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Comment by ed25519FUUU | Hacker News Reader

Article really lacks specifics. The reason so much of the USA grows “patented” seeds is because they’re created specifically to be sprayed with herbicide and not die. There’s no alternative to to patented seeds without making fundamental changes to agriculture practices.

Hybrid seeds are also different than open-pollinated in that the children do not grow true to parent. Even if we removed the patents, they wouldn’t be valuable without a way to create them again (using two specific parents).

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1) There are multiple herbicides and multiple pesticides and different ways to skin a cat, not all of which are patented, or for many, the patents have expired.

2) Your second point is more applicable. Who is going to grow these seeds? People underestimate how much agriculture is devoted solely to seed crops.

People underestimate how much agriculture is devoted solely to seed crops

Can you explain this further? I never thought about where seeds come from. Are there giant Bayer-owned fields devoted to growing seeds?

There are a lot of those fields around growing just seed. Some are Bayer owned, others are regular farmers who contract with Bayer to grow seed as their crop. One of the most common jobs for young farm kids is "detasseling" where they go around to seed fields to cut the tassel (male part of the corn plant) off some of the plants. Normally you plant 1 row of male plants, and 4 rows of female plants, since corn plants are both male and female, they need to cut off the male parts of the female plants. (the male plants produce corn on the female parts that is not used for the seed). You can just assume that every rural kid between 15 and 18 does the above job for a couple summers, which gives you an idea of the scale.

But do people really underestimate how much crop land is used to grow seed? What do people think? 1%, 5%? What is the reality? I don't actually know... As a farmer I would be very surprised to discover it was as 10% or 15%! I assume it is more like 0.01%. I regularly grow 70bu/ac wheat and seed 2ish bu/ac to produce that.. the corn/rice/soybean ratio is better I think but I haven't ever considered it in detail.

> You can just assume that every rural kid between 15 and 18 does the above job for a couple summers

Interesting assumption. As a corn farmer, I've never seen anyone growing seed corn in person. It was certainly not a job I had when I was a kid of such an age. Obviously someone does out there, but you may be overestimating just how prevalent it is.

I'd guess that the people wanting unpatented seeds are the same people who want to avoid the use of additives such as herbicides, pesticides, and fertilisers.

Certainly there are alternatives. The Congress could make it impossible to patent seeds or other organisms. They haven't, for reasons involving philosophy, money, and perhaps the deep corruption Citizens United has spawned. They probably won't. But alternatives do exist.

Or, because patenting seeds serves a legitimate and valuable public service, smears of "deep corruption" notwithstanding.

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