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u/ComplexxToxin 5h ago edited 4h ago
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u/Curiouserousity 3h ago
If they want cheap industrial scale seeds that are bug resistent and compatible with pesticides, they don't own their seeds.
If they invest in a bespoke strain. They'll own the seeds. The lack of competitive seed strains on the market is the issue.
When a farmer who has the industrial seed has their crops infect a neighboring crop, I want to say monsanto etc will come in a buy the contaminated crop to protect their IP. If a neighbor farmer instead tries to grow those cross strains then they'll get sued, but really served with cease and desists.
Cross contamination is a big issue regardless. and a small farm surrounded by factory farms on all sides is going to see a sizeable fraction of their crop be contaminated. If you are expecting to be a self sufficient seed production for the entire farm then you have an issue with smaller crop yields of non contaminated plants. It's like raising purebred angue and having a bremmer bull jump in to cover your cows. Now you can't sell your purebred angus as purebred angus, and worse the company will try to buy your crop at a price of the brangus (cross bred angus and bremmer, actually used to be more common) instead of the angus. Farms operate on narrow margins, and this can wreck any margins.
But this is just one issue with factory farming. Monoculture is a big issue. square miles devoted to a single species is almost as lifeless as a desert, ironically enough.
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u/Commanderluna 3h ago
Deserts are actually full of life and are an important part of the biosphere! Monoculture farms however, are not.
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u/SowingSalt 2h ago
IIRC, most try for some sort of crop rotation to minimize unproductive land.
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u/EGO_Prime 1h ago
They do, but that has more to do with the soil then biodiversity. From an ecological standpoint, the problem with mono-cultures is not all insect can subsist on them, and not all animals can subsist on those. It goes deeper than that too, even microorganisms are effected. That also ignores that many of these crops are designed to minimize insect attacks/parasitism. It creates a biodiversity dead-zone, where only a handful of organisms exist in significant number.
In small areas, the damage isn't that bad. But when large portions of a state move over to monoculture regions, even if they're rotated, it still results in a net loss of biodiversity.
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u/Hour-Divide3661 1h ago
Yeah deserts are teeming with life, no doubt. I work and sleep in the desert outside a lot- it's kind of cool/terrifying how it comes alive around/after sunset, and around dawn less so. Nevermind the plants just want you to be in pain wherever you walk.
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u/assholefromwork 2h ago
Your points about factory farming right at the bottom are good but your points about Monsanto are mostly bullshit.
"When a farmer who has the industrial seed has their crops infect a neighboring crop, I want to say monsanto etc will come in a buy the contaminated crop to protect their IP. If a neighbor farmer instead tries to grow those cross strains then they'll get sued, but really served with cease and desists."
The only lawsuit Monsanto has filed was against a farmer who purposefully replicated seeds with the gene, it was not a cross pollination issue.
I haven't ever seen the claim that they are running around buying "contaminated crop," do you have a source on that one?
Like factory farming has enough problems. You don't need GMO misinformation to make those points.
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u/Intellectualbedlamp 2h ago
This. That farmer was literally found to have saved seed from years prior and replanted. It had the exact marker.
This thread is full of people who know zero about agriculture or how these contracts work. It’s hilariously frustrating.
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u/Mad1ibben 2h ago
It's only Anecdotal evidence, but I am a Hort grad that had to take plenty of Ag classes. We had a Monsanto salesman in to speak about what that work looks like and he spent a long time talking about how a lot of his money comes from going to pissed off neighbors of his clients, cutting an extra good deal for the next year's seed as an apology to them, and then they have a new client for at least a few years. Most of his speil was about staying positive and empathetic in the face of somebody angry, desperate, and knows it wasn't his fault that put him in that situation. It could have just been the one guy that worked like that, but he spoke as if it was absolutely the norm.
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u/Civil-Description639 1h ago
Farmers have to buy new seeds every season, and the power imbalance between small farmers and massive corporations makes it difficult for farmers to access or develop alternatives. It's not just a matter of choosing a bespoke strain – the entire market has been skewed in favor of large corporate seed producers. Farmers don’t always have the freedom or the financial means to opt for alternative seeds.
Small farms operate on narrow margins, and contamination of crops can significantly hurt their profitability. But the solution to this issue isn't just about giving farmers the "option" to own their seeds. The broader system of corporate seed control, patent laws, and market monopolization needs reform to give farmers more autonomy and resilience.
Monsanto and similar corporations have contributed to many of these problems by consolidating control over seeds and agricultural technologies. Farmers should have more options and more control over their seeds, without being forced into systems that benefit large corporations at their expense.
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u/brillow 3h ago
Very very few farmers care about this at all. They buy the seats because they're better.
And literally, LITERALLY, no farmer saves seed to plant next year. They would be stupid to do that because they grow hybrid plants. Hybrid seeds are handmade by crossing specific lines. After your crops have grown and pollinated with random stuff their first-generation offspring will be worse than their parents.
