Monsanto Owns Us: The Monopoly of Seeds and Intellectual Property Rights
darkecologies.com
darkecologies.com
Second, just to pre-empt, please don't confuse Monsanto with GM crops. Monsanto are a real pain in my ass as a plant scientist because they're nucleating an all-out war on rationality. The original Monsanto, a chemical manufacturer, were hated because of their US government contracts for Agent Orange, and their massive environmental abuses in the 1950s. In the 90s they developed some nice genetic technology. In 2000 that company was bought out by Pharmacia. Then, in possibly the biggest PR fuckup ever, a newly formed company taking only the agricultural IP from the old Monsanto decided to keep the name. The name carries so many associations with the evil things they did in the 50s-70s that it has utterly polluted the public discourse on GM crops.
It's also very tiresome to have Percy Schmeiser trotted out over and over again. What's not mentioned here is that it came out in the trial that Schmeiser had very deliberately infringed the patent by using Roundup to select the Roundup-Ready plants, saving their seed and planting them separately. Schmeiser made a very good job of rousing the media in his support, but he definitively broke the law.
Sort of like copyright holders that have actively lobbied to lengthen (retroactively) terms. They have no moral standing against being stripped (retroactively) of their copyrights.
In other words, it's the law, not the companies, that are to blame. Change the law.
0: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8146/are-u-s-com...
I'm sorry you find his story inconvenient to your Monsanto cheerleading, but I (and I feel many others) don't think this should have violated any law. Someone contaminated his property with Roundup-Ready canola. He chose to take advantage of that, isolate it, and replant it. He never agreed with anybody to not do this, or signed contracts to control what he does with what ends up on his property.
The idea that a patent can exist on a lifeform is utter nonsense to me; I think a lot of the outrage comes in discovering that Monsanto's patent is on the actual lifeforms themselves, not on the process for turning a regular seed into a roundup-ready seed.
That's what Schmeiser did: he was sued by Monsanto not for planting unlicensed Roundup-Ready seeds, but for using Roundup on them.
It's also worth mentioning that the court did not find credible Schmeiser's claim that his original run of Roundup-Ready seeds were the product of accidental contamination --- upon determining that he was germinating Roundup-Ready plants, Schmeiser applied Roundup to the whole field, and 60% of the field survived. Furthermore, upon learning that he had a field consisting entirely of Roundup-Ready plants, he proceeded preserve and reuse the whole crop for future plantings.
"The court heard the question of whether Schmeiser's intentionally growing genetically modified plants constituted "use" of Monsanto's patented genetically modified plant cells."
And:
"Monsanto said that because they hold a patent on the gene, and on canola cells containing the gene, they have a legal right to control its use, including the intentional replanting of seed collected from plants with the gene which grew accidentally"
He was sued for using their seeds. It has nothing to do with whether or not he applied Roundup.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc._v._Schmeis...
"Thus a farmer whose field contains seed or plants originating from seed spilled into them, or blown as seed, in swaths from a neighbour's land or even growing from germination by pollen carried into his field from elsewhere by insects, birds, or by the wind, may own the seed or plants on his land even if he did not set about to plant them. He does not, however, own the right to the use of the patented gene, or of the seed or plant containing the patented gene or cell."
However, I don't think you can conclude that "use" arises when Roundup is applied. "Use" in this context is broader than that.
I doubt such a case exists, but that doubt is based on my belief that Monsanto isn't as aggressive as they're often characterized, not on the necessity of that component in the case.
It's hardly "inconvenient." Not only was he guilty of A) acknowledging Monsanto's value-addition by isolating the seeds and B) using but not paying for that value-addition, but he then went on a media tour to cash in on the Monsanto hate by lying repeatedly about the case to cast himself in a positive light. And then he used the media attention as a springboard for his political career. He's a scumbag, which is hardly "inconvenient" for people who don't hate Monsanto.
> I (and I feel many others) don't think this should have violated any law.
How do you propose to allow those who engineered the value-addition to capture a share of the societal benefit they created?
> The idea that a patent can exist on a lifeform is utter nonsense
They didn't patent the lifeform, they patented value-adding modifications to the life-form. If you spent the time and effort to remove Monsanto's additions, the life-form would no longer be patent-encumbered. The idea that they were patenting a lifeform is utter nonsense.
They still enforced that patent on the lifeform itself, not just on the modification.
The point of a patent is to restrict the reproduction of your invention. The point of a lifeform is that it reproduces itself. Putting your patented thing in something that reproduces itself, means you are releasing control over the reproduction of the thing you patented.
As far as I'm concerned, the only thing a gene patent should protect is taking the patented genes and putting them in a lifeform. Not the reproduction of the lifeform itself, since that is an automatic thing, inherent to life itself.
This is not about "societal benefit". Nobody but Monsanto benefits from Roundup Ready products: in fact they are a net detriment to society since the continual use of glyphosate will select for Roundup resistant weeds. Then there's the issue of residual glyphosate in our food supply.
You can put away your pom-poms and the "all Monstanto haters are liars" cheer line, and come join the rational debate.
