Bartow J. Elmore, SEED MONEY

Digging deep into a fraught legal and chemical past, Bartow J. Elmore, Carnegie Fellow, 2017; Eric & Wendy Schmidt Fellow, 2018, guides readers through the disastrous history of St. Louis chemical firm Monsanto and their Roundup Ready® seeds that continue to shape the farms that feed us. Elmore’s herbicidal history, Seed Money, follows the testaments of a former Monsanto employee with potentially explosive information, a town ravaged by the firm’s radioactive waste, and former factory workers scarred by dangerous jobs, in order to explain how the food future of America is steeped in Monsanto’s past.

An expertly-woven historical record, Seed Money offers the first full account of Monsanto’s rise and fall from farm fame. Incorporating global fieldwork, interviews with company employees, and untapped corporate and government records, Elmore traces Monsanto’s astounding evolution.

Join the New America Fellows Program and Future Tense for a conversation with Bartow J. Elmore and 2017 Fellow and Pulitzer Prize winner Marcia Chatelain about how the future of American food and farming is tangled up in a past of toxic chemicals and agricultural empire.