Part of the great American trend toward “green” living has been the rapid rise of organic foods. “Organic” means many things to many people. Consumers envision the meat products they eat being grown in wide-open, free-range environs. They picture their fruits and vegetables being farmed without the use of harmful pesticides. They imagine that they are feeding their families from wholesome crops, farmed by Midwestern families, relying on only the sun, the rain and the grace of the Good Lord above. Those illusions are likely to be shattered for millions of shoppers when they find out that Whole Foods Market has thrown in the towel against the biggest player in the world of corporate agriculture: Monsanto. “The policy set for (genetically engineered) alfalfa will most likely guide policies for other GE crops as well,” read the Whole Foods e-mail sent out last year. “True coexistence is a must.”

Rooted in Chemicals
Although Monsanto’s marketing department touts it as a relatively new company, its roots date back to pre-World War I. Monsanto’s first product was saccharin; by the 1960s it was also producing such chemical niceties as PCBs, dioxin and Agent Orange – and there are dozens of Superfund sites across the country to prove it. By 1980 the company had figured out how to genetically modify plant matter. Barely three national election cycles later, Monsanto’s former chief counsel was nominated – and contentiously confirmed – as a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. His name is Clarence Thomas. And a former Monsanto head lobbyist was named Deputy Food Commissioner at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. By 1994 he had returned to Monsanto, presumably with the FDA’s playbook under his arm.

Aggressive About Agriculture
Until 1980, one could not obtain a patent on a seed, since seeds were considered to be life-forms and not inventions. When Monsanto genetically engineered their seeds to resist Roundup weed killer (which is also made by Monsanto), they were granted a patent on their seeds as Genetically Modified Organisms – GMOs. For farmers, it meant they could use Roundup liberally without fear of crop damage. It also meant that they could no longer follow a custom as ancient as agriculture himself, known as “seed-saving”. Monsanto required every single seed to be returned to the company (necessitating the purchase of new seeds every year). Moreover, the company takes an extremely aggressive legal stance – even in the face of small farmers or small-town general stores – when it comes to protecting their intellectual property. Their reprehensible behavior includes hiring private detectives to conduct surveillance on small family farmers working their hardest to eke a living out of our nation’s breadbasket – out of their own land. The corporate giant has no problem litigating them beyond their means.

Nowhere to Hide
The fact of the matter, though, is that Monsanto products are already in nearly every household in America, even those dedicated to a “green” lifestyle that involves healthy nutritional choices. Ninety percent of American-grown soybeans come from Monsanto’s genetically-engineered seeds (soy is found in more food products than most people realize). With the abject surrender of the largest organic-foods retailer, Whole Foods, and the largest wholesaler, United Natural Foods, Monsanto alfalfa (complete with Roundup-resistant genetic modifications, whatever they are) will be fed to cattle which will eventually wind up on our grocery store shelves as beef products. Corn, cotton, sugar-beets and canola have all been subjected to Monsanto’s GMO engineering, which some scientists believe transfers to the very soil in which the plants are grown.

Bought and Paid For
Our friends and allies “across the pond” probably take no small measure of amusement from our plight, here in this proud Republic, where it was our freedom that was supposed to be iron-clad. Sure, they have genetically modified crops in Europe; they also have mandatory labeling laws, which don’t exist here and likely never will, given Monsanto’s appendages in our halls of government. So here we are, just 65 years removed from saving the world from monstrous tyranny, fresh out of the Cold War, with nearly all of our food production placed in the hands of a single monopolistic entity, one with a horrifying track record as a corporate citizen.

The Tipping Point: Citizens United
Ah, citizenship. Until the very recent Citizens United case, in which the Supreme Court (Clarence Thomas included) reversed a century’s worth of campaign finance law and bestowed “citizenship” unto corporations, that grand word referred to the people. You and me. Hearing Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney declare that “corporations are people” in Iowa late last year should have given those Midwestern farmers all the information they needed about the man, yet he won the Iowa caucuses. Corporations, like Monsanto, are people now. They are people who can dump money anywhere they please without so much as a kernel of disclosure, taking all the power from a self-divided government, with both parties now completely unaware of who is funding their opponents. Everyone serves the corporations. No wonder Whole Foods caved. Not even the United States government can stop them.

Corporations, unless and until a Constitutional amendment wipes out Citizens United, may have legally established their “personhood”. What the people at Monsanto and others like them can never achieve is humanity.