If GMOs cause my non-GM crops to be contaminated with GM genes, who owns my crops? More importantly, who pays for the cleanup when the value I offer to my customers is crops free of GMOs?
If a GM wind- or bee-pollinated crop is planted within a few kilometres of my crop without my permission, who owns the genes that get transferred to my crops due to cross-pollination?
Don't trot out the canard of "societal benefit" when the only people who actually benefit from GMOs are the companies who own the patents and manufacture the herbicides, pesticides and fertilisers that the GMO crops depend on.
That's just not true. Society benefits because we can avoid applying much more toxic and environmentally damaging herbicides and pesticides by using engineered resistance to pests or to harmless herbicides.
> They are a net detriment to society since the continual use of glyphosate will select for Roundup resistant weeds
This is a fallacy. All herbicide use selects for herbicide resistance. Herbicide resistance is a problem completely independent of GMOs, and is in no way exacerbated by using GMOs. Farmers have to use a huge quantity of herbicide regardless of whether they are growing GMOs cotton or organic quinoa.
> Then there's the issue of residual glyphosate in our food supply.
The whole point of using glyphosate is that it's one of the least harmful herbicides ever discovered. There is very little evidence of harm to humans even at much high doses than you would get in a lifetime of eating glyphosate-soaked food. Contrast that to every other broad action herbicide, which have various levels of toxicity but invariably higher than none.
Actually, it's your comment there that contains the fallacy. Roundup-Ready GM crops are designed to survive Roundup dosing (obviously). This leads to an overall increase in Roundup use and a corresponding increase in Roundup resistance.
You may say that herbicide resistance can be found to exist with non-GMOs, but you cannot say that "resistance is in no way exacerbated by using GMOs". The latter is positively and obviously false.
Right, but without roundup farmers have to use at least as much of a different set of herbicides, at different times in the crop cycle. Using roundup leads to an increase in the overall resistance to roundup and a decrease in the resistance to 2,4-D, paraquat, etc. The problem exists independently of GMOs.
>you cannot say that "resistance is in no way exacerbated by using GMOs"
Yes, I can. Resistance to Roundup is exacerbated by using Roundup-Ready GMOs, while resistance to other herbicides is decreased.
No, you can't. Well, you can...in the same way that you can say up is down and down is up. That's literally what you're doing.
You previously stated that resistance is no way exacerbated by using GMOs. Now you're saying that it is for one GMO, but trying to qualify it with a "but". Too late. You've already conceded the point. Now you're trying to lawyer it.
With your initial claim refuted, we can move on to your qualifier. That is, whether there is some secondary effect whereby resistance to other herbicides is decreased in direct proportion would be another question. But, you fail on that point as well. Resistance is dose dependent. GMOs allow higher dosing. It's the entire point.
The more herbicide-resistant GMOs we use, the more herbicides we'll use and the more resistance we'll see. It's really as simple as that.
> You previously stated that resistance is no way exacerbated by using GMOs. Now you're saying that it is for one GMO, but trying to qualify it with a "but". Too late. You've already conceded the point. Now you're trying to lawyer it.
Total rates of herbicide resistance have not increased since the introduction of herbicide resistant GMOs. The rate of glyphosate resistance has increased, while the rate of resistance to many other herbicides (e.g. ureas, dinitroanilines, atrazine) has slowed by a greater total rate.
> Resistance is dose dependent. GMOs allow higher dosing. It's the entire point.
1. Dose dependence of resistance doesn't mean what you think it means. When we say resistance is dose dependent, that means the plant is resistant only up to a threshold dose, beyond which it will suffer the normal symptoms of toxicity. It does not mean "the more herbicide we apply the more resistance there will be".
2. Glyphosate resistance does not allow higher dosing, it allows lower dosing after the crop has been planted (non-resistant crops in general have the land treated with extreme doses several weeks before sowing).
3. Herbicides select for resistance with different strengths, related to how easily mutations can lead to resistance. Glyphosate is a relatively low selector for resistance. Atrazine is an example of a very strongly resistance-selecting herbicide. By reducing the use of strongly-selecting herbicides like atrazine, Roundup-ready decreases the aggregate strength of selection for resistance.
> The more herbicide-resistant GMOs we use, the more herbicides we'll use and the more resistance we'll see.
No. The introduction of herbicide resistant GMOs has led to a reduction in the rate of herbicides applied for most crops, or approximately similar rates of less harmful herbicides applied in other crops.
Funny that you're bringing up cleverness with words. You're engaging in wordplay to avoid the obvious inferences ascribable to the very facts you're acknowledging.
That is, you're using "facts" to mislead in very much the same way that Monsanto does. What's your affiliation with them or related companies?
Forget about the term "dose dependence". I misused it in an effort to be concise. I should have used "volume-dependence". The point is that it is patently true that the more of a pesticide we use in aggregate, the higher the rate of resistance to that pesticide and the more we have to use. You seem to have acknowledged that, but now you are attempting to obfuscate it.
Obviously, this does not mean that if we use X volume of any given pesticide, then we will get Y resistance to that pesticide. Nowhere did I state that. Actual resistance rates are obviously dependent on the properties of the specific herbicide. But, for each pesticide, the more we use, the higher the risk of resistance. Again, you seem to be acknowledging this at least tacitly via your acknowledgment where Roundup is concerned.
