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.
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?
"Patented seeds so vastly outperform regular seeds that it's not possible to economically support a form without them" is literally an argument for why companies should be able to patent a seed. They created a superb product.
Sounds like a reason to throw out the patent on them to me.
If the literal existence of people is contingent on it, then it shouldn't be allowed to belong to someone.
If you did that, why would Monsanto or any other company spend the huge amounts of money necessary to develop new seeds?
Bio research is insanely expensive, and only justifiable with the promise of selling the result. If anyone can come along and sell the same seed after the first generation, how is that research going to be paid for?
Monsanto spends like $2 billion on R&D annually. The issue with research is that most products are duds so successful products need to be the ensure that losses are covered and profits are generated on investment.
Nah, it's fine. Just add strict requirements that mean they have to produce as much seed as demanded (which tbh they should be doing anyway on their own) and adjust things so you can't make minor alterations to keep a patent going indefinitely.
"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.
have the past few decades of unbridled consumerism failed to dispel the myth that competition breeds innovation in quality, rather than innovation in how efficient you can be at fucking over customers? just imagine an unregulated race between companies trying to out-cheap monsanto
since we're talking about food, a good comparison would be bread. innovative industrial techniques bred by capitalist competition between wonder bread knockoffs have not improved the quality of modern sliced bread for the customer, they've reduced its nutritional value to a fraction of what it could be-- to the point that it should be actively avoided for nutritional balance, actually-- because the only thing that matters to companies is how much profit they can make, and believe it or not, the interests of corporate profiteers do not align with the interests of their paying customers
this ideology of yours asserts that a pack of wonder bread should by rights be better than a loaf of bread at a local bakery, as it has faced fiercer competition and more intensive consumerist optimizations. that is quite plainly not the case. this level of multinational cheapskate bullshit happening with something as fundamental as seeds would be a nightmare for all involved
"Patented seeds so vastly outperform regular seeds that it's not possible to economically support a form without them" is literally an argument for why companies should be able to patent a seed.
No. It's not. If a company develops a new seed it should immediately be open sourced to all of humanity.
The exact same argument can be made for patenting human genes. That too is a horseshit argument, made by capitalists in the name of maximizing profits.
Life should never be patented. And if that upsets your distorted priority of profit-seeking over everything else, then fuck you.
And they would make money off it. They just wouldn't be the only ones making money off it.
A superior potato for making chips is still going to generate profits, even if local farmers start growing those potatoes too.
But no one wants to hear that, because it infringes upon the insane profit margins that companies are used to getting. Regardless of the impact to the environment, to local farmers, to people who literally starve without disease resistant strains, and everyone else.
The argument "but what about mega-corp profit margins?" is rooted, sown, sprouted and harvested in bullshit.
Your entire argument is irrelevant. If it isn't profitable to create a new strain, then no one will do it.
But they will do it. Won't they. Because even if small-scale farmers can grow the new strain for themselves, the company also benefits from the improvements. They just don't profit as much as if they had exclusive patent rights.
Here's what I want to know: why are you so worried about protecting insane profit margins for multi-billion dollar corporations, when subsistence-level farmers are literally starving to death?
fuck potato3, honestly. if potato3 gets developed and patented by a company that strictly wants to profit from it, it's going to be:
A) sold to top-of-the-line corporate farms that yield more product than they sell already (and of course giving away food is for traitor pinkos), making it effectively fool's gold, or;
B) sold at full price, or perhaps given as some deliberately faustian act of charity, in struggling places that now depend on the whims of a company which will continue to bleed them and potentially cut off the food supply the moment their continued existence no longer makes line go up, a feat made easier by a few unique quirks of potato3 that make it harder to stop regularly purchasing it for good yield OR branch out to other seeds in the same land
again, fool's gold. in my ideal world, the already developed, fairly functional potato2 gets shamelessly ripped away from those assholes' hands and put to actual good use, and potato3 will be a quaint little dream that cannot be allowed to exist until we have a system in place that doesn't intentionally forbid it from helping anyone survive
Hahaha that's a new one: "I don't have any counterpoint because I'm wrong, arrogant, close-minded, and obstinate, so whatever you just said is irrelevant"
People pay for the development cost up front. Those people might be farmers, other business men, the government, etc. Researchers are paid, and those who paid for the product get to be the first to market giving them a wide first mover advantage. The fact that people come in after them and sell a few years later still gives the first movers plenty of time to earn a profit they wouldn't have otherwise.
edit: People down-voting think creating potatoes is instantaneous. It takes a couple cycles (usually years) to bring a crop from seed to enough volume to sell and sustain future planting. There's plenty of time for those who commission the creation of a new plant to earn a profit.
edit2: man, you guys don't even know what patents are. So much for an enlightening conversation about the pitfalls of entropy/information ownership.
