[MereKatMoves]

"The SEC had said that Monsanto lacked sufficient internal controls to account for millions of dollars in rebates that it offered to retailers and distributors. It ultimately booked a sizeable amount of revenue, but then failed to recognize the costs of the rebate programs on its books."

This is what happens when you take glyphosate and multiply the cost/production price by well over 50x and package it as some miracle product. If your marketing strategy is to mislead every single purchaser then it is no surprise that you lose sight of how many strands of bullshit marketing you are running.

Roundup is a great example of one of those products that are cash cows for companies that market themselves as "the best solution"

Every.Single.One of the roundup products is glyphosate, and that stuff will kill anything and is very very cheap.

Dear readers be aware - glyphosate is a chemical that is present in all weedkillers (except the really shitty ones) so buying the brand name is a total waste of your money, and the amazing people at Roundup HQ know it. Buy the no-name, unbranded stuff.

I can understand Coca Cola etc selling sugar water for huge margins, but I pull my hair out when it comes to something like glyphosate. That's how I get my roots under control.

[mattgrice]

As another poster has pointed out, there are many, many non-glyphosate herbicides.

In the past, Monsanto has required farmers buying Roundup-Ready seeds to sign license agreements stating that only Monsanto glyphosate may be used.

https://www.ssjr.com/pubdigassets/presentations/lawyer_7/sbs...

[MereKatMoves]

Do you have any "roundup ready" chemical study that can determine, for example, what concentration of glyphosate (over the lesser killers) is in the commercial "Monsanto glyphosate ready" products?

I smell a rat here - perhaps they are selling glyphosate as a name on the product, but in reality there is so little of it compared to 'filler' weedkillers that they can profit from that too.

the whole world knows that glyph kills it all, so "glyph-ready" seems like a contradiction to me

source info comes from my time dealing with sugar cane producers who use pure glyph to increase the sugar content in the useful end of the canes they harvest

[adenadel]

I'm confused by your post. "Roundup Ready" plants are genetically engineered to be resistant to the effects of glyphosate.

[rmason]

You're incorrect. Glysophate is part of a lot of tank mix combos marketed to farmers but no where near all.

[MereKatMoves]

yes that's true. What I was pointing out was that the consumer base is being totally ripped off

Thanks for clarifying.

It remains the case that glyphosate is what kills things most effectively. Anything else is just flavor

[rmason]

If you're looking for a contact weed killer, you're interested in only killing some perennials and if your seed has been genetically engineered to be Roundup resistant then it's a top choice. That's virtually all soybeans but still a minority of corn and no wheat or alfalfa.

I'm old enough to have been running a fertilizer plant here in Michigan when Roundup was first introduced back in the seventies. The cost was 4x what it is now and it was mainly used as a quackgrass killer back then.

[MereKatMoves]

Is it true that you don't actually need "Roundup ready" weedkiller? Could you use plain old glyph instead?

[pyre]

> "Roundup ready" weedkiller

I thought that "Roundup ready" described the GMO crops and that the weedkiller was just "Roundup."

[rmason]

There are companies like Novartis that are making glyphosate using the original now expired patent.

Monsanto has updated the product with a slightly improved formulation. I'm enough removed nowadays to be able to tell you if it's worth the slight extra money, but Monsanto still has the majority of the market.

[ptaipale]

I couldn't find reliable market share figures, but I think Monsanto has nowhere near a majority of glyphosate market. The patent expired 25 years ago and glyphosate has since been made by many American, European and e.g. Chinese manufactures (BASF, Dow, Bayer, Syngenta, SinoChem, ChemChina, and whatever). I'm actually surprised if Monsanto's global glyphosate market share is a two digits percentage.