True, the genetic shell game Monsanto and its allies play on farmers is not directly relevant to the GMO issue. GMOs are only piggybacked onto the seed lines. Farmers evaluate the GMO seed product on the specific advantages of the GMO trait, most varieties being offered with or without that trait. By keeping seed prices artificially high it also rationalizes the even higher prices for seeds of GMO crops. Farmers pay two and three times as much for GMO seeds today than they did for conventional seeds ten years ago.
Seed companies are the most profitable in agribusiness.
Multinational chemical and pharmaceutical companies have acquired highly profitable seed companies at a breakneck pace over the last 30 years. The ability to maintain that underlying structure of profitability provides an advantage for the GMO trade. And that is what makes the difference - who benefits, who has a place to sit when the music stops. The model of the corporate farmer carefully choosing from the options presented to him in the marketplace is merely the latest installment in the neoclassical economist s tale of Rational Economic Man. Driven only by a desire to maximize, perfectly rational, and perfectly informed, this fanciful creature is presented as the perfect model for modern agriculture.