Veritasium
1 HN recommender · recommended in 3 months, 2025
46:59 · 23M views · Aug 31, 2025
Veritasium's long documentary on the history of Monsanto's herbicides, including glyphosate, and how patented seeds prevent farmers from replanting. It covers agricultural chemistry, litigation and corporate practices.
Pointed to as a relevant, recent deep dive whenever Monsanto, GMO seeds or glyphosate safety come up.
3 comments from Hacker News
Veritasium has a couple months old video that talks about this issue, and other various issues around agriculture area (Monsanto "seed mafia") in this video this video
Farmers spend millions on seeds partly because they are/were contractually obligated to NOT harvest and reuse seeds gathered from the patented GMO plants. While you're correct that resistance traits generally are less effective in F2/F3 generations, they would be committing a crime if they even attempted. Aside from this farmer-hostile position, there's plenty of other reasons to believe Monsanto and now Bayer were historically and continue to be evil. There's a relevant Veritasium video posted just 2 days ago about this very topic and I think "evil" is a very apt description. this video Secondly, your claims about organic farming are way more nuanced than you're making them out to be. For instance, the pesticides used in organic farming have way different toxicity profiles than conventional farming pesticides. The argument of "they use more pesticides" doesn't hold water under serious scrutiny. Finally, you're creating an false dichotomy where everyone who criticizes Monsanto/Bayer must have a pro-organic stance. I am allowed to think that Monsanto/Bayer is evil while also supporting GMO farming. In fact, that's my exact position.
If your neighbor planted a GMO crop in their field, and then sprayed them with the compatible chemicals, two things might happen: 1. The chemicals are carried by the wind onto your crop field, killing your non-GMO crops 2. The seeds from the GMO crop spread into your field, and corporate hired goons show up at your door threatening you with a lawsuit. Or maybe if your neighbor doesn't like you, they spread some GMO seed in your field, then report you to the company. This led to neighbor versus neighbor conflicts in ag communities, in some cases turning violent. this video