Zach Lahn - Exposing the Monsanto Files | SRS #290

TL;DR

Iowa gubernatorial candidate Zach Lahn exposes how Monsanto's internal emails prove they knowingly kept a toxic Roundup formulation on US markets after reformulating a safer version for the EU.

Key Points

• 1.The Monsanto Files reveal deliberate deception. Internal Monsanto emails show executives knew their US Roundup formulation was harmful — after reformulating a version 20 times less toxic for the EU, one email asked 'why would we continue to make a harmful product when we can make a safer one?' — yet nothing changed in the US.
• 2.The EU banned the US Roundup formulation, not glyphosate itself. Industry spokespeople mislead by saying glyphosate isn't banned in the EU, but the specific US formulation containing POEs (polyethoxylated tallowamines) — which penetrate human skin and enter the bloodstream — is banned there.
• 3.Bayer/Monsanto is pursuing immunity through every available channel. The company has two lobbyists per member of Congress, spends more per congressman than those members earn annually, and is simultaneously pushing state capitols, the Supreme Court, the farm bill, and an executive order to achieve liability immunity.
• 4.Lahn argues safe products don't need liability immunity. He draws a direct parallel to the 1986 vaccine immunity law, calling it possibly the greatest source of pharmaceutical suffering ever legislated, and says glyphosate immunity follows the same corrupt playbook.
• 5.Agriculture lobbying has cost family farms dearly. Agribusiness spent $1.5 billion lobbying Congress over 10 years, earned $150 billion in profit over the same period, while 100,000 family farms disappeared — proving lobbyists serve corporations, not producers.
• 6.Three companies now control 85% of Iowa's agriculture input market. When Lahn was growing up, over 300 companies competed; consolidation has given farmers an illusion of choice, with one of those three companies — Syngenta — being 100% owned by the Chinese state.
• 7.Iowa gave a Chinese-owned company $7.5 million in taxpayer-funded tax credits. Syngenta, fully owned by the Chinese government, received refundable Iowa state tax credits while homegrown Iowa competitors testified before Congress about being squeezed out of the market.
• 8.Only 0.03% of Iowa's 24 million acres produces food that reaches a plate in its original form. The rest grows ethanol feedstock or animal feed exported out of state and overseas — yet Iowa imports 95% of its food, exposing a catastrophic food sovereignty failure.
• 9.Seed patent manipulation locks independent farmers into royalty payments. When patents expire and seeds enter public libraries, large seed companies scramble the seed names into random letters and numbers so independent seedsmen can't identify them, forcing continued royalty payments to the duopoly controlling all US seed genetics.
• 10.At least 25% of Iowa's farmland is now owned by out-of-state investors. Lahn compares this directly to Blackstone buying single-family homes, arguing absentee ownership destroys rural communities and makes it impossible for young farmers to afford land entry.
• 11.Cedar Rapids gave Google and QTS $529 million in tax rebates for just 30 jobs. The two companies bought 1,400 acres of former farmland south of Cedar Rapids to build data centers, amounting to $17 million per job created — a deal Lahn calls an outright failure of negotiation by local government.
• 12.The average Iowa farmer is 57.6 years old and operating near break-even. Agribusiness companies raise input prices even as commodity prices stagnate or fall, making it impossible for the next generation to support two families on one farm — a generational transfer model that has effectively ended.
• 13.Lahn bought back his family's 1900 homestead in 2014 and spent 11 years restoring it. His great-great-grandfather arrived in Iowa alone at age 14, stowing away from Hamburg; Lahn found his grandfather's initials carved in the basement post, cementing his commitment to preserving that heritage as the core motivation for running for governor.
• 14.Lahn believes the federal government is beyond repair and plans to sue it as governor. He argues the Chevron doctrine's overturn now empowers states to sue federal regulators who invented rules Congress never passed, and sees strong state governance — not Washington DC — as the only viable path forward.
• 15.Trump's executive order on glyphosate immunity does not exclude product liability. Lahn states unambiguously that nothing in the executive order prevents it from applying to product liability claims, directly contradicting MAHA movement promises — and RFK's public backing of the order — that pesticide accountability would be protected.