Neil Young and The Monsanto Years, the protest album against the multinational company

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Neil Young is really an original and controversial figure. In addition to his extraordinary talent he is also known for his critical stance and his rebelliousness. In 2015, he pulled all of his music from the music stream on the market, claiming that they didn’t offer enough audio quality, and that his fans didn’t deserve to listen to their music in lousy quality. He also released in June in 2015, the album The Monsanto Years, a disc of protest against the multinational biotechnology company Monsanto, the largest producer of grain in the world, for its production of transgenics and pesticides. The album was recorded with the group Promisse of the Real, with Lukas and Micah Nelson, sons of Willie Nelson, in the theater named Teatro, the same one in which Willie Nelson recorded his namesake album Teatro, in Oxnard, California, in 1998. The Monsanto Years contains nine tracks, including Big Box, a critique of the unpopular politics of large multinational corporations, which is the record’s flagship. The album is available for sale in physical and digital format, on iTunes and PonoMusic, owned by Young himself.

The controversy of transgenics
Transgenics are genetically modified seeds to change their characteristics, such as becoming resistant to some pest species. The point is that this process, according to experts, causes damage to health and strong environmental impact, as well as damaging the economy, especially with regard to small farmers and producers. Monsanto is criticized not only by Young, but worldwide, by environmental activists and advocates. In addition, transgenic seeds end up contaminating other species, changing the entire ecosystem, and even more serious, produce sterile seeds, forcing the farmer to be a hostage to the company, having to always buy new seeds for the next crop, and consequently other pesticides. to combat the new pests that are emerging, thus forcibly increasing the already high profits of the company. Although there is some controversy among scholars on the subject, environmentalists maintain that the scientific studies carried out so far are not sufficient to prove the possible extent of such damage. Neil Young also criticizes Starbucks coffee chain A Rock Star Bucks A Coffee Shop for its involvement with Monsanto and its disregard for the environmental cause. In addition, and as always in his work, the album is filled with the best quality folk rock, with the unmistakable charisma of Neil Young.