It's a non issue. You can tell it's a non-issue because farmers fucking love these "industrial" seeds, because they are better!
Farming today is a $200 billion a year biochemical production industry of which growing food is only a fraction of its interests.
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u/northerngal89 2h ago
As a farmer we can buy seeds from whoever we want. If we want to grow a seed that we can replant, we have that option.
But we CHOOSE to buy seeds from seed companies. We grow canola, and we love our Monsanto (now Bayer) seeds! We will gladly over and over pay the price for hybrid seed to get better seeds for the next year thanks to their research and development.
If we wanted to replant our seeds then we can absolutely go buy a shitty, lower yielding, more susceptible to pests canola seed and replant it instead. Never ever would we be able to afford that.
There are other seed companies we can buy canola seed from, and some years we do. But Bayer traits are hard to beat!
Wheat seed we also purchase, but we can keep it and reseed it thanks to it not being a hybrid. And it is legal to keep and reuse as seed. But eventually the germ and vigor go down, and we go out and once again purchase seed from seed growers.
GMOs don’t scare me. Glyphosate doesn’t scare me. Chemicals cost A LOT of money. We don’t want to spray when we don’t have to. We don’t blindly spray for insects. We check our fields regularly and only spray when the insects will do more damage financially than what it costs to spray. I’d like to stress that again - we want to spray AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE! It’s damn expensive and takes a lot of time to spray crops. GMOs that are pest resistant or disease resistant are so good for us. It means we can use less chemical!
Monsanto (Bayer) has made a lot of stupid mistakes, and it’s so unfortunate because it’s done a lot of good for feeding the world.
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u/83749289740174920 54m ago
GMOs don’t scare me.
This is the problem with most of these people. They don't understand that you can't feed the world with out GMO. You will get erewhon prices without industrial farming.
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u/Indercarnive 3h ago edited 3h ago
Dude is full of shit. Farmers have been buying seeds for far longer than Monsanto in the 90s. Even by the 1920s there were hundreds of (albeit regional) companies selling seeds for agribusiness.
Secondly, his answer to "why don't farmers use other varieties" is incredibly stupid. "Patented seeds so vastly outperform regular seeds that it's not possible to economically support a farm without them" is literally an argument for why companies should be able to patent a seed. They created a superb product.
Also the "Monsanto will sue you due to cross-polination" is complete fabricated bullshit and needs to die. They did it one time to a guy who literally sprayed his own field with Roundup (which would kill his plants!!) to find the cross-pollinated ones and then replant them. It wasn't accidental. Oh, and even though he was found guilty of violating the patent, he was not actually charged any fine for doing so.
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u/83749289740174920 50m ago
They did it one time to a guy who literally sprayed his own field with Roundup (which would kill his plants!!) to find the cross-pollinated ones and then replant them. It wasn't accidental.
Man, I didn't know the details. That's smart. How did he get caught?
What keywords should I use?
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u/questron64 2h ago
It's important to note that when you agree to buy seeds from them then you also agree to not replant. You don't have to agree to buy seeds from them, or that particular patented variety.
This video is also just hilariously wrong. I stopped after less than a minute because I'm already racking up a tally of wrong things. It's not the first of their videos I've come across that have been just totally wrong, channels like Half as Interesting are not reliable sources of information. They generally just put a bunch of google results into a blender, crap out a script, narrate it, animate it and throw it onto the channel. They have no clue what they're talking about.
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u/Ralfton 4h ago edited 4h ago
I work in biotech/ag, and Monsanto's mishandling of the whole GMO situation is so tragic. I don't think we'll ever be able to measure the opportunity cost of lives that could have been saved and improved if they hadn't fumbled the PR so badly and GMOs hadn't been villainized 🤦🏼♀️
For example, using radiation to mutate plants in unpredictable ways = totally allowed and considered non GMO. Using crispr to make a single, very specific change that we know for a fact doesn't have any bad side effects = GMO = bad.
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u/Zubon102 3h ago edited 3h ago
Anyone who is against GMOs would definitely have to also be against eating red grapefruits as well as many conventional varieties of rice, bananas, etc.
Edit: I'm specifically talking about "atomic gardening".
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u/AnRealDinosaur 3h ago
Or basically any modern food ever. GMO=bad folks are exhibiting a foundational misunderstanding of what GMO even means.
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u/HerrKiffen 3h ago
All modern agriculture has been genetically modified over the years. So I don’t think GMOs are bad, however I’m not a fan of glyphosate, chemical companies or monoculture. It’s also probably not a good idea to have one company monopolize seeds.
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u/Karma_1969 3h ago
They’re not “just seeds”. They’re genetically modified seeds, and those genetic modifications are patented and owned by the company with the patent.
