In France, reseeding will soon be illegal due to firms’ patents | Hacker News Reader

In France, reseeding will soon be illegal due to firms’ patents

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64 pointsbpierre34 comments

Food has always been "free" in the sense that anyone could produce or harvest it, as long as they had the resources.

This is part of a two part process to steal the freedom of food from humanity: 1) produce these technically unique and patented seeds, 2) wait for those seeds to crowd out unencumbered seeds. Once there are essentially only patented seeds, Monsanto et al. become our new overlords.

This will probably happen with GM animals too.

The ultimate in rent seeking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_seeking

And as usual, there are other solutions:

http://www.realseeds.co.uk/ for example which involves cultivating and selling heritage non-hybrid seeds. Stuff tastes good as well - I grow quite a bit.

So what's to stop me/farmers using ordinary seeds?

Here's another process, tinhat mode fully on: 1) Kill of significant number of bees on which we depend to pollinate crops via pesticides, fertilizers, GMOs or combination of. 2) Buy leading bee research company investigating bee deaths to hide evidence of wrongdoing. 3) Use research company to develop GMO bees which are resistant to other Monsanto products, and further, modify them to only pollinate Monsanto products. 4) Kill off the remaining natural bee population.

This will only apply to "quality" seeds which went through "quality ensurance" and are sold by large companys.

So what is the logical consequence?

Bann all other seeds! This is not a joke http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/06/05/european-comm...

How about not buying seeds that are encumbered like this? "Oh no, but I need my roundup!"

Buy organic and support the farmers who don't need weedkiller resistant crops.

I upvoted you, but I think part of the problem is cross pollination, and runoff of chemicals from neighboring farms.

Is that part of the problem though? Is anyone actually trying to enforce patents against people whose plants get cross-pollinated with engineered crops?

EDIT: I realize Monsanto has sued farmers who took advantage of the cross-pollination to apply Roundup (which otherwise kills the plants) to their crops. But as far as I know, they're not suing farmers merely because of the cross-pollination by itself.

Sorry if I'm off base or misunderstanding you, but isn't this exactly what Monsanto has done to get their claws into a lot of US farmers that don't otherwise use their products?

If they then try to reuse those new seeds. In the US at least.

Monsanto does all the time.

The only lawsuits Monsanto has ever filed have been against farmers who both got cross pollinated with their seeds, and then knowingly took advantage of this by using Roundup chemicals. Monsanto has never filed a lawsuit against a farmer who didn't use Roundup on their crops.

Is that part of the problem though?

Yes, it is. If I'm a farmer who grows organic crops, and I get cross-pollinated from my neighbor who uses GMO seeds, I no longer qualify as organic, and no longer can sell my crops for the premium that qualifies me for.

We can debate the merits of GMO as an idea elsewhere (my belief is that without it we're guaranteeing major food supply problems down the road), but making sure that my crops are organic is not just a question of choosing to not buy from Monsanto.

Runoff of chemicals seems like a lawsuit against the upstream farmer. But that's assuming a just world, of course. :(

Organic does not mean the farmers cannot use pesticides and weedkillers, they're just restricted to specific ones.

I have lost faith in our system, thanks to patents. Wrote this just a few hours back https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/399c21224f8b

I hope this only applies to the Gentec seed; in a way this is understandable, but unsustainable.

Seeds (nature) are made/evolved to prosper and re-grow, making claims to some-one for doing this with a modified version of this product of nature is kind of un-ethical.

The seed is a derivative of nature, and imho cannot be patented.

Won't happen imho.

Not in France, anyway. The farmers will eventually hit the streets and block all road traffic in "Opérations Escargot" until the thing gets repelled.

Er, don't patents have to be novel? Surely you could claim prior invention?

The patent is on "novel" sequences, like "Roundup-Ready", but plants have a tendency to broadcast (old meaning) their genome (e.g., pollen).

Interesting you should mention that tendency to "broadcast", because Monsanto engineered their seeds to not do that (see: the "terminator gene") but did not put it into production because of the huge backlash it caused.

The terminator gene made them still broadcast, but the end result was sterile seeds. Which is definitely a risky option to take, and deserves backlash.

New species are created all the time, such as though cross-breeding.

It is even worse, EU agricultural commission is pushing replanting ban for entire EU, for any seed regardless of copyright.

In Europe each county or even village has its own breed of apples, plums and other fruit. Various mutation added some unique traits. For example resistance to cold or parasites, sweetness, time of harvest...

This would be golden mine for any geneticist. But 99% of breeds disappeared over last 70 years.

Yeah, let's sue those plants who spread their seeds without paying the patent holder. And the birds! That will teach them.

This has gone too far now.

I think it's worth noting that Europe in General, and France in particular, is very anti-GMO, so this will mostly apply to conventionally bred (but still patentable) plants. If IP is your problem, I'll admit that GMOs aren't innocent, but banning them won't fix the problem.

There's an amazing section in the documentary Food, Inc. that deals with the consequences of this in the US. Genuinely disturbing, hopefully this is overturned or at least protested against before it can be enforced.

Mother Nature should sue the hell out of these businesses, she was after all the maker of all the seeds :P

Can president issue an executive order to invalidate food patents?

In America, no.

Then again, Obama seems to think he has the authority to override the law with EOs, but they would likely be struck down by a court if challenged.

The French farmers would not stand for this, they will probably be out burning truck loads of seeds, having first forced the truck to stop via roadblock.

OH yes. France has a very strong labour union movement. The joke is the French will protest when it's cold in winter, and set Paris on fire to warm things up.

This gives me an idea for online betting system.

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