But, you are flailing about between arguments and contradicting each. On the one hand, you're saying that GMOs such as Roundup Ready do lead to higher resistance. OTOH, this is OK because we are decreasing use of other herbicides and thus decreasing resistance there. So you are arguing both sides. To see this, answer the following: what happens when we have herbicide-resistant GMOs for every herbicide in significant use?
And, BTW, beyond resistance, we are using more roundup because GMOs allow the crops to tolerate more.
>The introduction of herbicide resistant GMOs has led to a reduction in the rate of herbicides applied for most crops, or approximately similar rates of less harmful herbicides applied in other crops.
Again, this is misleading because you are vascillating between discrete herbicides/GMOs and aggregate. Bottom line is that humans are consuming more glyphosate than in pre-Roundup Ready times because more of it is being used. You keep calling it safe but, as is often the case with chemicals meant to kill, the independent research is calling these safety claims into serious question. When the dose we receive from any given herbicide keeps going up, we eventually cross a threshold wherein even the industry-sponsored research is little more than a wild guess. The result is that we just don't know when we've reached a tipping point until it's too late.
It boggles my mind when scientists, of all people, show little regard for the complexity of the human organism and make such cavalier statements about the safety of consuming chemicals that are intended to kill. If their presumably increased understanding of the delicate balance and complex chemical processes within the human body isn't enough to warrant a bit more respect, it seems that history should be.
> That is, you're using "facts" to mislead in very much the same way that Monsanto does. What's your affiliation with them or related companies?
I have no affiliation with Monsanto or any related company. I've never, to my knowledge, met or corresponded with anyone who works for them. I've very deliberately avoided doing so because I want to remain impartial in my role as a plant scientist. My research is funded by the Millennium Seed Bank, a conservation organisation.
>...you are flailing about between arguments...you are arguing both sides...
I'm just presenting the facts, there are no sides, there is just the simple fact that the total rate of herbicide resistance has decreased. If you're incapable of seeing that it is possible for all the things I've said to be true then I don't know what to suggest.
>what happens when we have herbicide-resistant GMOs for every herbicide in significant use?
Then we need to use less herbicide to achieve the same effect, because we can apply it directly to the crop after planting, killing the emerged weeds. With other herbicides, they have to be applied pre-emergence, sterilising the soil, which requires larger doses. Secondarily, there's no way we will have GMOs resistant to every herbicide that are currently in significant use because many of the older, more harmful ones will soon be illegal.
>You keep calling it safe but, as is often the case with chemicals meant to kill, the independent research is calling these safety claims into serious question.
I'm calling it safe relative to other herbicides. To feed everyone, herbicides have to be used. These chemicals are meant to kill plants, although some of the older ones has non-specific modes of action that might also harm animals. Glyphosate in particular targets a protein, ESPS synthase, that only exists in plants and microorganisms. It's been extensively tested and, you are wrong, there is not research calling the safety claims into question - the safety rating of glyphosate accurately reflects the state of knowledge. If you're seriously interested, just read the literature. Everything you're saying just demonstrates that you're not taking your information from the literature. A good start is the GENERA database of independently-funded studies on GMOs[0].
>The result is that we just don't know when we've reached a tipping point until it's too late.
This is true for absolutely anything. Wearing clothes, watching TV, fluorescent lighting, using a toilet, eating organic food, eating GMOs, and so on. We have to use short-term studies to infer safety.
>It boggles my mind when scientists, of all people, show little regard for the complexity of the human organism and make such cavalier statements about the safety of consuming chemicals that are intended to kill.
Nothing is more important to me than human wellbeing. It's what I've dedicated my life to, for very low pay, and I work incredibly hard to a) develop the technology to allow us to alleviate hunger and b) maintain a thorough understanding of the working of the agricultural system and its implications. The reason your mind seems to be boggled is because you're leaping to conclusions without understanding the system you're talking about.
I'm out.
And I suppose that, like you, I have trouble letting your last bit stand. So, I will just summarize and be done with it.
You started by making a blanket statement that was categorically false and misleading. Then, rather than acknowlege that you misspoke, you dug in and defended it to the end. You never even acknowledged that you were now qualifying your initial statement. But, it's me who is being deliberately obtuse? OK.
And, here, you are making still more claims that are simply untrue or misleading, as well as making trite arguments. Comparing wearing clothes, using a toilet, etc. to consuming herbicides? Come on, man.
You are also deliberately taking examples meant to illustrate points to extremes to set up strawmen. Attempting an earnest discussion is frustrating. Perhaps consider that you may be so passionate that you are dismissive of any ideas (and possibly some facts) that contradict your beliefs.
And, if you are truly interested in educating people, then perhaps, at a minimum, you might also consider how you present facts and draw conclusions. For instance, as just one example, you might reconsider how making unqualified statements, such as your initial one here declaring that GMOs are completely independent of the resistance problem might be misleading, especially to laymen. Then, you might consider how making such glaring and apparently apologetic misstatements in a charged environment might lead to questions about your motives (of which you seem to get many) or, at the least, diminish the effectiveness of your efforts to educate.