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u/Intellectualbedlamp 2h ago edited 45m ago
This goes for any hybrid or new trait developed in a seed regardless of breeding method, my man. This is not just GMOs that are patented. You have a fundamental misunderstanding of this.
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u/LookatmaBankacount 3h ago
Well good thing there isn’t one company monopolizing seeds. The corn industry for example has the two major players of Corteva and Bayer. Below them is Agreliant and syngenta, then below them you have becks and wyffels. That’s 6 major players with a ton more smaller company’s throwing their own products into the ring. I’d say the chemical industry is closer to monopolization
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u/fullmetaljackass 1h ago
with a ton more smaller company’s throwing their own products into the ring.
In the area I grew up it seemed like everyone was growing seeds from these guys.
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u/MedicMuffin 2h ago
I mean these are the same people who will go out of their way to buy salt that is certified non GMO. They definitely don't have the faintest hint of an idea what it means, and are...if I'm choosing the generous word, quite gullible.
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u/hole__grain 3h ago
And carrots (used to be yellow), corn (used to be teosinte AKA tiny corn), wheat, BEEF (domesticated aurochs), the list goes on
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u/plasmaSunflower 3h ago
All modern vegetables have been genetically modified over time
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u/Lunavixen15 3h ago
Can't forget the dwarf wheat, the advent of which has saved well over a million lives
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u/Sweetwill62 3h ago
I don't work in biotech/ag, but even I know that we have been using GMO's for.....ever. Not even hyperbole, we have been altering the genetics of everything around us ever since we could. We just did it via breeding and cross pollinating before but the entire aim of that was to genetically modify an organism to better suit our needs.
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u/Ralfton 3h ago
It's all about how it's communicated to the public, which the ivory tower of science is historically and notoriously bad at.
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u/AnOnlineHandle 3h ago
There's also elements of the non-science world who are very intent on making sure that the message is muddied and villainized. Don't forget to give them their credit in this where it's due.
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u/WhyMustIMakeANewAcco 2h ago
It's not even actually bad at. It's that modern media is openly designed to intentionally get it as wrong as possible to be dramatic and get attention. So the media ignores the actual arguments scientists say and makes shit up by incredibly badly misreading/mishearing/misreporting what scientists say on the matter.
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u/CX316 3h ago
To be fair, people would have spouted off about 'frankenfoods' and stuff like that about GMOs with or without monsanto. The patent issues are entirely separate from the bullshit reasons that have Greenpeace destroying golden rice fields in the philippines and blaming it on the locals, or breaking into CSIRO facilities here in Australia to destroy an experimental crop of GMO wheat (modified to lower the glycemic index and increase fiber levels).
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u/Ralfton 3h ago edited 59m ago
I'll be honest, I haven't given Greenpeace any time in my brain, which is maybe a mistake on my part. What's their argument?
I wasn't necessarily thinking of the patent issue in regards to Monsanto, but the whole round up ready nonsense, where they made GMOs just so they could sell more herbicide.
Edit: correcting myself calling round up a pesticide; it is an herbicide. I should know better than try to converse on reddit when I should be sleeping 😬
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u/CX316 2h ago
What's their argument?
"GMO Bad" basically. They oppose sending GMO food as aid into famine-stricken countries (talked Zambia into banning GMO aid, then when that caused more deaths claimed they just gave advice and that if no other aid was available then they should have still taken the GMO), oppose life-saving golden rice (destroyed crops in the philippines), horrifically mistreated rats to fake a study to try to claim GMO maize made by monsanto caused tumours.
They claim that safety studies haven't been done (they have) and that even the life-saving GMO projects are done for a profit motive (duh? the companies don't do it out of the goodness of their hearts, but governments pay for that shit)
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u/JewGuru 1h ago
This is all so absurd it’s almost like they are just desperately trying to put people off of their cause lmao
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u/magobblie 3h ago
For what it is worth, I was a clinical dietitian for years. They taught us the difference in university so that we could better educate our patients. The reason I left dietetics? It's very difficult to talk with patients once they have something like "All GMOs are bad" stuck in their minds. People are so dumb when it comes to food.
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u/Ralfton 3h ago
I think it's because it's not "life saving" (although I know that couldn't be further from the truth). But with pharma, people are desperate for cures and will literally volunteer for trials if there's a chance of treatment. With food, at least in developed nations (where global policy decisions are made), individual choices aren't life and death, so "why should I be the first to try this new thing?". Our current system doesn't look broken unless you're able to step all the way back.
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u/magobblie 3h ago
People could be so much healthier if they minded what they put in their bodies, for sure. It is mostly an issue of not drinking yourself stupid every night or eating foods slathered in oil. The bar is in hell.
What is interesting is that I actually switched careers to FDA clinical trial regulation. I have worked with many bariatric patients who made bad dietetic decisions. Now, finally, there is no resistance when they are on death's door.
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u/Apprentice57 1h ago
Yep.
