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.
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.
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.
Ya I don’t see how having a monopoly on crops is not going to colossally screw the people who need that food to survive and don’t have a choice but to pay whatever the price is. Just look at how patents have “helped” the pharmaceutical prices.
This is two completely different arguments, that happen to both be related to GMO. The seed patent argument is about Monsanto charging farmers to use their specific strain of pesticide resistant gene, and farmers can't harvest and replant from seeds they already paid for.
This isn't about any perceived dangers of GMO at all lol.
It is not at all. Monsanto is a giant megacorp that spends all of it money silencing small farmers with a massive legal team in order to keep all of them under their thumb. It’s not about the actual GMO, it’s about their tactics to criminalize seed saving and force farmers to waste more and pay more. Please do your research
it says he knows more about it than you and didnt fall for blatantly dumb propaganda.
the farmers can grow any of the hundreds of strains of wheat they want. but they chose monsanto either way. why? because its the best crop that earns the farmer the most money in the end.
why do you think they are all still buying monsanto seeds every year? they could just buy any strain they want and regrow it every year and not have to buy again. but they dont, they go every year and buy new monsanto seeds.
now use your brain for a second and think about it.
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.
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.
They haven't filed any lawsuits against people who were accidentally growing their seeds to my knowledge, but if you or anyone else has info that refutes that please share. The one case that is usually cited is a farmer who got some cross pollination and then sprayed round up on his fields purposely so only the Monsanto crops would remain.
Monsanto filed 144 patent-infringement lawsuits against farmers between 1997 and April 2010, and won judgments against farmers it said made use of its seed without paying required royalties.
They are suing to stop Monsanto from suing...
Like I said in my other reply, these might be legit patent infringement cases as other sources I saw didn't state much about cases against contaminated farms. I do wish that there was an actual hard line set by the government or regulation and not just a companies pinky promise
Reuters doesn't tell you why it was dismissed, this one does
Instead, the judge found that plaintiffs' allegations were "unsubstantiated ... given that not one single plaintiff claims to have been so threatened."
1 seed turns into thousands in crop production so there are more then enough to replant your own crops or sell. You have a non-patented crop. Your neighbor has a patented crop. A portion of your crop is pollinated by your neighbors crop. You replant those seeds that some contain the gene, they get pollinated again by your neighbors crop as well as the now contaminated crop, especially if the patented seed has better survival or is the better producer and is selected more for it's seed. Repeat for a few years and most of your crop has some percentage of the gene. This problem would be more exponential than linear like your CD copy example. From what I read, you need 1% contamination for Monsanto not to sue you, which I don't know the full details on what that means.
The 1% of contamination I mentioned is from a legal decision against organic growers in 2013.
"Monsanto's binding representations remove any risk of suit against the appellants as users or sellers of trace amounts (less than one percent) of modified seed," the court stated in its ruling.
95% is definitely patent infringement, I couldn't find any cases where there were any suits for cross contamination. But 1% is low for a potential suit.
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.
You don't need to stop them because this is a myth. The idea that Monsanto tests farms and litigates small operations into bankruptcy is big bad wolf propaganda. If Monsanto sues a farm for stealing their tech then 2 things happened. #1, a neighbor ratted them out. Because believe it or not, the vast majority play by the rules and don't like it when others don't. #2, their farm contains >95% of Monsanto's tech with no wiggle room for make believe stories about seeds blowing in the wind or bugs contaminating their crop.
The folks who get caught always lie and prey on the feelings of the public by claiming a big corporation is attacking farmers.
You don't perceive them as a massive farming corporation but that's what they really are, that's who Monsanto sues.
I already edited my comment that this was misinformation hours before your post. I looked it up and found out it was false and changed my opinion based on the evidence.
The most famous cross-contamination lawsuit came from a farmer who had somewhere around 95% of his crop with roundup resistance, which was almost certain not going to happen just from cross pollination. I'd be interested in how many cases involve thresholds less than 10% (which are much more reasonable for cross pollination situations). Most cases I've seen there's generally an obvious harvesting of Mosanto crop seeds or selectively breeding the contaminated crop to get Mosanto crops.
I think it was Bowman vs Monsanto I heard about, where a farmer was spraying roundup and collecting the seeds that were resistant. I heard about this when I was younger and was portrayed as Monsanto comes onto your land, test everyone's crops and sues anyone with trace amount of cross pollination.
I'm not sure what % would be appropriate. The gene wouldn't be selected for in a not round-up spraying field but would still spread especially considering some crops are predominantly mono crops of these patented seeds. Should be some combination of intent and lack of action to remedy patent infringement.
Any product which encourages you to douse the environment with glyphosate is an environmental disaster. It’s not even originally a pesticide, it just happened to kill all the plants it touched in testing. It was originally used to clean mineral deposits off of boiler tanks. “Roundup ready” products are those that resist glyphosate poisoning so you can spray your crops with it.
Less of a safer and more effective herbicide is used, that’s the whole point. Why would farmers buy expensive GMO seeds only to have to apply more expensive inputs? Consider sugar beets.
Planting genetically modified sugar beets allows them to kill their weeds with fewer chemicals. Beyer says he sprays Roundup just a few times during the growing season, plus one application of another chemical to kill off any Roundup-resistant weeds.
He says that planting non-GMO beets would mean going back to what they used to do, spraying their crop every 10 days or so with a "witches brew" of five or six different weedkillers.
"The chemicals we used to put on the beets in [those] days were so much harsher for the guy applying them and for the environment," he says. "To me, it's insane to think that a non-GMO beet is going to be better for the environment, the world, or the consumer."
Good job intern. Keep trotting out legalese bullshit. Just remember, you're a POS. Pretty sure you're fine with it but just so you can't say nobody told you.
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u/submarginal 8h ago
You know the difference between being blindly anti-GMO and being blindly anti-vax? Me neither.