In short, maybe it's not everyone else. Maybe it's you.
Take care. I'm out.
In your interpretation, any use of a product which results in increased resistance to that product "exacerbates resistance."
In his interpretation, he compares the use of Roundup + Roundup-ready crops to a non-Roundup situation, and notes that indeed in both situations products must be used which will result in increase resistance, but notes however that the former scenario does not increase resistance relative to the latter, and may in fact increase it less. So he finds that the problem of resistance is not "exacerbated."
It's similar to noting that people riding bicycles to work does not "exacerbate" road-use, even though roads are busier than they would be if the people riding bikes just stayed at home (which obviously they won't because they have to work.)
No, I completely understand what he is saying, and I am suggesting that, in saying it, he is being disingenuous and misleading. It's industry sponsored double-speak. Judging by your response, it appears to be working.
His initial statements that GMOs don't exacerbate the problem and that resistance is completely independent of GMOs are false. Full-stop. When challenged, he goes on to admit as much by acknowledging the well-known fact that resistance has increased where the Roundup Ready case is concerned.
But, he then tries to qualify and obfuscate that acknowledgment by saying that overall resistance is decreased by a corresponding amount for other herbicides which are subsequently used less.
The problem with this is that it is misleading and seeks to let GMOs off the hook. It even applauds them. The reality is that humans are now using and consuming more glyphosate. He tries to dismiss this effect by cheerleading their safety (which is anything but assured when independent research is considered).
The other pernicious bit of his argument is due to the fact that, in the future, we are likely to use more and more herbicide-resistant GMOs. By declaring GMOs "competely independent" of the resistance problem, he is implying that overall resistance would continue to remain the same (or be reduced), even with more GMOs. But, the fact is, the more we use any herbicide-resistant GMOs, the more we will dump those herbicides on crops, and the more resistance we'll see to those (and, hence, overall).
At the end of the day, our crops will be soaked in more of whatever herbicide we're using. But, you certainly don't get that potential scenario from statements like "herbicide resistance is a problem completely independent of GMOs".
Not even the farmers who grow the seeds with Monsanto's traits? Thousands of Monsanto's happy customers would beg to differ. You benefit, too, because GM crops are cheaper to grow, so the products they end up in are also (marginally) cheaper.
You can certainly have a "rational debate" over the individual and societal costs of GM crops, but it is absurd to pretend that Monsanto is the only party that derives any benefit from their products. If that were true, nobody would buy them.
Disclaimer: I work for a Monsanto subsidiary.
Then they should pay the rest of society royalties for all other value-adding modifications that were introduced in those same lifeforms since the dawn of agriculture.
They wan't to sell their value added seed for 100$? Sure but to do that they should pay 99.99$ of royalty to scientists and farmers that intoduced previous genetic modifiactions to those same seeds with selective breeding and mixing species.
If you want to sell IP you need to buy IP for the things you are basing your work on.
What a stupid, facile thing to say. Should we call authors leeches and sue them for profiting from the common linguistic heritage of humanity?
Do you come on to Hacker News just to derail conversations with garbage like that?
How about the fact that their kids are more likely to be able to eat some fucking food?
Or not to be lynched by the starving, unwashed masses?
> He never agreed with anybody to not do this, or signed contracts to control what he does with what ends up on his property.
That's not how the law works. I never agreed with anyone not to commit murder or (more relevant) not to pirate music. But I can still be prosecuted for it. And if I have a problem with that, it's the law that I have a problem with, not the people who made the music.
Whether or not a farmer encourages a particular seed to grow, the seeds would have sprouted and grown of their own accord. That is the fundamental difference between copyright violation and gene patent violation.
If a farmer doesn't knowingly violate, he will not be prosecuted. Having read a large number of court summaries from Monsanto cases, I haven't yet found one where they brought a case against someone who was simply dealing with accidental contamination.
If copyright infringing files were to end up on my computer by genuine accident, I would not be prosecuted for copyright infringement. For example, if I downloaded a zip file that was supposed to contain an album that I had paid for, but also accidentally contained an extra mp3 of a file I hadn't paid for, no court would find me in violation of copyright law.
There has to be intent, which nullifies the argument that it matters that seed self-replicates.
Plants may grow, but fields of plants don't spray Roundup all over themselves either.
An analogous situation is someone tosses a movie DVD on your yard. You take that DVD, make thousands of copies, and then profit from them.
Analogies are hard!
Also:
1) I don't think "GM food" per se is bad, however if I had a choice, and knew ahead of time what I'm eating, I probably wouldn't choose GM food, whether from Monsanto or others, because I see GM food as "beta food", and I don't want to be the beta tester. Come back to me after 30-50 years of research for that type of GM product.
2) I do think Monsanto is bad as a company
3) I do think patenting lifeforms, like others have said is bad.
A lot of the current activism against monsanto is due to pressure groups who have hated them for a very long time. Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth (both of which I used to be a member of until I realised what anti-science crap they were spouting about GMOs) have both had long-running campaigns which have strongly affected the public mood about GMOs. The 'Frankenfoods' Greenpeace campaign set the UK down a particularly crippling path.