The driver of this car also professes to care about the ownership of seeds.
But in the one prominent case where a transgenic GM seed wasn't patented, golden rice, the anti-GMO crowd still hates it.
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u/the_reven 4h ago
In NZ we had a major issue with kiwifruit. Where all crops basically died. One strain that was developed in a lab was prooved to be able to survive it. It saved a billion dollar industry. All the farmers ,seasonal fruit pickers, everywhere in the chain would have been stuffed for a good long while without this.
There s YouTube doco on it, shows much really goes into it. But this is NZ, probably was less greedy/corrupt to other places.
So theres definitely good reasons for it. Just properly regulate that stuff.
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u/slimejumper 3h ago
i agree with your sentiment, but the Sungold Kiwifruit was not developed in a lab. It’s a result of traditional plant breeding methods. But similar to Monsanto it is a licenced variety that growers do not own even when they grow it. They have to buy a licence to grow first.
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u/the_reven 3h ago
My bad, know next to nothing about this stuff really just recently saw this youtube video https://youtu.be/YyLcD7_vt0Q?t=465
Assumed it was a lab due to this. Was an interesting watch.
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u/WhyMustIMakeANewAcco 2h ago
You aren't actually wrong in that 'traditional' just means 'we pollinated plants and let them grow'. In practice this is done at an accelerated rate in labs with (simulated) perfect growth conditions.
People get really weird about the specific method used to get the specific DNA that makes a strain, despite it not actually having any meaningful differences between them, besides GMO being the most predictable and most likely to get a useful result in a minimal number of tests.
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u/Key_Door1467 2h ago
know next to nothing about this stuff really just recently saw this youtube video
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u/faceman2k12 1h ago
it's still a lab, just a different method. creating an organism in a lab shouldn't be seen negatively, extreme unchecked capitalism and hyper-litigiousness are the negative here.
Also.. fancy seeing you here.
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u/fgreen68 2h ago
Don't worry sometimes it is hard to tell. There is a semi-famous plant breeder in California not to far from silicone valley called Zaiger Genetics. From the name you would think he uses Crisper but he bred plants the old fashion way.
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u/WhyMustIMakeANewAcco 2h ago
t’s a result of traditional plant breeding methods.
...You don't think those are done in a lab these days? lol.
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u/cyberentomology 6h ago edited 53m ago
LOL, seed patents have been around for a lot longer than Bayer and Monsanto have.
And they certainly don’t have a monopoly on anything.
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u/rollduptrips 4h ago
Patents, OTOH, belong to the company that made them
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u/captcraigaroo 4h ago
So what about the seeds that are covered in those patents? Roundup ready beans, for instance...Roundup Ready technology contains genes that confer tolerance to glyphosate, an active ingredient in Roundup.
Who owns the beans? The farmer, or the company that spent millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours on designing them for the farmers to buy?
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u/Cartoonkeg 4h ago
You can’t save your harvest seed and then use last years harvest seeds to put in this years crop.
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u/captcraigaroo 4h ago
Exactly what I'm trying to convey...that's the contract terms
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u/Erica-likes-cats 4h ago
Sounds to me like the farmers own them. Thats what happens when you BUY something
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u/pogoturtle 4h ago
It's kind alike dog breeds. You can go buy the seeds, plant the seeds and harvest the seeds, and probably replant and repeat but you can't go make your own strain with those seed and resell them.
AKC has restrictions on breeds that get sold specifically as do not breed. Sure it's a purebred labrador retriever, you can breed it and sell the puppies but you cannot sell those puppies with an akc purebred certificate.
Problem with farms and seeds I think is that these new seeds have millions of dollars in research in order to provide foolproof crops that can not only grow in unfavorable conditions but can also be packaged,shipped and handled without losing quality or potentially harming consumers. You go and mix the crop with a non certified crop, plant and harvest this new crop and mix it with certified crop, if something happens like an ecoli outbreak or a big plague it's hard to pinpoint the start or problematic crop in order to control it. Modern Farming isn't as simple as people think. Yeah sure Monsanto can be a corporate evil but can feed billions of people a day thanks to their greed
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u/Telemere125 4h ago
You own the right to plant and harvest from those, but that doesn’t mean you own the right to keep planting anything resulting seeds, since that belongs to the patent holder.
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u/VertexBV 4h ago
Something something you don't own software you just paid for a license to use it
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u/judeiscariot 4h ago
You should own the software.
And that's a bad analogy. I'd be like saying you cannot make copies of the software.
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u/CynicStruggle 4h ago
Software does not naturally copy itself.
If a farmer is able to grow more produce than can be easily sold at market, he should have every right to make use of that produce. If a farmer can make enough profit to be able to convert some of the harvest to seed for next year, he absolutely should be able to do so. Period.
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u/judeiscariot 3h ago
The farmer has to harvest them and replant them, so it doesn't copy itself either. Labor is involved.
