Good news folks! At least somebody is making money in this dismal bear-eat-bear economy, and guess what, it’s an agricultural company! Well…sort of.

I’m going to have to apologize for my inappropriate levity come Yom Kippur, but Monsanto “The Man” Company doubled their net income on seeds this last quarter. It hurts, I know, but it hurts us less than in hurts the soil in Argentina.

Analysts credit the rise in profits to an increase in corn production in South America. According to the article linked above, for every million new acres of corn (converted from soy production), Monsanto’s share goes up one dollar. According to some clever commentators on The Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch, we ought to build an equation that estimates how many farmers Monsanto needs to sue at 50K per patented grain of pollen for the same increase.

What’s good for Monsanto is bad for the Global Food Crisis. The FAO says that, “Among all major food and feed commodities, additional demand for maize (a feedstock for the production of ethanol) and rapeseed (a feedstock for the production of biodiesel) have had the strongest impacts on [food] prices. For example, out of nearly 40 million tonnes increase in total world maize utilization in 2007, almost 30 million tonnes were absorbed by ethanol plants alone.” The increase in seed sales for Monsanto means an increase in corn production, which means more corn for fuel, which means less agricultural land devoted to food. It also means more Roundup run-off, which, as this recent study shows, isn’t good for any body.