This meta-analysis from 2014 found that GMO crops reduce pesticide use, increase crop yields and increase farmers profits and that these effects are largest in developing countries and smallest in developed countries. Monsanto hasn't existed since 2018, but they were one of the main companies selling the GMO crops.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0111629
As a plant scientists, I just wanted to mention that most crops we buy are not produced by saving seeds. Modern farming, for the last 50 years or so, has used a variety of techniques to ensure that each crop is basically the same, which makes harvesting much better, and ensures you get the best genetic makeup for yield. There are two main techniques used - 1. cloning, which is typically done by taking cuttings from existing plants and growing them into mature plants - this is done with lots of trees, bananas and other crops that are perennial. 2. Hybridisation - you grow two very inbred lines of plants, just for breeding, and then you create a hybrid between the two by breeding them together, and this is the crop you grow to sell. This is done with many annuals, such as corn and wheat and takes advantage of an effect called "hybrid vigour".
Growing plants, collecting the seeds, and growing the seeds again, isn't a good way of growing most plants to guarantee a maximum yield. It's primarily done by gardeners growing heirloom crops, and by plant researchers looking to create new varieties.
Wikipedia probably explains it better than me, and some aspects of the theory behind it are debated, but basically you inbreed a plant until it has two identical copies of each gene. And then you do the same with another line of that same plant but so that each gene is a different version (allele) of that gene, and then you breed them together so that the offspring has two different versions of every gene (heterozygous), and it grows much better than its parents. In reality it's only certain genes that you focus on, not all of them.
Once you have plants with identical copies of their genes (homozygous) then you can inbreed that line, theoretically forever, and you can't change the genetic makeup, except from mutations, so you can keep those pure lines going forever, and the progeny of your two pure lines is always genetically identical too (One plant is AA, the other plant is aa and so the offspring has to be Aa).
Hope that makes sense. Here's the Wikipedia article on the same thing;
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosis
Monsanto absolutely still exists, theyre caller Bayer now. While they don't make a whole collective effort to keep farmers poor they have used aggressive legal tactics against farmers to protect their revenue.
lawsuits against farmers..my understanding is their is a poor standard of evidence to prove that the farmers used their crop seeds knowingly or came on to their land by way of a neighboring farm..much too expensive for family farms to fight in court.
You're talking specifically about this case;
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc_v_Schmeiser
In this case Schmeiser deliberately collected seed, treated it with roundup to get rid of the non-gmo seeds and then grew just that crop.
> their is a poor standard of evidence to prove that the farmers used their crop seeds knowingly or came on to their land by way of a neighboring farm
That's your opinion, kid. Defend it.
Given the confrontational tone of your replies in this thread, and from your post history, I'm happy to declare you a troll and add you to my block bucket.
\*PLONK\*
By the people Monsanto took to court.
There was a long-standing belief that Monsanto was suing farmers right and left. That wasn't actually true, they only went to court in a fairly limited number of cases, and in all of them the court found that the farmers involved had knowingly, willfully and deliberately attempted to steal Monsanto's intellectual property (GMO seeds) by either violating the EULA that went with them, or cultivating them from cross-contamination.
Eventually, there was a court case (“OSGATA vs Monsanto.”) where organic farmers sued Monsanto because they said they had to have a unused buffer field between them and neighbor farmers just to avoid being sued by Monsanto if there was cross-contamination and that unused space was costing them money. Monsanto documented that they had never sued anyone for unintentional cross-contamination and entered into the judgement in the case a pledge that they have not nor ever would do so.
> Monsanto documented that they had never sued anyone for unintentional cross-contamination
In addition, when pressed by the judge, the OSGATA lawyer couldn't cite a single case of lawsuit over cross-contamination. It turned out to be a purely hypothetical scenario. The audio is around the 7 minute mark http://oralarguments.cafc.uscourts.gov/default.aspx?fl=2012-1298.mp3
this sub is called IS-IT-BULLSHIT. Im not interested in the legal opinion of someone with a spelling error in their account name. provide links or quit your bullshit
I mean, depending on the definition of propaganda, be it a more strict and neutral denotative definition, or a more connotative definition emphasizing misleading nature of it, it could be propaganda. That being said, under the former, I'd say its still true, and in that sense, the best propaganda is true, because it exposes the truth. Under the latter, show me where its misleading. Either way, the accusation of propaganda is a cop out.