I'll wager GM foods are a hell of a lot safer than most of the pharmaceuticals that pass FDA review.
Personally, I think drawing the line at genetic manipulation is arbitrary and not really backed up by science. Given a few years, there are plenty of everyday foods that you can breed into something poisonous.
In a sense, all food is "beta food" since the precise combination of genes that made up that plant may not have been tested before. ( I guess clones like bananas are safe. )
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010... [2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6_DbVdVo-k
The roundup ready trait has been available to consumers for 18 years[1] now. Do you mean we need 30-50 more years of research, 48-68 total, or do you mean we only need 12-32 more years of research? (We'll ignore any research done before releasing the product to the public)
Also, while I understand your point, it seems funny to still call something that has been around for eighteen years, and already released a version 2.0, a beta product. Imagine if we treated software lifecycles like that.
[1] http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/pages/roundup-ready-patent...
All the talk about evil lawsuits against poor farmers who got accidentally contaminated seems to be FUD. The big recent case was a guy deliberately trying to skirt the rules.
If farmers would like to use non-Monsanto seeds then they are free to do so. If they'd like to use (arguably) superior seeds that have to be re-purchased every year then they are also free to do so.
If people think it's bullshit that Monsanto can prevent their seeds from being re-used then that's not insane, but I'd politely disagree. It's not terribly different from copyright protection on software. The way I see it is we could revoke that protection and then the seeds wouldn't be developed because it wouldn't be profitable and we'd be stuck with the old stuff. Or we could give protection to enable the development of new seeds and then farmers have the choice to use the old stuff or new stuff. And if the new stuff is so much better than the old stuff that using the old stuff isn't financially feasible then I'd be inclined to call that a success.
Maybe someone can convince me to grab my pitchfork and join the mob but so far I'm just not seeing it.
It's a bit like Microsoft or ATT/Verizon. Just switch providers.. good luck with that.
[1]: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091214/0856327337.shtml
ATT/Verizon use municipal contracts and large barriers-to-entry to maintain their oligopoly
All Monsanto has are patents on their specific crop strains. What prevents a seed producer from going into business other than the benefits of using Monsanto strains?
EDIT: ok, after googling around (the techdirt link was broken), it looks like they were bundling
Farmers choose GMOs because they really do get more return on their investment. They aren't idiots and they aren't being forced.
You can tell they are pushing an angle when they pretend that the "contamination" was accidental, and that Schmeiser was hitting his crops with Roundup.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc._v._Schmeis...
Most hybrids fail to reproduce into another hybrid, and people have been selling hybrid seeds for years before Monsanto even existed.
I don't think it's right that you can make plants your IP however.
In the past we had heirloom seeds which, although proprietary, were not patent protected, so people who shared their superior seed stock didn't run afoul of courts and lawyers.
Call me a pitchfork bearing loon but I find patenting life forms to be egregiously reprehensible.
Patents serve the same purpose in farming as they do elsewhere: it makes it worthwhile for companies to invest the hundreds of millions of dollars it costs to drive crop yields ever higher.
I share your moral outrage at the idea of patenting life, and all my own research as well as all the genetic technology produced by our consortium on the C4 rice project will be made free (as in beer and speech).
However, agriculture relies on agricultural companies, and they need some way to make money. If people can just take their technology and grow it again themselves, there is no way for them to recoup their investment and we simply won't have better crops.
just to chime in here. for a majority of indian farmers - partly which triggered the mass suicide by pesticide - they turned out to be not at all as high yielding as was claimed.
now you could say, ahhh, but wait a second. they didn't use as much water and pesticide as they were supposed to, and you might be right. but then it depends on your definition of yield.
their own crops had a higher yield given the conditions of the soil, and water.
Definition of yield? Bushels per acre, or kg per hectare. There's not much of an issue there. The same plant might yield very differently in different fields, just like it yields differently each year. If you are conducting trials, you have to plant a bunch of stuff together vs well known controls. Something that yields 140 bushels per acre on average might give you just 58 in the wrong year. Just look at what happened to most of the US fall crop in 2012.
Now, if you plant a variety of plant that does well in X conditions, and you actually plant it in Y conditions, then yeah, pick between changing the condition or using a different variety.
sounds great. you're assuming that most people are critical of these crops. have any means to research what was mentioned(ie. internet). and have the means to recover from these loans, but if they did why would they need the loans to buy these crops to begin with?
This rest on the assumption that the patent system is the best way to structure a market and incentivize agricultural R&D.
I'd figure higher crop yields are incentive enough to invest in higher yield seeds. As in, smart farmers would invest profits into developing better seeds to give them more reliable or higher yields. It doesn't require an artificial profit motive attached to the development of seeds themselves if they are a net gain.
That is the same argument I have against big pharma - drugs are useful because they abate symptoms or cure disease. That right there is a motivator to develop drugs - attaching artificial profit motives to their development don't change the fundamentals.
There are several problems with the economics in your response.
Specialization is good, economically speaking: farmers should concentrate on being good farmers, not on trying to oversee research projects in far-off universities or labs. By having a market, it's also possible for companies to bring new products to market without charging the farmers a dime unless the products are actually any good.
