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Comment by efitz | Hacker News Reader

Oh, and there is a special place in hell reserved for anyone involved in designing food crops that can’t reproduce.

Well, as an Iowa farm boy (and farm land owner) I have a more nuanced view. There have been hybrid maizes for many decades. It is possible to create unstable hybrids of normal field corns, which serves as a form of intellectual property protection for seed companies. As a farmer, you certainly can go out and plant heirloom varieties that can self-reproduce if you so choose. At which point, the choice of buying hybrid seed versus planting an heirloom variety is a simple business decision. Now with soy beans, on the other hand, it is not possible to create an unstable hybrid. Even hybrid soy beans can be saved and planted. Which is the direct root of the insanity around Monsanto's Roundup-Ready hybrid seed licensing scheme, and all the notorious law suits around that. We would be better off if Monsanto could sell an unstable soy hybrid. That would eliminate all the craziness that the licensing system creates.

Monsanto ceased to exist 8 years ago. It was acquired and absorbed by a bigger company.

It ceased to be independent. It still exists and I have agricultural products at work that still bear its trademark.

> anyone involved in designing food crops that can’t reproduce

This is a side effect of many clonal varieties of selective-bred crops. It's why they have to be grafted.

Does stop clueless numbskulls from cursing those who created these high-yield varities.

Essentially all commercial apple trees are grafted and don't reproduce true to seed. Been this way for almost a century now.

Them doing it for a certain amount of time does not make it any less egregious. I'm not sure if you're just stating fact or wanting to use it as a rebuttal. I hope the former.

The reality is that it’s not as clear cut like “X is bad/Y is good” as laypeople in this thread assume

Apples don't breed true.

You plant a seed, you have very little idea of whether the apples will be good. This isn't a modern evil, this is simply how apples are.

It's been that way forever. No apple reproduces true to seed, period. 400 years ago, if you wanted another of your apple tree, you grafted it.

It is preferable if genetically engineered crops cannot reproduce. The impact of their wild propagation should be studied first, not unleashed upon the local ecosystem.

> their wild propagation

In general, crop plants don't propagate well in the wild. The whole point of breeding a crop plant is to remove their chemical defenses (to make them edible) and to make them produce lots of edible parts. This is usually the direct opposite of what plants need to survive in the wild.

The wind carries pollen from the crops long distances, where it cross-pollinates with other crops, some of which are grown from seed.

This is a real thing that happens. There have been major court cases about it, like this one from Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc_v_Schmeise...

If we understand "in the wild" to mean outside of farmers' fields, then rapeseed pollen flying from one rapeseed field to another nearby rapeseed field is not "in the wild".

If you redefine the words to win an argument you can win the argument.

By "wild propagation" I meant outside of the original controlled planting.

Propagating to another farm leaves the controlled area and now it's spreading in the wild.

This is what you wrote:

"The impact of their wild propagation should be studied first, not unleashed upon the local ecosystem."

So by "wild propagation" you meant farm-to-farm propagation? And by "local ecosystem" you meant "farmers' fields"? And you accuse others of redefining words.

>The courts at all three levels noted that the case of accidental contamination beyond the farmer's control was not under consideration but rather that Mr. Schmeiser's action of having identified, isolated and saved the Roundup-resistant seed placed the case in a different category.

Do you want novel genes propagating throughout the food system by accident? Terminator genes prevent that problem.

isn't this just a by-product of seed hybridization which has enabled pretty much all of modern agriculture? A lot of testing goes into finding the two strains that combine together to create high-yield seeds, but the next generations of those seeds won't produce well.

Almost true. For many plants, a hybrid is naturally unstable, and can often be stabilized with one extra cross. (But isn't, as it serves as intellectual property protection for the seed company.) But some plants, soy beans being a biggest cash-crop example, can not be bred to be unstable. (See my comment above about Monsanto Roundup-Ready beans.)

Like seedless grapes?

Seedless watermelons are my favorite!

Between this comment and few of your others above, it's pretty clear you don't have any concept of how farming works and are just angry about things you don't understand.

I hope you don't eat any cultivar fruit or vegetable.

So you want to destroy all the people who create hybrid plants? Isn't that a bit cruel?

Edit: also, Monsanto has never actually used their non-replicating seeds. This is a common trope in the greenie hippie community that "Monsanto wants to own your food forever".

Strawman if I ever saw one.

Really? How? Has Monsanto used its termination patents?

>> These people are evil.

> So you want to kill them?

If you're being serious, saying "there is a special place in hell" does not equal "let's send them there".

True, he's not suggesting that they be sent prematurely, just that they should endure eternal torture afterwards. That seems harsh for growing a seedless grape.

People also say things in ways not to be taken super literally. "There's a special place in hell" is an idiom.

> Said of a person whom one considers to be especially wicked, evil, malevolent, etc. Often used facetiously or sarcastically.

From: https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/there's+a+special+place...

So they're not really saying this either:

> just that they should endure eternal torture afterwards

They're really just saying, "these people are evil/wicked".

Let's try this: "greenie hippie who want to starve the humanity deserve a special place in hell".

Hmm? Not bad, I think?

What? You're saying that greenie hippies think that they're actually saving the humanity by forcing it to get close to the Great Spirit, Wisdom of The Anciens or some such nonsense?

Well, Monsanto also had good reasons for developing self-terminating seeds. They are more contained, have almost zero risk of accidentally spreading resistance to other species, and they still can be easily recreated by anyone once the patent expires.

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