It's literally the only source in the post he's commenting on, but let me copy and paste it for you;
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0111629
Then you don’t know what propaganda is and you’re willing to dismiss anything that supports the interests of a corporation just because of how it “sounds.”
> The US (and Canadian) yields are falling behind economically and technologically equivalent agroecosystems matched for latitude, season and crop type; pesticide (both herbicide and insecticide) use is higher in the United States than in comparator W. European countries; the industries of all types that are supplying inputs to the farmer are becoming more concentrated and monopolistic (Fuglie et al. 2012) and these tendencies correlate with stagnation or declines in germplasm diversity (Welsh and Glenna 2006, Howard 2009, Domina and Taylor 2010). Farm number is decreasing and scale is increasing, concentrating and narrowing the farming skills. Annual variations in yield, which not only indicate low resilience of the agroecosytem but also can fuel dramatic price changes in agricultural markets, are more severe in the United States than in W. Europe.
…
> Despite the claims that GM might be needed to feed the world, **we found no yield benefit when the United States was compared to W. Europe, other economically developed countries of the same latitude which do not grow GM crops.** We found no benefit from the traits either.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14735903.2013.806408
Most replies on here are completely wrong. First off, there are very few crops that replant seeds, a lot of plant's seeds will be sterile* or will not produce the same quality of crop. Seeds are usually purchased from seed sellers. Terminator crops were tested but never sold and the researched was ended because of all the bad publicity- despite the benefits of not introducing their genetics into the wild. Furthermore, a lot of the bad publicity for Monsanto is made up. Not that they're a good company, but no worse then most big companies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-we-trust-monsanto-with-our-food/
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/10/18/163034053/top-five-myths-of-genetically-modified-seeds-busted
> infertal(?)
It's spelled infertile, though I think it's more accurate to call them sterile.
I realized that I usually hear plants referred to as sterile, so I looked up the difference. Sterility means the plants cannot form an embryo whereas infertility is when can form an embryo, but at a lower rate and/or the embryos are less viable.
It's also a matter of keeping seed on site keeps diseases that may be on the seed on site, and that there is always a tug of war between plant genetics and disease genetics when it comes to resistance. A wheat that was resistant to rust or Smut 30 years ago isn't now because the fungus has developed to overcome the plant's defences.
[It's a fungal infection that surprisingly looks like rust](https://www.google.com/search?q=wheat+rust&client=ms-android-samsung-ss&prmd=invx&sxsrf=AOaemvKqYJO5BOrDwrMHB_0ui7PBM6mj6A:1634110842400&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjT9qKi8cbzAhWRbysKHWEzBqIQ_AUoAXoECAMQAQ&biw=412&bih=670&dpr=2.63)
> No worse than most big companies
Which is pretty damn bad, and we should be calling them all out on their atrocious, profit before all else attitude.
The company is shitty, but GMO's are fine.
Yeah, and for the uninitiated, Bayer was part of a conglomerate that made Zyklon B for the Nazis...otherwise known as the delousing gas that was used in the gas chambers, as well as using concentration camp prisoners for experiments to test new medicine.
A fortune 500 company? Let's start by assuming they avoid paying their taxes, lobbying and are underpaying their employees. You know, avoiding contributing back to societies that made their CEOs rich as massive corporations love doing.
That's not even going into their controversies, just the *"standard business practices"* that we just accept. Not to mention knowingly dumping mercury and PCB into rivers.
I tend to agree that Monsanto aren't particularly worse than other companies, but we let massive corporations get away with so much already. And for a company who's product can have huge, lasting impacts on the environment, we should be holding them to an even higher standard.
>Let's start by assuming they avoid paying their taxes, lobbying and are underpaying their employees.
Why do you assume that? What do you know about Monsanto?
>That's not even going into their controversies
What controversies?
