Monsanto's Past, Our Future w/ Bart Elmore
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 6 November 2023
⏱️ 66 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Monsanto's Past, Our Future w/ Bart Elmore
The Monsanto Company officially ceased to exist when it was acquired by Bayer in 2018, but its legacy lives on in courtrooms, factory towns and farms across the globe. Today the company's name is most associated with the herbicide Roundup and genetically modified seeds, but Monsanto also served as a leading producer of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, an essential supplier of caffeine and saccharin to Coca-Cola in Coke's early years, and the sole US producer of Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs). In short, Monsanto's history is one that will continue to shape the US well into the future.
In this episode, Bart Elmore joins Bob and Ben to talk about his new book Seed Money: Monsanto's Past and Our Future (W.W. Norton, 2021), and how a small midwestern company founded in 1901 became an agricultural powerhouse by selling solutions to the problems it helped to create.
Dr. Bartow Elmore is Associate Professor of History at The Ohio State University where he specializes in Global Environmental History and the History of Capitalism. He is also the author of the award-winning book Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism (W. W. Norton, 2015). You can follow him on twitter at @BartElmore.
You can hear Bart's other appearances on The Road To Now in episode #140: Citizen Coke: The History of Coca-Cola w/ Bartow Elmore and #277: Country Capitalism w/ Bartow Elmore.
This is a fully re-edited and audio-enhanced rebroadcast of RTN Episode 208, which originally aired on September 27, 2021. This episode was edited by Ben Sawyer.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I'm Ben Sawyer and this is the road to now. |
| 0:06.6 | Today we're resharing our conversation with Bartow Elmore on his book Seed Money, |
| 0:11.5 | Monsanto's past and Our Food Future. |
| 0:13.9 | It's a fantastic conversation and we thought it was another great episode worth sharing. |
| 0:18.9 | Bob and I will be back with a brand new episode next week. |
| 0:21.9 | Take care. Patrons, thank you. Boy, Elmore, welcome to The Road to Now. Thanks for how to be |
| 0:28.0 | back. It's a pleasure to be with you all. You know, we have to introduce Bart, but we really don't |
| 0:31.7 | because this is his second time here. And he was here for Citizen Coke a few years ago, |
| 0:36.3 | and now he's here for seed money. |
| 0:39.1 | Monsanto's past and our future. |
| 0:41.4 | And you kind of threw out this phrase, and it's also really a part of the Coke story. |
| 0:46.0 | What is Scavenger Capitalism? |
| 0:49.0 | I love it. Yeah. And I want to say also, I want to say thank you. |
| 0:52.3 | I think I said this earlier, but I wanted to thank you all for having me on because when I did the Citizen Coke kind of my first book tour, I think it was one of my last stops on that tour, so to speak, journey. And y'all are one of the first stops on this journey. And I wouldn't have any other way. The conversation was so fun last time. |
| 1:11.9 | So thanks. |
| 1:13.7 | And I think the scavenger capitalism thing came late in the process like any writer. |
| 1:21.0 | You know, you're writing and you're thinking about what's the pattern I'm seeing here. |
| 1:26.5 | But with Monsanto, it was very clear. |
| 1:29.1 | Here's a company for those who may not know it that started in St. Louis, Missouri in 1901. |
| 1:38.0 | At the time, it was a real scrappy little firm. |
| 1:40.7 | It was trying to make its name for itself. |
| 1:43.2 | And that was kind of the fun part of going back to that past. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Benjamin Sawyer, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Benjamin Sawyer and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.