This is also what's known as a coordination problem. Each farmer's profits are probably not that high, so one of them on their own is not going to be able to fund this research. So how do they coordinate their work? Markets provide a pretty good answer.
Also, as Blahah mentions, the lack of patents means that there is a free rider problem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_of_labour
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordination_game
Consider...
Company A spends 5billion developing a new variety that yields high, and sells it at price X. With no protection of the IP, Company B can pirate the technology and sell it for price X/10. A farmer can buy the the pirated version just once, and he'll thereafter have no expense to lay out on seed purchase.
Any farmer who tries to do the right thing and invest in the seeds from the company doing the research will be out of business in a year, outcompeted by those wiling to pirate. Company A loses its 5billion investment and exits the market.
Are GMO crops really consistently high yielding? I've heard of some statistics that showed this wasn't actually the case. I don't have any source at hand, but I recall reading that in Europe, where GMO crops are far more restricted than in the US, crop yields actually grew faster over the past decades than in the US, where GMO crops are common.
Also, monoculture makes your crop awfully vulnerable to new diseases. Genetic diversity is much more robust.
Personally I'm a big fan of projects that use more natural ways of fighting weeds and pests. I've read about some very effective programs that reduced pests by planting a specific plant around the crop fields, or (re)introducing a predator of that pest.
If you want to reduce monoculture, then monoculture is a bad idea :)
If people can just take their technology and grow it again themselves, there is no way for them to recoup their investment and we simply won't have better crops.
It's not always about ROI. Some of us just like variety. I do agree with your sentiment, it's just the legal aspects that I dislike.
Oh for a world without money & greed!
> In the past we had heirloom seeds
In the past we didn't have genetic engineering technology that could beat the "heirloom" mixture of selective breeding and snake oil. Now we do, and it has to be funded somehow or society doesn't benefit from that technology.
Why?
1) In a market economy, monopolies should generally be distrusted and prevented whenever possible.
2) There are people who are unsatisfied with the claimed (lack of) health effects of GMO on human consumers.
3) There are people who are unsatisfied with the claimed (lack of) effects that GMO seeds could have on the broader ecosystem.
You shouldn't just disband monopolies too, you should analyze the environment that let them form in the first place. In a functioning market the only time a monopoly becomes an issue is if they can exploit their position to keep prices above optimal competitive levels, and that means that there are barriers to market entry that need to be considered in policy that prevent price competition against the major player. And usually they are legal in nature, be it patent / copyright, or biased tax law, or blatant exclusive contracts like ISPs.
Not after terminator seeds are used.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto#Terminator_seeds http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-seeds-of-suicide-how-monsan...
Now, what happens when you get the next generation? When Hybrids cross with hybrids, the actual genetic makeup of the offspring will produce quite a bit more variation. With that increased variation, come less average yields. So even if a farmer didn't sign anything that would stop him from planting the seeds, chances are that a farmer would have higher profits by just buying a bag of seed anyway.
Not so much for Soybeans though, but that really is a place where Monsanto has pretty much a monopoly: Roundup protection increases yields so much that non-GMO soybeans are barely planted, because they are far less profitable for the farmer.
That really depends on the market you are selling into. It is definitely not a hard truth. For instance, we only grow non-GMO soybeans on my farm because they are quite a bit more profitable and seem to get even more profitable each year. We won't even consider looking at GMO soys until that dynamic starts to change. Farmers in other markets might not be selling to the same customers, and therefore might not be able to see the same margins on non-GMOs.
At the end of the day, it all comes down to what the consumers are buying. With the tight margins in farming, you'll be out of business in no time if you aren't growing exactly what the customers want.
They are seeds. They aren't being reused, they are being used, as seeds.
Genetic information in the wild cannot be subject to strict intellectual property regulation, when there are things like horizontal gene transfer.
monsanto == agent orange
The current problem with Monsanto isn't their products; it seems they learned some pathological business practices back in the 70s from a newly formed consulting service[1] known as Bane. They changed a lot of their business strategy under their oversight, guided by the consultant's representative: Mitt Romney.
[1] http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/09/romney-monsa...
But compare it to a corporation that has a patent on some computer code which would distribute itself as a worm and every victim with an infected PC has to pay to the corporation. Only because you have it on your PC does not make you a copyright pirate. There must be clear evidence that you downloaded patented software willingly. So it is Monsanto who has to make sure that the farmers have the tools to prevent Monsanto seeds from growing. If these tools are not freely available I would say farmers should not be liable this.
For instance, let's take Soybeans. There have been lawsuits out there claiming that someone's Soybean field had been 100% contaminated by Monsanto seeds, so that the fact that all the plants survived Roundup plantings was completely accidental. Given how difficult it is to even cross soybeans on purpose, having an entire field of plants with perfect flowers that get contaminated through pollination is just silly.
On something like corn, however, you just can't avoid cross contamination. So if a field has corn that has genes that came straight from a GMO, it's not as if one can prove wrongdoing: It's impossible to prevent that kind of contamination.