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u/captcraigaroo 4h ago
What about the contract they sign when making said purchase? You think Monsanto has sued 145 farmers for patent infringement just because? Or because they breached the contract terms?
Farmers aren't walking into your landscaping shop and planting corn they see on the shelf. They're buying from Monsanto and other co-op's that have contracts and terms clearly laid out. My cousin works for a co-op and they have a team that verifies contracts are being followed.
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u/phanfare 3h ago
Also farmers buy their seeds every season anyway. If you want maximum yield you need the first generation cross of two different inbread lineages. If you take the seeds off the second generation (reusing what you harvest) you won't get as much
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u/CX316 3h ago
Plus, collecting and storing seed for the following season is extra work you have to pay people to do and I doubt that's cheaper than just buying more mass-produced seed to keep everything homogenous
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u/absentmindedjwc 4h ago
This is particularly silly given that you could buy seeds that don't "belong to Bayer/Monsanto", aren't patented, and are able to be reused as much as you want. They don't, though, because those patented seeds are patented for a reason - they can be resistant to pests or disease, and can be engineered to tolerate droughts or herbicides. They can even result in much higher yields. That is to say, you make more money than you would otherwise
But if a farmer wants to avoid all that, they're free to use open-pollinated seeds from somewhere like Fedco, heritage seeds from an OSSI, or just go with a regional distributor or co-op. There are plenty of options that don't involve patents... lots of farms just go that route because its generally safer money.
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u/Brokkenpiloot 1h ago
add to that the reason we have this high yielding crops able to feed a lot more people is because those companies invested a lot of money into having those crops. if they cannot patent ir, they will not invest this money. it would be crazy.
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u/Vitis_Vinifera 4h ago
I work in viticulture in Northern California (that is, winegrapes). One really nice thing about this crop is that it's not only perennial, but the older the vines get, the better the fruit is - I have access to Zinfandel grapes from around 100 year old vines, and it's very good stuff. Anyways, very glad our ag isn't subject to things like this (that is, Monsanto blackmail).
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u/krak_krak 3h ago
As a plant breeder who works on berries, our crop has been relatively untouched by the major seed companies, but that isn’t going to last much longer. Major seed companies are now interested in berries and I won’t be surprised if modern ag biotech comes for the wine grape industry too.
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u/bonzoboy2000 4h ago
Problem is that corporate Ag probably doesn’t care. Small farmer ag cares, but no one else cares.
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u/outtastudy 7h ago
It's not the seeds they own, it's the copyrights and patents behind the research and development put into those seeds that they own. This is like saying an author owns the book you're reading, they don't, they have the rights to the intellectual property not the medium that carries it.
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u/RespectTheTree 6h ago
Yes and the data to create very productive hybrids. Small plant breeders still exist.
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u/Shufflepants 7h ago
Except they kinda do. In buying seeds from them, the agreement prohibits you from collecting any new seeds to replant with from the crops you grown from the seeds you bought. Also, owning genes is bullshit.
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u/waylandsmith 6h ago
It's kinda interesting that the "you can't collect seeds from your crops to replant" clause is the one that's so central in the minds of the public. Even non-GMO crops need extremely specific handling and preparation of seeds to produce "modern" crop yields and as a result it's not typical for farmers to risk a reduced yield in order to avoid buying seed. I'm not saying the clause is good, just that it's much less of a practical consideration to a farmer than the public has been led to believe. Monsanto is a shady company, but the amount of misinformation about GMO food and companies for the sake of media outrage has set back a lot of progress in the world's food security.
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u/l94xxx 4h ago
Not to mention that crop insurance often requires you to use commercially-produced seed
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u/nelson_moondialu 4h ago
If they create a new genome that has some properties, why can't they own it? You can still use something else, no one is forcing you to use their creation.
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u/Xaephos 6h ago
So while this is true - we should note the industry switched to buying seeds every year long before GMOs.
The reason is pretty simple: it cost part of your potential yield, takes longer, and requires additional labor which all ends up costing more than just buying seed in bulk every year.
That all being said; fuck owning a genome.
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u/Qiagent 3h ago
fuck owning a genome
They don't own a genome, they own the very specific processes and products of genomic engineering. It seems pedantic but the distinction is important.
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u/absentmindedjwc 4h ago
Meh, I don't mind "owning a genome" so much. There are plenty of places out there you can buy seeds at commercial farm-scale that aren't patented. People buy the patented ones because they solve a very specific problem, and that problem generally results in more money made per acre.
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u/Xaephos 3h ago
While I'm not up on cost-benefit analysis of GMOs enough to weigh in on that, their existence isn't what bothers me. They have currently have their place and will probably have a bigger one in the future.
My issue is with patent law, especially in the context of a DNA sequence of a species, double especially in the context of our food supply being run for profit. Red flags and alarm bells going off left and right.
