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Comment by hinata08 | Hacker News Reader

It terrifies me to have a patent on the only crop that can grow in a country.

Food is a necessity

What happens if the seller decides to quadruple the price overnight ? (à la OPEC but for crops)

If some country does 'sanctions' ? (like Russia or the USA when they can't just declare a war to a place)

or if the economy collapses and imports are expensive ? (imagine Venezuela, but the country is also not able to buy crops that work)

these crops sellers will own the Kenyans.

I wouldn't buy the crops if patents were enforced.

it feels like some SF novel (or the Washington Consensus, yet again)

Back in the days, China forced foreign companies to work with domestic companies to sell in China. And at least, they are independent on some technologies now.

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I don’t think it is ever a case that someone can patent the only crop you can grow. Parents are not issued for such broad categories. You cannot patent corn or potatoes as a whole. What is patentable is a specific variety of corn that you develop anew. This means that you can always grow the traditional varieties that are not (and cannot be) patented. If a seller of patented variety quadruples seed price, you can just go back to these if patented variety is not worth the extra cost.

Except that your neighbor bought into the patented crop and nature pollinated your crops, cross contaminating your fields and placing you into patent infringement.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-monsanto-organic-lawsuit/...

Nobody has ever been sued for accidental cross contamination this, and Monsanto explicitly says that it will never sue anyone for this.

> In its ruling Monday, the appellate court said the organic growers must rely on Monsanto assurances on the company’s website that it will not sue them so long as the mix is very slight

That is about as good as "trust us." If it is unclear, that is a really bad position legally.

In theory, maybe, but in practice nobody (in particular, no serious, non-hobby farmers) cares about it other than activists who hate Monsanto. Outside of activist groups and NGOs, this is simply a non-issue.

Big corporation with shady past promises us nicely that they will not sue...thanks, I'll pass!

There is a Hugo Award-winning SciFi book about this called The Wind Up Girl. It imagines a future where petroleum is depleted and “Calorie Companies” wield power by controlling the supply of blight resistant crops.

On the bright side, this would probably happen only if the host country doesn't block these crops and continue enforcing those patents as the situation gets dire.

A sane gov. would pull the brakes pretty fast.

On the dirty side, a gov could be forced in that situation as a condition to receive foreign investment or other critical foreign intervention. We've seen it happen with water infra built under a condition of monopoly, an puting the country's water at the mercy of an international company.

> It terrifies me to have a patent on the only crop that can grow in a country.

If dreaming up an implausible scenario scares you, maybe that's on you?

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