Ultimately though, we just have to figure out if we believe that patenting GMOs is something that is good for society or not. If I make a computer program and sell it, it's not really all that difficult for me to make money out of it, if people actually want it. If I tried to sell carefully engineered soybean seeds, I would not make much money, because from a few soybeans you can make millions. In two seasons, anyone that bought the seed could just compete with me without any for the R&D cost. So if a world without some kind of protection, major seed research just have to be left to public projects that don't expect any profit. You can't even protect your seed by being the only user, because very often, the seed itself is the output. Good luck selling soybeans without giving away the DNA to make more.
And it's not like we could instead change the protections to be all about the insertion of new DNA into a plant: The entire corn catalogue of Roundup ready seeds is probably comes from less than two dozen actual insertions of foreign DNA into regular plants. The tough work is to figure out which ones are actually effective, and to cross them with high yielding regular plants. So I could just take the gene that Monsanto put on a seed and add it to my own strain by using conventional breeding techniques in about 5 years, tops.
So yeah, our options are to just stop all research, move it all to non-profits, or allow some kind of patents on seeds. You could make a case for either of the three, but we have to understand that they all have their shortcomings.
From the 2001 Court Decision[0]:
"[146] I find on a balance of probabilities that the growing by the defendants in 1998 of canola on nine fields, from seed saved in 1997 which was known or ought to have been known by them to be Roundup tolerant, and the harvesting and sale of that canola crop, infringed upon the plaintiffs' exclusive rights under Canadian patent number 1, 313, 830 in particular claims 1, 2, 5, 6, 22, 23, 27, 28 and 45 of the patent"
[0] http://decisions.fct-cf.gc.ca/fc-cf/decisions/en/item/38991/...
But overall there is a wider direction of change whether directed or emergent. Our agricultural system producing our food is becoming problematic in many ways. Food is flora and fauna. These things exist in an ecosystem. These controlled super strains can become very dominant and genetically poor. Many major crops are losing genetic diversity. GMO cereals are just a part of it. It's been going on for a long time. Genetic modification is something we started doing hundreds of years before we named it. Modern genetic tech distills it.
I'm not sure the long term ramifications of all this can be captured in supply and demand. There is a bigger picture that is probably not going to be clear until it is in retrospect.
"Agent Orange was manufactured for the U.S. Department of Defense primarily by Monsanto Corporation and Dow Chemical."
"According to Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 4.8 million Vietnamese people were exposed to Agent Orange, resulting in 400,000 people being killed or maimed, and 500,000 children born with birth defects"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange
Possible connection between Monsanto Roundup and Bee Colony Colapse disorder http://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/ro...
Sure Dow and Monsanto took the money. But they learned their lesson and when the DEA started spraying Paraquat onto cocaine plants in South America Dow sued them to stop. I believe they even threatened to take Paraquat off the market if they lost their lawsuit.
In addition to this Colombia recently signed a free trade agreement with the U.S that introduced a law known as:"Ley 9.70" This law basically forces farmers to only grow food crops from semilla certificada (patented seeds) and guess which companies are supplying these patented seeds? Monsanto, Dupont and Syngenta. This is causing great financial hardship among campesinos as they can't afford to buy seeds every growing season and this has already resulted in peasant protests late last year which resulted in over 40 civilian casualties. As if farmers didn't have it bad enough being stuck in the middle of an armed conflict they now need to comply with this new law or disappear.
If you were genuinely interested in this subject you could do a little independent research of your own and you would see that Colombia is not an isolated incident by any means. Monsanto has been taking advantage of corrupt elected officials all over the developing world to maximize their profits.
It's infuriating.
I wish the nutballs on both sides would just leave the rest of us alone.
a friend of mine was actually collecting seeds in afghanistan a couple of years back precisely, because of that.
besides the yield implications there are also health implications, as we're increasingly growing seeds with a certain taste.
this is completely disregarding the possible health implications of gmo crops.
imho there's huge potential for startups, but probably als huge attack surfaces on those startups.
why? don't forget that uncle bens for example tried to patent basmati rice, and it took the indian government to shut them down. there have also been countless other such cases.
and for those saying the whole monsanto thing is overrated? i remember the guy mentioning a couple of years back that he wants to own 100% of the crop market by 20xx(xx being a number that i forgot). that number has been growing rapidly. and again disregarding the health implications of generic seeds distributed throughout the world, we kinda recognize that monopolies in everything are dangerous.
what on earth makes us think that this is any different?
If they're really better adapted, why are people choosing to buy Monsanto seeds instead? Also, if this were the case, wouldn't Monsanto be interested in reverse-engineering these adaptations and applying them across species / regions?
> there are also health implications
Citation needed. And no, Seralini's work doesn't count -- if you would like me to explain why it was BS I can do so at great length.
> this is completely disregarding the possible health implications
1. We have never held "natural" crops to standards beyond the basic FDA regs. I put "natural" in quotes because usually "natural" = "inbred over generations because even primitive genetic engineering techniques with known, proven side effects are better than nothing." This is all despite the fact that natural crops are often much further, genetically speaking, from "known goods" than Monsanto's crops, which actually do receive additional testing.