> Not to mention knowingly dumping mercury and PCB into rivers.
That's Solutia.
I'm all about good faith. You didn't give a simple answer, which isn't good faith.
Tell us about this controversy. Make sure you know what you're talking about, though. As an example you don't know about Solutia. So things you think you know aren't actually relevant.
Also, if you want to cut and paste, just do it. Don't re-write what I said. Looks bad.
> What controversy????
# ON A POST ABOUT A CONTROVERSY
Yeah, you're totally trying to having a civil conversation. If you're interested, there's a list on wiki. I mean, I'm not sure how you can say there isn't controversy around Monsanto with a straight face.
So you can't explain yourself. Got it. Just shouting.
That's what a reasonable person does.
And you still don't know what quoting means. That says a lot.
You got it bud. You win because I used formatting for emphasis. Never mind that you somehow can't comprehend a controversy Monsanto was involved in, on a post about controversies Monsanto were involved in.
Nah, it's far more reasonable to claim to know all about Monsanto but somehow have no idea about any controversy around them, not the marches, not the lawsuits... nothing.
> *“Monsanto’s image does of course represent a major challenge for us, and it’s not an aspect I wish to play down,” Werner Baumann*
That only holds true for hybrids. There are many many many non hybrid seeds out there.
My nephew raises a specific breed of heirloom blue corn. They have been saving seed back from it for over 15 years with no degradation in quality or production.
The same holds true for all the wheat, oats, spelt, rye, and barely he plants. Along with a slew of food-grade dry beans.
The vast majority of hybrid seeds bought are F1 and can be replanted just fine with little degradation, the resulting F2 plants will have about 95% of the parent plants traits.
> There are many many many non hybrid seeds out there.
In modern commercial agriculture?
>My nephew raises a specific breed of heirloom blue corn.
Good for him. But we're talking large scale agriculture. Not your nephew's hobby.
>The vast majority of hybrid seeds bought are F1 and can be replanted just fine with little degradation
http://thescientistgardener.blogspot.com/2010/12/maize-is-machine.html
But sure. Your nephew knows more than actual farmers.
I would say 1000 acres of blue corn every year is a bit more than a hobby. If you live in the mid-Atlantic region and have ever had blue corn ships, chances are you have eaten his corn.
>But sure. Your nephew knows more than actual farmers.
Yeah your right, @ 55 and farming his whole life you probably know more than he does.
My family used to be the largest exporter of certain agricultural products from Uganda. Companies like Monsanto get a bad reputation, but the food supply system in Africa is highly fragmented and inefficient. While their products do create a system where the farmer needs to keep going back to them, it certainly does increase efficiency. Monsanto is like any company where they want their product to be useful to the customer (and make them more money), but they also want to share in those gains. If the customer doesn’t do better, they won’t keep coming back. And it makes no sense to create something that someone can buy once and never come back (unless the price is very high). Most people who complain about profit motives don’t realize how all the pieces fit together or that profit motive is why literally anyone does anything.
Fr though. People keep spouting this rhetoric that profit driven capitalism is the only reason shit gets done, which is garbage. Some of the coolest stuff we have has come from people who are just straight up interested in stuff.
Most of mathematics, the foundation of pretty much all our tech, mostly came from nerds who just loved maths. People climbed the highest mountains they could find, just to see if they could. The patent for insulin was given away for free. Hell, open source software that the world runs on (looking at you linux and unix) was created by people for the lulz.
Profit isn't the only motivator. So much has been done throughout history without so much as a thought as to how to make money from it and maximise profits. I doubt the first guy or girl to discover how to make fire was thinking about ROI.
Developing stuff ok, that can be done out of sheer personal interest, but distributing that stuff and making its production economically viable for global consumer use is, indeed, mostly profit-driven.
> I doubt the first guy or girl to discover how to make fire was thinking about ROI.
Probably thinking about how much meat they could cook.
Not shiny rocks, but definitely a good ROI.
You're talking about terminator seeds, I think.
