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Comment by bootsmann | Hacker News Reader

Valid points but this seems more simple to address using regulation rather than removing the seed patents (which are essential to some degree to make this whole process worthwhile for manufacturers). The argument is that without seed patents most of the genuine advancements would not be worth pursuing.

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What regulation would you propose to fix either of these issues?

Case 2 I suspect could be addressed by a law granting some level of immunity for simply having GMO plants in a field. But how do you fix Case 1 with laws? These are effects of biology and physics.

If a factory pours poison into a farmers water source they can already sue, I cannot imagine it would be significantly harder to enable similar regulation for fertilizers and pesticides.

The legal costs would bankrupt most non-corporate farms. (In fact that's what happened - as explained in the link in that comment, many farmers had to settle even if they believed themselves innocent.)

A lawsuit is rarely a good remedy to a problem, between legal costs, the time delay to any rewards, and the overloaded court system strongly encouraging people to settle out of court.

Yes, that very famously worked for PFAS poisoned waters by DuPont in the US.

It's still ongoing and we're 24 years later.

Monsanto has already made legally binding declarations that they will never sue for "simply having GMO plants in a field" or "accidentally growing trace amounts of patented crops" which have been affirmatively held as legally binding [1].

The cases you are referencing are cases where the farmer discovers trace contamination of their field, then deliberately sprays Roundup to kill all non-GMO crops, then deliberately harvest seed from the survivors, then deliberately create a GMO section of their farm where they repeatedly plant and harvest to concentrate seed production until they have multiple thousands of acres of GMO crops they derived from the trace contamination [2].

Or cases where they signed a agreement to not replant their GMO soybeans, so they sold those GMO soybeans to a facility which sells to consumers for consumption, then turned around and rebought from that same facility the GMO soybeans they just sold so they could replant them [3] claiming that the sale to a third party meant they were not "replanting" the soybeans they just produced since they just oopsie-whoopsie bought them from someone not bound by the agreement.

If you actually look into it, most of the cases that people imagine were really bad or evidence of Monsanto screwing farmers are actually examples of ridiculously slimy farmers. That is not to say that Monsanto is a saint as they almost surely are hiding evidence of Roundup toxicity and you should be generally distrusting that large corporations are value-aligned with regular people, but specifically in the cases of Monsanto versus farmers, the farmers are almost always hiding how absolutely slimy they are actually being.

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/06/12/190977225/co...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc_v_Schmeise...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowman_v._Monsanto_Co.

The idea that a farmer can ever be sued for saving seeds is horrific, no matter what corporate pr speak you dress it up in

Why is that horrific? Is it because some farmers are smaller operations and have less bargaining power? What about a large farming conglomerate, e.g. Cargill? What in particular is bad about this contract, and makes it different from other contracts?

Is it horrific to be sued for modifying and selling software with a removed GPLv3 notice?

this is still based on the idea that farmers are bad businessmen, and couldnt find the seed innovation because it would result in better crops.

if the advancement is genuinely worthwhile, farmers are going to make it happen

The whole point of the G in GMO is that you don’t get these plants by the usual technique of selecting good strains produced by natural gene variance.

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