Bart Elmore takes us on an authoritative and eye-opening journey into how the company Monsanto came to have outsized influence over our food system. Monsanto, a St. Louis chemical firm that became the world’s largest maker of genetically engineered seeds, merged with German pharma-biotech giant Bayer in 2018―but its Roundup Ready® seeds, introduced twenty-five years ago, are still reshaping the farms that feed us. Elmore examines Monsanto’s astounding evolution from a scrappy chemical startup to a global agribusiness powerhouse. Monsanto used seed money derived from toxic products―including PCBs and Agent Orange―to build an agricultural empire, promising endless bounty through its genetically engineered technology.

Bart Elmore is Associate Professor of Environmental History at The Ohio State University.

A transcript of this podcast is available at https://origins.osu.edu/listen/history-talk/seed-money-monsantos-past-and-our-food-future