Is Monsanto Jeopardizing Sugar Crops to Push Their GMO Corn?

The word sugar began to be replaced on food labels with the word high fructose corn syrup in the mid 80s. Most notably was Coca-Cola, whose three month new Coke formulation sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, angered consumers so much, they hardly noticed with Coca-Cola Class hit the shelves claiming to be the original but sweetened with corn.

Corn has become a huge cash crop and it's in nearly everything food related these days, and driving those efforts without a doubt is Big Agra giant Monsanto. It appears Monsanto may be willing to disrupt an entire crop in order to continue pushing corn upon the world diet, even though more and more people are demanding real sugar over the more controversial high fructose corn syrup, which many fear is the reason diabetes are escalating in the United States. And it's no wonder, it's practically in everything including sandwich bread.

Food giant Monsanto is so large that it can disrupt an entire food supply chain--the sweetest one there is. A court battle over genetically modified Monsanto sugar beets (detailed here) may lead to a drop in U.S. sugar production over the next two years, driving up prices for shoppers and food processors alike.

How can a single company shake up sugar production like that? In a nutshell: a judge recently ordered 256 acres of seed-producing Monsanto baby beet plants pulled out of the ground because the company didn't go through the proper USDA approval process when the beets were approved for use in 2005. And now the sugar industry is in trouble--50 percent of the U.S. sugar supply comes from sugar beets, and more than 90 percent of sugar beets are genetically engineered.

In theory, the solution is just to switch to conventional seeds. But Monsanto has dominated the market so much in the past few years that there might not be enough conventional seeds available to meet demand. As a result, total domestic sugar production could fall by as much as 20 percent, according to the New York Times.

It's not like Monsanto will lose in this, even after the court ruling. After all, corn has become the sweetener of choice for most of the food processing industry. You have to wonder if Monsanto is purposely strangling an industry as more and more Americans are demanding high fructose corn syrup removed from their foods while they fight the GMO industry by choosing to purchase naturally grown organics.