> don't forget that uncle bens for example tried to patent basmati rice, and it took the indian government to shut them down
Were they trying to patent their modifications to the rice, or regular, unmodified rice? The Indian government (like the Chinese government) has a long history of ignoring patent law when it suits their purposes. It's a self-interest move, not a morality move.
> remember the guy mentioning a couple of years back that he wants to own 100% of the crop market by 20xx(xx being a number that i forgot). that number has been growing rapidly.
I'll assume by "the guy" you mean "a higher-up at Monsanto" and by "that number" you mean "Monsanto's present market share." In that case, your assertion is patently incorrect:
http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/workshops/ag2010/015/AGW-1...
> and again disregarding the health implications of generic seeds distributed throughout the world
By "generic," I'll assume you mean "genetically engineered." Citation still needed.
> what on earth makes us think that this is any different?
The fact that Monsanto has made a significant improvement to one of the fundamental goods society is built around. They deserve a share of the value they created.
No, because I deny that they made any improvement. Only because it is shown in TV, it is not true!
Today's companies are great in creating "pseudo values". Of course, short term, there might be an improvement. But who checks for the long term effects? I also heard about countries where farmers wanted to go back to their old crop, since after paying the price for the crops (and the pesticides, that are sometimes additionally needed), the value was negative! But say what? They could not, because the old crops where swept from market!
I'm becoming more and more convinced that in aggregate as a species nobody ever checks for the long term, and nobody ever actually cares about the long term. Even today, any environmentally friendly actions come off to me as being more social than logical - it is great we got green to be somewhat "cool", but the fact that is the driving force in adoption (people usually buy Teslas and hybrids because they are "cool", not because it vastly reduces their carbon footprint) leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
And it always happens throughout history. Depressions, wars, and famines are caused by perpetual short term thinking coming back to bite you the long term that eventually catches up to you.
The farmers buying Monsanto seeds over the competition and the customers buying the resulting cheaper/larger/less buggy produce get to make that decision, not you. They have spoken.
> I also heard about countries where farmers wanted to go back to their old crop, since after paying the price for the crops (and the pesticides, that are sometimes additionally needed), the value was negative!
Monsanto makes a point of A) not using terminator seeds, B) only going after farmers who are so guilty that they will possibly be a "PR win", and then donating the proceeds of the lawsuits to charity. Are they actually going after anyone in the 3rd world countries that don't ignore patents? I suspect that they would either be able to get away with saving seeds or are big enough that "the local seed dealer only sells Monsanto" isn't much of an excuse. But I could be wrong. Link to the specific stories you mention?
>He also told me that the overall yield data on GM crops isn't as simple as "yes, it produces higher yields" or "no, it doesn't". For instance, he pointed to a paper published this February in Nature Biotechnology which shows that GM corn sometimes out-produces conventionally bred corn and sometimes under-produces in comparison. The key is in the environmental context. The years where GM corn was producing similar or lower yields than conventionally bred corn were average years, when it came to factors like the weather, disease, and pests. It was in bad years that you can see a significant, positive, difference for GM corn. When the situation was bad, GM corn had greater yields.
From http://boingboing.net/2013/03/29/do-gmos-yield-more-food-the...
Then there's of course Golden Rice which has an increased content of Vitamin A, which you can't measure in terms of yield.
Then there is a problem. There are gmo crops out there which are resistant (e.g. by poison) against X, but there are also some side effects, that critics have found out. The X (e.g. some bugs) are becoming themselves resistant against the poison. And often times those crops need more fertilizers or pesticides because of other reasons. And because the gmo crops are often times dominating the old crops, the chance is high, that we loose the old crops -- so in the end we might end up with crops that need more care and that fully have replaced the old crops -- and the X, we made those crops in the first place, might be stronger than before.
http://newsjunkiepost.com/2009/08/05/monsanto-dow-making-hea...
Such companies already have a tremendous influence on politics and the whole live we have. The financial system is roaming the lands for new "investments". There is not to few money around, it is way to much -- and it is in the hands of the few.
The result is, that companies, the finance sector and the big shareholders own us all! We are at the verge of a state, where it will not be possible to live without paying "life-taxes" to specific companies. So the difference of the Having (and I don't mean a million bucks or even a billion bucks -- far more!) and the Not-Having will grow. There might be some kind of new middle-class formed by the millionaires of today -- but the old middle-class will go down.
At last, there will be the new aristocrats (as in the middle ages -- max. 0.01% of the people), their handymen (~ 1%) and the rest of the pack, that will be living in rags.
I don't know, if this will come to pass, but we are at the verge of it and the neo-capitalism is going exactly that direction! Already some aristocrats are building homes for the millionaires -- secure and apart of the pack!
When you say: This is just bullshit: Look into your countries government -- who makes the laws? In the US, in the EU, in .... (where you live). Open your eyes! (if you are able to)
Only thru force and coercion they have a temporary advantage.
The correct thing would be to do is create a chemical that kills all unwanted stuff and leaves the wanted stuff unharmed, not modify nature because it does not fit your world order.
Plus, GM foods for any purpose are evil. Correct procedure for getting enhanced plants is to use normal breeding processes.
I think you stumbled into the biotech equivalent of CSI picture enhancement[0] or unlimited data storage.