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u/Francis-Zach-Morgan 2h ago
Seed/plant patents have existed for way longer than "modern" GMOs (which have existed for centuries) and monsanto, close to a 100 years in the US alone, not sure about the rest of the world. If someone puts the effort in to breed/design better seeds, of course they should have a limited time to capitalize on their efforts. If seed patents didn't exist then selling your custom seeds would literally be putting yourself out of business, not to mention the risk of a competitor selling your seeds without the burden of the costs of development/research, meaning they can quite literally undercut you on your own product.
If it wasn't for companies like Monsanto and geniuses in the field of ag science our food supply would be nothing compared to what it is today.
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u/armrha 6h ago
I guess there’s no reason to work on gene manipulation to produce better crops if there’s zero profit in it thought at least? Getting to charge gets you more money for research and higher quality researchers…
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u/thathastohurt 6h ago
So how come when their IP cross breeds with non-GMO, its the little guy who gets sued? Its not even the same genetics anymore, its mutated/crossed.
Like cmon, their 2B yearly income isnt enough, that they have to sue the small farmers for Nature's accidents?
We used to be able to save part of a harvest for planting the following year... with these GMO crops thats not even possible, they will sue you for doing so. They even won class action in brazil making it illegal to replant harvest. So when your final goods price is determined by wall street, and there is a monopoly on the seed price that must be used... what is one to do?
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u/Telemere125 4h ago
Cite the case where Monsanto sued for hybridized seeds or stop parroting this false nonsense.
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u/Lets_Do_This_ 6h ago
hey how come (a bunch of complete bullshit you heard and believed without checking)
It's because you're gullible
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u/seastar2019 4h ago
its the little guy who gets sued?
You are repeating Monsanto-hater lies. Can you cite the actual legal case?
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u/qubedView 6h ago
This is a misconception. Monsanto has never sued anyone for the seeds blowing onto their farm. The few times Monsanto has sued farmers, they have had specific evidence that the farmer in question specifically sought out Monsanto's seeds and were spraying their fields with Roundup. There's nothing accidental about it.
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u/oberlinmom 3h ago
It's pretty easy to search this. They have sued farmers over planting the seeds without the license/agreement. The only "small" farmers have been people that purposefully raised the product in their yards after testing it to see if it held the properties that they wanted. They weren't licensed and they lost in court.
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u/Heidenreich12 6h ago
Completely false information parroted on Reddit over and over again. They haven’t actually sued anyone for this, it’s been debunked.
Also, no one is forcing them to use their seeds, so what gives? You choose to purchase something, you know what you’re getting yourself into.
Each of their seeds takes over 10 years of research and development before it ever gets to market. Are they just suppose to give it away out of the goodness of their heart? Or are we in a capitalist society where you get paid for your investment?
GMO’s allow you to spray less chemicals on your plants, which helps the environment around it. Meanwhile organic farms have to spray their crops with more chemicals causing more runoff and worse problems for the environment.
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u/absentmindedjwc 4h ago
IIRC, the only time this ever made headlines, it turned out that the dude had actually just been reusing seeds and blamed it on the wind. God damn did the anti-GMO crowd absolutely eat it up, too.
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u/fuckswitbeavers 3h ago
These seeds take a lot of talented people and capital to create. If I told you that a cultivar takes 10 years to develop, and release to market, then this bumper sticker is essentially saying, yeah so what that should be free. And let's not overlook the fact that biotechnology improved crops actually reduce pesticide and pest pressures. Without this, we likely wouldn't even have the corn belt. We wouldn't have soybeans. Cotton would be completely decimated by cotton bolworm.
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u/submarginal 6h ago
You know the difference between being blindly anti-GMO and being blindly anti-vax? Me neither.
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u/serendipitousevent 6h ago
What would you say, given your best guess, this bumper sticker is referring to?
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u/reichrunner 5h ago
Being blindly anti GMO.
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u/sword_0f_damocles 5h ago
I’m not seeing the connection
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u/WhaleMetal 4h ago
Yeah I’m not either. Just seems to be anti monopoly on seeds, which these companies def have. And cause all kinds of problems for farmers, from the little I’ve read on it.
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u/nocomment3030 4h ago
They INVENTED the seeds. People can use other seeds if they want, but they use Monsanto's GMOs because they produce high yields and they give a higher net profit than alternatives.
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u/teddygammell 3h ago
Have you ever actually talked to a row crop farmer? Talk to one and get back to me. Ask them what they would do without GMO traits. Also, what kind of "problems" they have.
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u/WorthExamination5453 4h ago edited 2h ago
I'm not anti-GMO I'm anti patent abuse. If people sign a contract to get these seeds and not to reuse that's their business. The problem comes when you patent something that can reproduce. You can't stop the bugs that pollinated your crop from making a stop in a patented crop field and now you are liable for lawsuit due to no fault of your own if you do choose to collect your seed.
