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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.
There is so much wrong with this claim, not least of which is that it's about a century out of date and straight from a marketing playbook by "organic" associations.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/