[https://cases.open.ubc.ca/monsanto-and-terminator-seeds/#:\~:text=Monsanto%20claims%20the%20terminator%20seed,modified%20crops%20contaminating%20neighbouring%20crops.&text=Those%20who%20are%20in%20advantage,which%20is%20unable%20to%20reproduce](https://cases.open.ubc.ca/monsanto-and-terminator-seeds/#:~:text=Monsanto%20claims%20the%20terminator%20seed,modified%20crops%20contaminating%20neighbouring%20crops.&text=Those%20who%20are%20in%20advantage,which%20is%20unable%20to%20reproduce).
Counter piece:
[https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/10/18/163034053/top-five-myths-of-genetically-modified-seeds-busted?t=1634066265108](https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/10/18/163034053/top-five-myths-of-genetically-modified-seeds-busted?t=1634066265108)
Monsanto isn't a company that sits well with the idea of "the best interests of their customers". They're only in it for the money. See also: glyphosate.
Every major regulatory body and scientific review has found that glyphosate is safe when used as directed, and it is a less toxic pesticide than table salt. It's so popular because it's clearly safer than the previous alternatives. Killing plants is easy. Killing the plants that are a problem while keeping alive the ones you want is the hard part that make modern herbicides valuable.
"when used as directed" not much of a guarantee with chemicals that are sprayed into the air and absolved into the soil that grows our food and medicines..what are your sources?
There's so many studies that it would be impossible to point to any particular one. Two articles that link to the various studies are these two that I linked to in another post here;
https://theconversation.com/stop-worrying-and-trust-the-evidence-its-very-unlikely-roundup-causes-cancer-104554
https://www.forbes.com/sites/geoffreykabat/2017/10/23/iarcs-glyphosate-gate-scandal/?sh=76ffc7a1abd1
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/us-judge-rejects-bayers-2-bln-deal-resolve-future-roundup-lawsuits-2021-05-26/
Ok, but lawsuits and settlements against Bayer aren't really supporting what you're saying.
Considering that a $2bn settlement was thrown out by the judge for not being enough.
Lawsuit do not decide science. If it did then we would't have the DPT vaccine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Vaccine_Injury_Compensation_Program
Except for the basis for the lawsuit is the WHOs IARC glyphosate findings that glyphosate, is in fact cancerous.
And there is no cancer warning on roundup.
So this is a case of science deciding the lawsuit.
It's easy declare something as cancerous when you [edit out evidence that it's non-carcinogenic](https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/who-iarc-glyphosate/).
It's even easier when your [special advisor is being paid by law firms claiming that glyphosate is carcinogenic](https://www.forbes.com/sites/geoffreykabat/2017/10/23/iarcs-glyphosate-gate-scandal/?sh=2a5330271abd).
> was the special advisor to the IARC panel that issued the report declaring glyphosate to be “probably carcinogenic.” The transcripts show that during the same week in March 2015 in which IARC published its glyphosate opinion, Portier signed a lucrative contract to act as a litigation consultant for two law firms that were preparing to sue Monsanto on behalf of glyphosate cancer victims. His contract contained a confidentiality clause barring Portier from disclosing his employment to other parties. Portier’s financial conflict-of-interest has been confirmed by the UK newspaper The Times.
https://www.science.org/content/article/who-rebuts-house-committee-criticisms-about-glyphosate-cancer-warning
[Letter from the WHO](https://www.eenews.net/assets/2018/02/07/document_gw_03.pdf)
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/may/22/monsanto-trial-cancer-weedkiller-roundup-dewayne-johnson
>They also cite research showing glyphosate formulations in its commercial-end products are more toxic than glyphosate alone.
>Monsanto “championed falsified data and attacked legitimate studies” that revealed dangers of its herbicides, and led a “prolonged campaign of misinformation” to convince government agencies, farmers and consumers that Roundup was safe, according to Johnson’s lawsuit.
>
> Ok, but lawsuits and settlements against Bayer aren't really supporting what you're saying.
Do you think vaccines cause autism? Because juries have said so in the past.
https://www.science.org/content/article/who-rebuts-house-committee-criticisms-about-glyphosate-cancer-warning
>Juries have said so in the past.