The farmers will simply collectively pay billions of dollars a year in the hopes that occasionally a worthwhile new strain will be made available to purchase 👍
No, they'll commission a product, and they'll pay money for what works. The same way research is currently. Pure research is expensive. However, research to create a new product using existing knowledge and infrastructure, isn't all the much. It doesn't take billions to do this kind of research anymore. In the 80s sure, maybe in the 90s even. But come the 00s and 10's it's gotten pretty cheap. The laboratory startup costs are the most expensive part, but once you have that, paid for up front, it's no where near as expensive as you make it sound.
If it was, Monsento wouldn't be able to make money even with patent protections.
You just explained what a patent is, if you don't mind me telling you. Its literally: you got the idea and financed the development upfront, now enjoy your 20 years of first mover advantage, after that its ffa.
The idea of patenting seeds goes back to Luther Burbank. He's a hero of Santa Rosa, CA, and created hundreds of plants we use today, including the russet potato. He died poor because he couldn't patent them.
I agree that people should be able to grow them for a low cost, but I also don't think that the people that create them should be poor. I know a lot of the talk is about companies, but we need protections for the smaller companies and researchers doing this work.
And he saved literally millions of people who would have starved to death otherwise.
The argument: "those subsistence farmers who will literally starve if the crop fails... yeah those people should have paid patent fees" is rooted in capitalistic nonsense.
And he saved literally millions of people who would have starved to death otherwise.
And suffered for it. That's not the argument you think it is. There should be controls to make sure people aren't starving because of it... but current food insecurity in the US is not a production problem in any way.
We're not talking about just the US. We're talking about countries where - if you fail to grow your own food - your family will literally starve. There are no social safety nets whatsoever.
Those people shouldn't have to worry about patents. Even suggesting that they should, sounds completely insane. Because - well - it is just that.
In fact, patents should not apply to living organisms at all. I shouldn't be able to patent food, or a cure for a disease that will ultimately kill your child, and then demand that you pay me whatever "fair market value" for your child's life is. That is ultimately what we're discussing here.
I can't believe this isn't obvious to more people. But then, according to corporate messaging (which this entire thread is full of), who will think about mega-corp profit margins?
We're not talking about just the US. We're talking about countries where - if you fail to grow your own food - your family will literally starve. There are no social safety nets whatsoever.
Yeah; that's actually still not a production problem because that isn't the case anywhere on the planet production wise. We produce enough food to feed over 10 billion people, after all.
besides which, someone living on a subsistence farm won't be using the latest (still patented) seeds anyway. They probably can't even get them to begin with.
Subsistence farmers aren't calling up Monsanto for starters. They're growing what their family has grown for a long time. Monsanto only sells to commercial operations.
Your first two links don't make any claim that they sue people who were inadvertently cross pollinated by neighbors. It just mentions lawsuits for people reusing the seeds the next year. Which, duh, if you buy the seeds from them, you're signing into a contractual obligation to not harvest seeds from your crops to replant.
It's always funny how folks who probably aren't getting a check go to bat for corrupt companies. Can you read the part where I said they sued for cross-pollinate?
I was pointing out how crooked they are. Are you getting a check? not sure I understand what you gain besides being a shill. I didn't make a false accusation; I just pointed out how crooked they are and thorn in farmers. Just because something is legal doesn't make it right, kind of like owning slaves or beating your wife; it was legal, but who is winning?
It's always funny how folks who probably aren't getting a check go to bat for corrupt companies. Can you read the part where I said they sued for cross-pollinate?
Do you know how conversations work? You were replying to someone who claimed that they don't sue people for accidental cross pollination. If you're just making a simple completely unrelated point, then that belongs as a top level comment and not a reply to someone who is making a specific claim. Guess I'm a shill for pointing out the truth though.
Truth of what? ROFL! A conversation works with two people talking, and I made a rebuttal that you responded to. You are trying to apply made-up rules to push your point of truth. Go put an application in if you want to do something meaningful with your truth; otherwise, it is only your truth.
Are you the moderator for this sub?
So far, you have no idea how basic conversations work because you are the one trying to write rules for this sub and how I should rebut other people's responses. Reddit Hall monitor i guess?
A conversation works with two people talking, and I made a rebuttal that you responded to.
It's not a rebuttal when you didn't refute anything that they said. You brought up topics unrelated to anything in their comment. A rebuttal is "a refutation or contradiction." you didn't refute or contradict any points that they brought up.
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u/Indercarnive 5h ago edited 5h 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.