Donald L. Barret's and James B. Steel's, Monsanto's Harvest of Fear, Rhetorical Analysis

Monsanto's Harvest of Fear

A Quick Summary

In this article, both Donald Barlett and James Steele, use Logos and Pathos in order to inform us and give us testimonies of the real side of Monsanto. Monsanto is a company that sells people genetic modified seeds for crops, not only does this company sell these genetic seeds, and other substances, they also are known for many controversial acts. The key points of this article are to inform people about the experiences Monsanto’s customers have with the company, not only the customers, but also how other farmers not associated with Monsanto, have been affected. This article was prompted because a testimony of Gary Rinehart, a small store-owner who sold farming products in Eagleville, Missouri, who had a negative experience with the company. He explained how Monsanto had secret investigators who accused and confronted him for violating the company’s patent rights. He was then taken into court and investigator Jefferey Moore was sent to do a surveillance of Gary’s barn, the article states, “Mr. Moore located two empty bags in the ditch in the public road right-of-way beside one of the fields planted by Rinehart, which contained some soybeans. Mr. Moore collected a small number of soybeans left in the bags which Defendant had tossed into the public right-of-way. These samples tested positive for Monsanto’s Roundup Ready technology.” Rinehart then hired a lawyer and the company of Monsanto stated, “Investigator Jeffery Moore had targeted the wrong man.”

Monsanto eventually dropped the suit. Gary was one of the lucky targets that beat Monsanto. Despite that occurring, the company still managed to have power and took over Pilot Grove in Missouri where Monsanto began enforcing their patents on farmers. Just like Gary had been confronted by secrete investigators, farmers in Pilot Grove were also being confronted, however, many of the farmers here didn’t stand a chance to fight back against Monsanto’s suits. How did this company started and got power? Monsanto was founded by John Francis Queeny in 1901 according to Steele and Barlett. Queeny made a business producing saccharin, which at the time was and artificial sweetener imported from Germany. The German cartel were not so happy that Queeny began producing their product, but with the loyalty of Coca-Cola, the U.S. Department of Agriculture did not ban Quenny’s business. Monsanto then began producing more products and became a leading force in the chemical industry because of WWI. In the 1920s, Queeny was diagnosed with cancer and made his only son, Edgar Monsanto Queeny, be in charge of the company. Edgar made the company bigger by making more products like plastic, rubber, and more chemicals. In the 1970s the company then turned into biotechnology, with many scientist and studies they successfully created a G.M. seed in the 1990s which turned out to be very successful. The company had successfully sold many chemical-based products that caused one of the worst toxics products ever know, PCBs and dioxin.

Even though the company rose to power, it had many downfalls. Monsanto polluted many areas across the nation and in other countries, were some people have had side effects because of their power plants failing and disposing waste in the environment. Even though Monsanto was responsible for pollution, they still didn’t want to take no part in questions related to their pollution. A biologist also had a fish test that confirmed the pollution when all his fish died after he had put the fish in the contaminated waters. Despite having this bad history, Monsanto still grew bigger and began attacking dairy farms. According to Steele and Barlett, Monsanto did not agree with dairy products having the phrase “From Cows Not Treated with rBGH.” Monsanto eventually got dairy products to stop phrasing those things and began making hormones for cows to produce more milk. Just like suing farmers, Monsanto began suing dairy companies as well for their phrases. In the labeling war, however, Monsanto did fall short but some of the company’s foot soldiers still put pressure on some dairy companies. Jeff Kleinpeter, a dairy farmer who got attacked my Monsanto, has also been attacked on websites to stop making false accusations. One of the websites had a contributor, Steven Milloy, who claimed to debunk “faculty scientific data and analysis.” According to Steele and Barlett, Steven Milloy was no surprise of him claiming the debunk after he was a lobbyist for Monsanto early in his career.

Authors

Donald Barlett and James Steele are two journalist who are known for working together and looking deep into topics and have strong investigation power. Many of their topics in their books are investigating big companies or secrets that people in the U.S. are not aware of. They did a duo and made this article so that people can know more about where their foods come from.

How the Article was Written as Informal

In order to write this article so that people could be informed and not give their personal opinions, Barlett and Steele used two specific rhetoric methods to do so. In the scenario of Gary Rinehart and the negative experience with Monsanto’s investigators, is an example of Pathos where they stated, “Gary Rinehart clearly remembers the summer day in 2002 when the stranger walked in and issued his threat.” However, this testimony was not that of the authors, rather the store owner. Ethos was not used in this article because there was no statements made from the authors to claim any such details, rather statistics from others or testimonies were used in order to persuade someone. Logos would be the method used more in order to persuade the audience. We can see the evidence of logos with the statistics, the authors stated “in 1988, Monsanto agreed to settle most of the cases by making a single lump payment of $1.5 million. Monsanto also agreed to drop claims to collect $305,000 in court cost from six retired Monsanto workers who had unsuccessfully charged in another lawsuit that Monsanto had recklessly exposed them to dioxin.” Pathos and Logos are seen more throughout the article as it is very informative.

The Authors Argument Strategies

The authors argumentative strategies were not that of giving any personal experience, nor give any type of emotion from themselves. They just simply gave us information, gave us facts and other things, but didn’t really said to follow a certain way against Monsanto. It was more of a hey, here is the info, you decide what you want to think about it. This strategy worked because it’s an article that is not bias, there are no statements that the authors made that puts them in the problem of the topic.

What the Authors Were Trying to Show the Audience

In this article, Barlett and Steel wanted to make aware of what was happing to our foods, and what was happing in the process of our foods. With so much information about one specific company and the wrongs doing of that company, one can guess that both authors were trying to help people to learn more about supplements, the process of them, the pros and cons, and how it affects people in terms of business. This article gave me an idea that the writers probably didn’t agree with the way Monsanto was running their company, and the bad things that the company did, so they accomplished to write this article in a way to not give their personal persuasion rather inform us.

Conclusion

In conclusion, with the testimonies and statistics provided by Barlett and Steele, clearly, they were trying to expose Monsanto and show the ugly truth about the company. They did not expose them with opinions rather with facts and real people’s testimonies without having any of their own words, and it worked because it did not come off biased.

#Food #GMOs #DonaldLBarret #JamesBSteele