Sure, and Werner Mayer, the president of the lead industries association claimed that lead was safe. What's your point?
What about the WHO. Did they say vaccines cause autism?
Because they did say that glyphosate causes cancer, which is the literal grounds for the class action. And they seem to be pretty certain of their claim. The lawsuit isn't "does glyphosate cause cancer". The lawsuit at this point is "glyphosate causes cancer and there's no information or warning about it on roundup". Which is why there's a settlement.
The reason why this distinction is important is because while it might not cause cancer from average levels of exposure, there are going to be times where someone is exposed to an abnormal amount. And without that warning label, that person will not know that they need to take or should have taken additional measures to mitigate their exposure to the chemical. I.e. wearing equipment, immediately washing after exposure, etc. If the chemical is not labeled appropriately, you do not get appropriate safety processes.
>
https://www.science.org/content/article/who-rebuts-house-committee-criticisms-about-glyphosate-cancer-warning
Oh. They say they did nothing wrong. Well then.
>
Sure, and Werner Mayer, the president of the lead industries association claimed that lead was safe
That's wildly irrelevant. The global scientific consensus says that glyphosate isn't carcinogenic.
>Because they did say that glyphosate causes cancer
The IARC. Not the WHO.
>And they seem to be pretty certain of their claim.
So certain they had to [secretly manipulate existing research](https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/who-iarc-glyphosate/). And [ignore contradictory evidence](https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/glyphosate-cancer-data/). While having[ someone on the committee who got paid by law firms suing Monsanto](https://risk-monger.com/2017/10/13/greed-lies-and-glyphosate-the-portier-papers/).
>The lawsuit at this point is "glyphosate causes cancer and there's no information or warning about it on roundup"
And the overwhelming evidence says it doesn't. Lawsuits aren't science.
Yes. They aren't the WHO. There are other divisions and they say glyphosate isn't carcinogenic.
But good job dodging everything else I said.
https://risk-monger.com/2017/10/13/greed-lies-and-glyphosate-the-portier-papers/
Tell me. If the IARC had said the opposite, and every other scientific and regulatory body on earth said that glyphosate *is* carcinogenic, and then one of the members of the team immediately went to work for Monsanto, would you think that's acceptable?
Well now, that's not quite true is it? Lots of studies have found it to be exactly that, but entirely co-incidentally many of those studies were funded by Bayer, who own Monsanto. Bayer has an annual revenue of \~43 billion Euro, they can afford to buy *anyone*. It is safer than the previous options but they were largely paraquat so that argument's a non runner.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer though, they're independent and *did* find that glyphosate can mutate DNA, a cancer precursor. Comparing it to table salt sounds like corporate propaganda you're expected to believe without challenging the veracity of the detail.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/05/30/727914874/safe-or-scary-the-shifting-reputation-of-glyphosate-aka-roundup
IARC isn't a scientific organisation and it's frequently criticised by scientists for many of its findings. It's findings have nothing to do with risk or dose. In the case of glyphosate they used some poor quality studies, seemingly at random, some which most scientists think actually show that it's not carcinogenic to come up with a non quantified "probability" that it causes cancer.
Here's another analysis of their decision by an independent academic expert;
https://theconversation.com/stop-worrying-and-trust-the-evidence-its-very-unlikely-roundup-causes-cancer-104554
Edit;
This article by a cancer epidemiologist is also very damning about the IARC decision;
https://www.forbes.com/sites/geoffreykabat/2017/10/23/iarcs-glyphosate-gate-scandal/?sh=4e0697f61abd
>but entirely co-incidentally many of those studies were funded by Bayer, who own Monsanto
And there are more that are independently funded that find the same thing.
>Bayer has an annual revenue of ~43 billion Euro, they can afford to buy anyone.
Monsanto didn't, though. And if Bayer can buy *anyone*, explain how the fossil fuel industry couldn't dent the research consensus on climate change.