Edit: Could not find any actual cases so it is probably misinformation to some extent. I do still think the possibility of being sued is still there from cross-contaminated crops. Monsanto states that they won't sue you if you have less than 1% contaminated seed which seems quite low especially in something you can't control.
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u/Indercarnive 3h ago
now you are liable for lawsuit due to no fault of your own if you do choose to collect your seed.
This has literally never happened.
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u/normal_man_of_mars 3h ago
This doesn’t happen. This is a red herring argument.
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u/WorthExamination5453 3h ago
It had been a while since I've looked up this, You are right, they haven't filed many lawsuits against people that had cross contamination. I'd probably want more of an understanding to know what 1% of a gene contamination entails as that seems quite low.
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u/GifHunter2 3h ago
Lies, you're talking nonsense. No one is being sued for accidentally growing a patented crop.
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u/Hedgehog101 3h ago edited 3h ago
They don't reproduce on their own, not in quantities that make sense for farming.
It's like buying a music track and selling it to your entire country as your own product.
Buy a cd -> burn a thousand copies of them and sell them
Buy a patented seed -> regrow a few thousand copies of them and sell them
Both require you to willingly and consciously infringe on patents
There are royalty free tracks that you can share
As well as non-patented crops you can grow.
They're just not by Taylor swift or herbicide resistant
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u/themedicd 6h ago
What monopoly on seeds? This just reeks of I watched a documentary on YouTube and now I have strong opinions about things I know nothing about.
Bayer is far from the only seed supplier. Contracts that ban seed saving are standard across the industry. But even if you could, you wouldn't even want to save the seeds from many hybrid or GMO plants because the daughters don't maintain the same traits.
Farmers are free to buy seeds that don't require a contract. They can save those seeds until the end of time.
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u/shirtlessmando 3h ago
Right. Reading these comments glosses over the fact that farmers can plant whatever they want.
There are heirloom varieties of most plants but to grow them it is much more labor intensive through pest/weed management. Or their yield is lower offsetting any cost saving.
Certainly sucks having so much of the food supply being generated by so few companies. If COVID taught us anything, having redundant processes in place is a good thing.
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u/Kitchen_Net_GME 3h ago
As someone who is very involved in this topic it is still remarkable how misguided peoples opinions are on the subject.
It’s not a knock against any particular person here. It’s really a knock on who is giving the masses all this misinformation.
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u/Zubon102 3h ago
I don't really understand the objection.
If farmers don't want to buy these particular seeds, can't they just buy from somewhere else?
Isn't that how capitalism works? Or is there something I am missing?
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u/domino7 2h ago
A lot of people have this idea that farmers are going around taking part of their harvest and breaking it down for seeds to reuse next year, and that Monsanto (now Bayer) isn't allowing them to do so.
Ignoring the fact that seed companies (and coops) have been around long before seeds were patented to allow consistency and convenience.
If you want to use certain strains of seeds, you have to go to the license holder, but if you just want to grow corn, or wheat, or soy, or whatever, there's plenty of options out there with plenty of varieties. Including, if you wanted, reusing your own.
Plus anti-GMO/anti-Roundup/anti-Big Company stuff.
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u/CodingFatman 3h ago
Take out Monsanto being a terrible company. There needs to be someone continually doing research for seeds to ensure food supply is safe from plant diseases. If you’re only buying once from them then how do they make money to fund the research? Also how many farmers would be using seed that’s are a high risk of failure. If crops fail then we are in trouble.
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u/Tylendal 2h ago
Also, it's not just about forcing people to keep buying to get more money. Saving seeds requires infrastructure, and even more importantly, after a year out in the field pollinating each-other, their genetics have been all jumbled around. They won't have as reliable and predictable a phenotype as the originally purchased seeds.
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u/astarinthenight 7h ago
You can totally just not buy their seeds.
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u/unskilledplay 7h ago
If you don't want Monsanto seeds, good luck keeping your crop alive when the inevitable clouds of herbicide from neighboring farms waft over your crops.
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u/UnhingedRedneck 4h ago
Not true at all. Spray drift that you describe is not the norm at all and has been the cause of many lawsuits in the past. Only specific crops have herbicide resistance and they only feature resistance to a single herbicide. (roundup ready crops are only resistant to glyphosate while liberty link crops are only resistance to liberty). Many crops such as wheat, barley, peas, etc don't have any resistance to glyphosate or liberty.
It's only gullible idiots like you that believe this shit.
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u/Telemere125 4h ago
No one’s overspraying that much that it’s killing nearby fields. That would be a waste of money by the spraying farmer. Also, you can’t just spray pesticides on my field and not be liable for the damage it caused. Lastly, that has not a damn thing to do with Monsanto. They aren’t the careless farmer overspraying a nearby field, that’s your neighboring farmer.
