filed.

In this way, Monsanto is attempting to protect its business from pirates in much the same way the entertainment industry does when it sues underground digital distributors exploiting music, movies and video games.

In the process, it has turned farmer on farmer and sent private investigators into small towns to ask prying questions of friends and business acquaintances.

Monsanto’s licensing contracts and litigation tactics are coming under increased scrutiny as more of the planet’s farmland comes under genetically engineered cultivation.

Some 200 million acres of the world’s farms grew biotech crops last year, an increase of 20 percent from 2003, according to a separate report released Wednesday.

Many of the farmers Monsanto has sued say, as McFarling claims, that they didn’t read the company’s technology agreement close enough. Others say they never received an agreement in the first place.

The company counters that it sues only the most egregious violations and is protecting the 300,000 law-abiding U.S. farmers who annually pay a premium for its technology.