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this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2024
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A big problem is that farmers are not allowed to use the corn and and grain which they grew themselves on their own field as seeds. When they buy the engineered seeds and accompanied pesticides they are forced to do it every year.
That's a dangerous development in my opinion. You must not centralise seed production in that way.
Plus: the Roundup stuff really doesn't look healthy to me.
Yep, I'm not necessarily worried about health effects, it's the whole thing about corporations suddenly owning the copyright on plants and forcing farmers to buy seeds instead of keeping seeds like they used to.
1: non-gmo plants have patents, far more of them than gmo plants.
2: farmers generally don't keep their own seeds, and haven't for a century.
Nobody's forcing farmers to buy seeds. Seed sellers are asking farmers to pay if they want their seeds.
Farmers could grow their own seeds and use those. It's just that nobody does because buying highly productive cultivars is more profitable for them, even after they've shared that extra income with seed producers.
This is a exclusive problem for the US. A County with a working justice system would acknowledge biological gene mobility and the natural reproduction cycle. That means farmers will be able to grow plants out of their own seeds as well as cross the mutants with relatives to keep the benefits alongside biodiversity. This is of course no business model but open funded research could do it as well.
Most scientists have a strong opinion against herbicide resistance (like round-up, round-up-ready). These genes are very quickly found in other plants do to gene transfer so it's only a short short sighted solution.
PS: Glyphosate is the best herbicide we know. Your argument is valid for all herbicides but with roundup the least.
The US does have IP exceptions for plants used only internally to develop new variants. The news stories where a seed company sues a farmer are all about selling product commercially.
Though those laws are far less robust than in much of the world.
That is the same for all crops though - including those modified as hybrids, or by mutagenesis, which are allowed.
I agree that patents shouldn't be allowed on genetics (and software for that matter) - but that's unrelated to the specific gene editing ban here (CRISPR, etc.)
Look, people will get cancer from the pesticides but just think of the shareholders!
There is so much wrong with this claim, not least of which is that it's about a century out of date and straight from a marketing playbook by "organic" associations.
1: most farmers don't save their own seeds. They haven't for a century, because it's pretty hard to do right, so they simply buy seeds from a seed company. Even the ones using heirloom seeds do this.
2: almost every modern crop is a hybrid, including the ones that aren't GMO. Hybrid crops are created by crossing two specific parent crops (say short leaf variant, crossed with long stem variant, to produce a hybrid with both traits). This hybrid will only produce 25% hybrid seeds itself though, so saving them is useless. This applies to basically every commercial non-gmo crop
There is a huge difference between not being allowed to do something, and deciding not to do something.
I don't have a car (like most people in my town). So not allowing car ownership would be ok?
Ah, I thought this one was pretty obvious, but let me add point 3
3: every single modern cultivar sold the past half century has had intellectual property agreement attached to it. You're not allowed to save modern non-gmo seeds either.
Them:
You:
Them, replying to a post about GMO-seeds: "you're not allowed to save these seeds"
Me: "That's not a GMO thing, you're not allowed to save any seeds".
Also, I don't think that's a good thing at all. Most IP law is detrimental.
it was not obvious to me. I am still in doubt thought.
is there a source?
(I am especially sceptical about the quanifiers. "every sjngle,,," is a very strong statement. "You’re not allowed to save modern non-gmo seeds either." implies, that there are no non-gmo seeds, that the farmer could sell, which is also a strong statement)
Source down there.
No, there definitely are, but most aren't modern. You're allowed to do whatever you want with seeds that aren't covered under IP laws, like heirloom seeds. The problem is that those (by definition) aren't the latest and greatest, so their yields will be lower, they'll be less hardy, etc.
I'm sure there will also be open varieties, but the problem is still that seed saving is difficult and costly, so most farmers will buy seeds. And the people selling those seeds get less money from selling the old seeds. And that's bad, but not a GMO-only thing.
Here's a great guide as to why the whole situation is rather shit (imho, and in their less-humble opinion too): https://seedalliance.org/publications/a-guide-to-seed-intellectual-property-rights/
Depends on the crop. We just clean our own peas, barley and oats. But canola and wheat is usually purchased every year to keep on top of varieties.
CRISPR is actually much cheaper than the methods used now, so there could be more participants in the market.
It's about the creation of artifical markets - Allowing patents on genetic modifications in lifeforms so that one can sell something that basically copies itself if you provide it with a place to grow (exclusively) and some water and light. It's highly problematic.
It's uncritical to play that utilisation rights game with music and videos and other works of art. No one starves to death from not listening to music. But you shouldn't play that game with food sources.
Which is more of a problem with the expensive methods, that are used right now. With CRISPR there would be a market for other viable mutations, which are not patented.
You mean garage generical engineering? Genetical design instead of breeding and selection?
I see pros and cons.
I don't mean to sound like a Monsanto shill, but farmers are not forced to use those seeds. They could use their own seeds if they wanted. But the GMO crops are so much more efficient that they are worth the cost.
Also Monsanto has people go out and collect samples off farms that didn’t buy their seed and then sue them into either submission or destruction if they don’t pay anyway. So yeah, it’s cheaper either way to just buy their seed.
Possibly, but there is no proof of this. In all the court cases Monsanto has won (which is apparently all of them), the defendant was trying to scam the company.
https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2024/01/05/dissecting-claims-about-monsanto-suing-farmers-for-accidentally-planting-patented-seeds/
They have a disclaimer (which is not legally binding though) that they will not go after accidental cross pollination.
No, that's a lie. Monsanto may have characterized it as "scamming," but I don't give a fuck about monopolists' opinions and neither should anybody else.
Even intentionally preferentially gathering and replanting "Monsanto's" "patented" seeds is not wrong, end of!
These are public court cases, Monsanto isn't characterizing anything. The ones I've seen are deliberate attempts to use the seeds without paying. Do you have examples of a farmers livelihood destroyed by Monsanto? Because it doesn't seem good business to me for them to attack random farmers. I implore you to look at the link I posted or google it yourself.
Yes, I know. Re-read my last sentence.
Ok, again, no one is forcing these farmers to use the seeds. They have every opportunity to use their own heirloom seeds that they can replant forever, but they don't because even when paying for seeds the GMO ones bring in more money. It's a business, if they want to use them they need to pay. It's ok to fundamentally disagree with seeds as a service but recognize (as the courts did) that this applies to all IP. Just owning a product doesn't give you the right to duplicate and redistribute it.
Yeah. For most common crops, harvesting and using your own seeds is simply not done. Farmers have been buying seeds for a hundred years or so.
My knowledge stems from just my memory of one or two documentations I watched. But there they stated that the gmo advantage is just a marketing lie in the long run, because nature adapts and yields decrease and herbicide/ fungicide usage increases.
Is there a study that shows that gmo performs better (yield wise, impact on the fauna, toxicity) than all other approaches?
Bt Eggplants in Bangladesh have higher yields and need less pesticide, which saves the lives of farmers who are too poor to buy protective gear and now need to spray much less pesticide.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajae.12162
Thanks. That's interesting. The outcome looks positive regarding the yield sold/ha and spray of pesticides.
I wasn't able to find the duration of the study and an answer to the question: Are the improved yields/ reduced pesticide results stable over multiple years (1/5/10 years after the switch to Bt brinjal)? I searched for year and duration in the text and wasn't able to find it. But I'm at my mobile phone atm. 😒