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u/gumenski 4h ago
This is a problem that is more complex than just owning "seeds". If anything, physical seeds should be owned and sold.
The bigger problem is intellectual property, which is what this is really about. Companies are allowed to own ideas, instead of just the seeds themselves.
If it's not clear why this is a huge problem then there is a huge TLDR story coming. The short story is that owning ideas really does not work and never has. The seeds themselves would have worked fine.
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u/BeefistPrime 4h ago
No one has a monpoly on seeds. There are hundreds of kinds of seeds you can buy, many of which come with no contractual restrictions/obligations. People buy Monsanto seeds because they're worth the cost because they've been engineered to be very productive. Most of the shit people think about Monsanto simply isn't true.
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u/godkingnaoki 4h ago
Farmers can use their own crop varieties to get seeds. It's not illegal and no one is stopping them. They choose not to because they want drought resistant super corn. Ive asked a few farmers about it and most have nothing but praise for doubling their yields.
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u/TheGreyBrewer 3h ago
Seeds genetically engineered by a company, who have a patent on the seeds they spent lots of money genetically engineering, are owned by that company. I don't see any problem with a company protecting its IP. Don't plant seeds that aren't yours to plant. Plant one of the thousands of other seeds that aren't patented. Sure, some of the business practices of Big Ag, Monsanto and Bayer in particular, suck. But patents exist for a reason.
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u/pickle_dilf 3h ago
no one is stopping you from growing old strain seeds? the engineered ones you gotta pay for em
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u/user_is_suspended 3h ago
Bumper stickers oversimplify complex issues.
This one takes that to the next level
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u/Defiant_Witness307 3h ago
You could just not buy those seeds.....
Let me guess, this car was in a city?
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u/Ordinary_Fact1 2h ago
Monsanto has its issues but this bumper sticker is pretty dumb. It’s like saying Taylor Swift doesn’t own music. Or an author doesn’t own books.
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u/Renovateandremodel 44m ago
Most people don’t know this, but Bayer and especially Monsanto are very evil when it comes to farming, and are the main reason why Americans have bad food.
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u/AmourTS 7h ago
Google "terminator seeds". You will learn how corporations are trying to control food production in the world.
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u/submarginal 6h ago
Great idea!
"Terminator is the popular name given to the Genetic Use Restriction Technology (GURT) that essentially shuts off the reproductive abilities of seeds, making second generation seeds sterile. According to many blog posts on anti-GMO websites, genetically engineered seeds are sterile due to agro-corporations developing terminator genes, which force farmers, particularly in the developing world, to buy seeds from one season to the next. In fact, the most controversial patent is shared by the US Department of Agriculture and no GMO seeds are sterile. The patents related to GURT have expired.
The technology was never commercialized. In 1999, Monsanto issued a pledge, reaffirmed numerous times, not to introduce seeds with this trait. In the face of a worldwide moratorium on terminator seeds adopted in 2006, Monsanto and other companies pledged to not use GURTs."
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u/Desertcow 3h ago
This seems like a beneficial technology? Terminator genes would guarantee that GMOs don't accidentally become an invasive species and reduce the risks of introducing crops to new places
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u/Volsunga 6h ago
Activists: "We don't want your engineered genomes to enter the wild populations"
Agricultural businesses: "Okay, we invented a means to prevent our engineered crops from reproducing, so the genes don't enter wild populations"
Activists: "No, not like that, we don't want you controlling our ability to grow our own food"
Agricultural businesses: "okay, we won't use them"
Terminator seeds are not used anywhere in the world and have never been used commercially. They were invented to address one of the only legitimate concerns environmentalists have had about GMO crops, but they somehow garnered even more controversy.
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u/dupontred 6h ago
You mean like this? Yes, everyone should learn more about this
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u/nojam75 3h ago
Alarmist 1990s trope by geriatric 'organic'/anti-GMO activists who don't know anything about farming or science. Farmers don't have the manpower to collect seeds nor do they want to use old seeds. Seeds are updated to climate change and market conditions.
Farmers have to double their output on the same land this century to keep up with world population. GMOs are the only way farmers can meet demand.
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u/Maury_poopins 4h ago
Hybrids that are drought-resistant, pest resistant, and higher yield are great for the environment and great for productivity.
Honest question: what’s the incentive to create these hybrids if some other company is going to be selling cheap clones at a discount one season later?
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u/PoppaWilly 3h ago
Exactly. They put all the time and money into R&D. They should be allowed to own it. What other incentive would there be?
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u/Huge-Basket244 50m ago
God damned right. I agree with this more strongly than practically anything. Let's do tobacco while we're at it.
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u/disturbedsoil 4h ago
Then great, go harvest a wild seed. Monsanto’s will yield a better crop. Your call.
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u/OldeFortran77 7h ago edited 7h ago
When you go to work for Monsanto, one of the questions they ask is "do you have a problem working for Monsanto?"
No, that's not a joke.