Well, it’s a start, as reported by Jack Kaskey for BusinessWeek, Monsanto’s Roundup Ready Soybeans Probed by Justice (Update4),

Jan. 14 (Bloomberg) — Monsanto Co., the world’s largest seed producer, said the U.S. Justice Department formally requested information on its herbicide-tolerant soybean seed business as part of an investigation.

The Justice Department issued a civil investigative demand seeking confirmation that competitors and farmers will have access to first-generation Roundup Ready soybean seeds following patent expiration in 2014, St. Louis-based Monsanto said today in a statement. The company has provided access to “millions of pages of documents” as it cooperates with inquiries into its business and the industry.

After Monsanto’s stock price fell, analysts tried to put a good spin on this:

The department’s focus on Roundup Ready soybeans “likely indicates no DOJ interest in the remainder of Monsanto” operations, Vincent Andrews, a New York-based analyst at Morgan Stanley, said today in a report. He rates the shares “overweight.“

He wishes.

Meanwhile, it’s not just DoJ:

The U.S. Justice Department will hold a March workshop on crop-seed competition. The department made informal inquiries last year into allegations from DuPont Co., the second-biggest seed maker, that Monsanto unfairly uses genetic licenses to dominate the engineered seed market, Monsanto said last year.

And it’s not just big business that’s affected:

Monsanto has begun switching growers to its more expensive Roundup Ready 2 Yield product, predicting the seeds will boost soybean output 7 percent. Roundup Ready 2 seeds will be stacked with new traits, such as healthier oils, that won’t be offered on the original, Grant said last week.

Note the language: “begun switching growers”. The growers have no choice, after all. That’s why the Monsanto monopoly on monoculture is a problem for the economy, the environment, and the rest of us.

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