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Comment by parineum | Hacker News Reader

> Apart from the health aspect, there is the thing were these GMOs are patented and the business model is one where farmers are not allowed to keep a portion of this years yield to use to seed for next year, but essentially get roped into a subscription model for the crops they plant.

They don't get roped into anything. They elect to do that because the crop yields are significantly better and justify the cost. Further, at least part of the reasoning for not allowing replanting is to avoid genetic deviation in future generations of crop.

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> They elect to do that because the crop yields are significantly better and justify the cost.

That is correct. They are so much better ( and I am in awe of that technology) that outside of some niches (depending on the crop) as a farmer you cannot afford not to use them. But now your farmer-timeframe of a few years is up against a 20 year artificial monopoly in the form of a patent. And all your peers are facing the same situation. This isn't a situation where you can just decide to do whatever you want.

You suddenly find yourself dependent on a third party that knows your situation exactly and will try to extract the most amount of value from you - trying to capture your profit while keeping you healthy enough to keep being a customer.

This skews towards the seed supplier.

> as a farmer you cannot afford not to use them.

Yes, because it's a good product.

Farmer's can't afford not to use tractors or artificial irrigation either.

It's not sinister to develop a product that is better than the competition.

> This skews towards the seed supplier.

Right up until someone else makes a better product.

> Right up until someone else makes a better product.

Yes. A different seed supplier. My point isn't that it's morally wrong to make a better product. My point is that the way it's set up is that those who are in the position to make a better patented-product are in an unbalancedly better position towards the people who use the product to create something as fundamentally important as food.

The major important gmo patents are expiring close to it. If that is your argument it isn't relevant. There are new patents but they are not hard to work around.

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