Shame on Monsanto.

[sewen]

Just read an article in the Western Producer about legal strings on volunteer canola. Being from Alberta I have nothing to do with the situation in Manitoba but apparently some farmers are thinking of letting the volunteer canola grow in the hope they might get something. But Monsanto says hold on you'll have to pay us $15 an acre. The way I see it Monsanto might just as well go over there and kick mud in the farmers face too. What a bunch of crap at least Bayer said they would look the other way this year.

This is why I have never grown Round-up ready Canola and will never grow it. I don't need Monsanto trying to sue the pants off me.

[FarmRanger]

Bayer gets their pound of flesh when you spray their chemical. Monsanto has no way of collecting, except through that $15 TUA. If you have volunteers, that means you agreed to their terms last year. Why should you be able to grow RR canola for less than the other systems where it still costs about the same, but they make their money from the chemical.

[silverback]

Does that mean that if they find volunteer canola in my wheat field this year that they can sue my a__?

I may think twice about R/R as well if they get that petty.

[FarmRanger]

I grow RR canola, and I believe my contract says I have to control the volunteers. If there are a few escapes, I don't think that counts as a violation, its dockage. What sewen was talking about was letting the volunteers produce a crop. If you have a wheat crop, I would assume you would try to control the weeds, including volunteers. A few escapes in a wheat crop is a lot different than a volunteer crop.
I pay my $15, why should someone else get it for free just because its a Roundup system and not Liberty Link, or Clearfield? I'm glad Monsanto goes after the blatant violators. You'd see lawsuits from the other companies too if there was generic Liberty or Odysey available.

[sewen]

FarmRanger what I'm talking about is the poor guys in Manitoba. It's almost the middle of July and they don't have some of their fields seeded yet. I thought maybe Monsanto could probably cut them a little slack. As for myself I use certified Canola seed and would never think of trying to get a crop from volunteers, unless it was the middle of July and I couldn't get into the field!!

[nicolaas]

I try to use anything but monsanto when it comes to spray. I haven't used Round Up for years. Any thing but. I can't wait untill their "TUA" ends. Just think, how many hundreds of millions they collect from Canadian farmers every year from that alone. Really, how much money does it cost to develop a plant? I got a question, do farmers in other countries have to pay the "TUA" or are we the only stupid ones? I do not buy the argument that without it we would never get "progressive varieties developed" Another thing, why do the americans only pay about 1/2 the cost for round up type spray then we do? I appreciate the US system in the fact that they have safeguards against monopolies and the screwing of the producers.

[ward.toma]

As far as I know, no one in the world gets RR technology for free. While there may not be a TUA, there is a cost somewhere inthe system that the farmers pays.

[mhartman]

I have heard American farmers complain about much cheaper Roundup in Canada! Apparently they pay $10US per litre ($40US per US gallon). But Roundup is even cheaper in Australia and Argentina...
Here's a quote from an article in Farm Industry News, May 18, 2003:
"U.S. farmers have complained that glyphosate prices in Latin America, Australia and the Far East are substantially cheaper, nearly half the price paid by U.S. farmers in some cases, despite what appears to be fierce glyphosate competition between Monsanto and Syngenta in the U.S."

[Private-i]

My Monsanto rep has told me that no country gets the roundup ready for free. If there isn't a TUA then it is added to the cost of the seed. They get it out of you one way or another. As for the cost of producing a new hybrid, when i got a tour of bayer's breeding facility at Saskatoon you can see that it is not cheap. If you took the cost of just that variety then sure it looks cheap but you have to remember the hundreds of thousands of strains that never make it. Bayer has to pay to produce them no matter what thye produce, that is why the cost of new technology is so high. Just a side note on the cost of hybrid seed. Our year end buy price was 30 cents a pound cheaper this year than it was last year and our cost from bayer went up 1 1/2 %.