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An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/02/07/691979417/is-fear-driving-sales-of-dicamba-proof-soybeans [npr.org]

"The biggest, most valuable new technology on Midwestern farms these days is a new family of soybean seeds. But some farmers say they're buying these seeds partly out of fear.

"A new lawsuit claims that the company Monsanto, now owned by Bayer, violated antitrust laws when it introduced the seeds. Bayer is asking the court to dismiss the complaint.

"The seeds go by the trade name Xtend. They're worth an estimated billion dollars a year to Bayer."

For those who don't want to read or listen to the story, the short summary is as follows: Dicamba is an herbicide used as a weed killer. It is thought to spread far outside its targeted area. (Many academics and scientists say that is proven fact, Bayer disagrees, but irrespective of the truth of the matter, many farmers think it does.) Therefore after one farmer decides to use these seeds and herbicide, their neighbors need to use the same seeds out of fear of losing their crop to dicamba. Now this farmer can use dicamba as well and has no reason not to, so they do so, and the cycle repeats.

By analogy, think what happens when the first person sells their land to oil and gas companies, or indeed the first time during the era of American Segregation when somebody sold a house to a black family in an all-white neighborhood.

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