Crowd Sourcing The Monsanto Network

This is a primer for everyone participating in the movement to shut down Monsanto using The Collective Contract.

An essential step in shutting down Monsanto with The Collective Contract is finding out where it is locally, and what it is doing. This is because we are going to target not only Monsanto, but all those corporations in it’s supply and distribution networks and also those corporations which support them in turn.

So the next step, for everyone involved in the movement, is to find what presence Monsanto has in their own local area. Essentially we are going to remove Monsanto area by area. If the tree is to be green, the leaves must be green. Local areas and communities are where this process of removing Monsanto really happens.

In this article I am going to try to answer the common questions you may have about how to do this research.

1. How big a geographical area should my research cover?

I suggest that you research the presence of Monsanto within your state. As the word state sometimes means country, I want to clarify that I mean a major subdivision of a country for example in the USA, your state might be Texas or Idaho. In Germany it might be Baden or Sachsen. In Mexico it might be Durango or Chiapas etc. If there is a complex Monsanto presence in your state, then come back to us, and we will work out together what the size of the area might be.

2. What Monsanto operations should I be looking for?

The research process will go through stages starting off with the most obvious operations. At the moment let’s stick the most obvious. When that is done we can look deeper.

Stage 1. Look for primary Monsanto operations with physical infrastructure— these are the obvious operations which carry the name of Monsanto. For example: A head office. A branch office. An agent directly employed by Monsanto. These will be the easiest things to find.

When we have completed that, we will begin to look for supporting organisations, service suppliers and etc.

3. How do I find out this information?

(a) Use the internet. Google and Wikipedia are particularly useful. There is a lot of information on Monsanto which can easily be found.

(b) Ask locally. You might ring up you local newspaper or chamber of commerce and see what connections you can find to Monsanto.

4. Where should I upload this information?

For the time being, please write up your findings on Medium and put them into this collection https://medium.com/the-monsanto-networks. Medium is easy to access for everyone who has a twitter account and is very simple to use. As nearly all of us are on Twitter, it seems like the best bet for the moment. Later on we will provide more suitable web space for each group.

Instructions for getting on to Medium (Link). This will take you 25 seconds!

5. What format should this information be in?

To make this easy, we have created a form you can copy and paste into a new document (Medium calls it a “new story”). Please use a new document for every new Monsanto location you find in your area.

We need the form to be the same because we have to put your info into a global spreadsheet in order to create the maps that everyone everywhere around the world is going to use, to know where, how and when to target Monsanto. These maps will be zoom-able, searchable & provide all participants with everything they need to know.

But we are going to start off very simple at the most local level. Here is the link to the form: Monsanto In My Area (link)

Later we are going to add local connections to those local operations, like adding the estate agent, the landlord, the local bank & etc etc. And also global connections that link to Monsanto’s various central operations.

6. How do can I split the work up in my area?

Communicate with others who are taking part in the crowd source. You can connect to others in your area who are using the Collective Contract to shut down Monsanto by joining your local area CCM-groups at Twoodo (Instructions: link).

7. How long do we have to complete stage 1?

Let’s try to complete this within the next 30 days. So, everyone should have their findings up on Medium by the first week of November.

Good luck!