As of last night, a US marshall, 2 state police and a county police are all over Mr. Hixon's area, serving notices to farmers that they are being sued by Monsanto. They arrive in pairs, with two cars parked a quarter mile and half mile down the road. They've served 3 so far and said "a bunch more are coming." No telling how many will be served since Hixon has between 200-400 farmers he cleans seeds for and these farmers have been repeatedly threatened by Monsanto thugs for the last two months, getting "visits," letters, and calls daily.

Farmers report that a Monsanto investigator laughed that they were doing "rural cleansing."

In March Monsanto agreed to acquire Netherlands-based De Ruiter Seeds Group BV, which produces seeds for the greenhouse market, for $862.7 million plus debt. Monsanto did not disclose the amount of the debt included in the purchase price.

De Ruiter Seeds, which had global sales of about $170.6 million, works with crops such as tomatoes, cucumbers, melons, peppers and rootstock.

The move comes three years after Monsanto began aggressively moving into the vegetable seed arena with the $1.4 billion purchase in 2005 of California-based Seminis, which gave Monsanto control over more than 30 percent of the North American vegetable seed market, as well as more than 20 percent of the world’s tomato seed market and more than 30 percent of the global hot pepper seed market.