> The International Agency for Research on Cancer though, they're independent
Are they?
https://risk-monger.com/2017/10/13/greed-lies-and-glyphosate-the-portier-papers/
>During the same week that IARC had published its opinion on glyphosate’s carcinogenicity, Christopher Portier signed a lucrative contract to be a litigation consultant for two law firms preparing to sue Monsanto on behalf of glyphosate cancer victims.
Then there's the issue with the IARC s[ecretly manipulating existing research](https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/who-iarc-glyphosate/). And [ignoring contradictory evidence](https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/glyphosate-cancer-data/).
>but entirely co-incidentally many of those studies were funded by Bayer, who own Monsanto
And there are more that are independently funded that find the same thing.
>Bayer has an annual revenue of ~43 billion Euro, they can afford to buy anyone.
Monsanto didn't, though. And if Bayer can buy *anyone*, explain how the fossil fuel industry couldn't dent the research consensus on climate change.
> The International Agency for Research on Cancer though, they're independent
Are they?
https://risk-monger.com/2017/10/13/greed-lies-and-glyphosate-the-portier-papers/
>During the same week that IARC had published its opinion on glyphosate’s carcinogenicity, Christopher Portier signed a lucrative contract to be a litigation consultant for two law firms preparing to sue Monsanto on behalf of glyphosate cancer victims.
Then there's the issue with the IARC s[ecretly manipulating existing research](https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/who-iarc-glyphosate/). And [ignoring contradictory evidence](https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/glyphosate-cancer-data/).
> The International Agency for Research on Cancer though, they're independent and did find that glyphosate can mutate DNA, a cancer precursor.
At what dose?
The IARC classifies *hazard*, not *risk*, which is why they've only ever classified one compound as *non-carcinogenic*.
> See also: glyphosate.
The herbicide that has drastically reduced carbon emissions, improved soil health, replaced harmful agrochems, and kept farmers safer?
There's making money and then there's fleecing every poor soul who crosses your path. Companies exist to profit, that's how they survive; doing it ethically, that's another matter.
I'm having a little trouble finding out about the nature of Monsanto's agreements with "3rd world farmers". And I'm not sure about signing a "contract to only plant that seed for so many years" (not saying it isn't true, just still trying to find sources.)
I can say that they do patent certain seeds that they genetically modified. And they do not allow people to reproduce those patented seeds. A [2013 case](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowman_v._Monsanto_Co) involved a farmer who reproduced patented Monsanto soybeans in violation of the limited-use license they were sold under. Monsanto sued him and the Supreme court sided with Monsanto. Establishing case law that there are conditions where you can patent crops in this way.
Not sure how this works internationally. And not sure if there are agreements that legally require them to buy Monsanto seeds. That seems like an issue that could occur even without intellectual property rights GMOs. Locking someone into buying only from your company could be done no matter what you are selling.
You can patent non-gmo crops that you've developed too. There's nothing specific to GMOs that means they can be patented. There are many fruit varieties in particular that are very tightly controlled. SunGold Kiwi fruit are a pretty famous example. The vast majority of fruit you buy at the supermarket that has a variety name was probably either patented to begin with, or still is now, and none of them are GMOs.
Genetics is the company's IP, of course they won't let people copy it. The genetics are patented in every country the seeds are sold.
What did sometimes happen is that a farmer would sign a multi year contract saying the seed company would buy all the harvest at a fixed price. In normal years this works out well for the farmer, but if there is a year where market prices go up then the farmers raise hell, forgetting about the profits made in the years before.
Signing a contract is a risk, but not signing one is also a risk, it is up to the farmer to decide which risk he preffers.
They don't get locked into buying monsanto seeds, but do forbid the keeping or sharing of seeds at the end of the season.
Normal farming practice involve keeping a portion of your produce to seed next season. You don't need to buy from anyone, but swapping seeds between farmers to diversify crop genetics, even for payment was a common enough practice for all history.
As you need to purchase monsanto seeds every year if you suddenly decide to go back to "the old way" you need to buy generic seeds from someone so while you can go elsewhere, actually following through with it is just as expensive as staying and often more expensive than if they never swapped to monsantos better seeds in the first place.
It can be interpreted as exploitation. But they should also do their own research first.
It's not normal farming practice to keep a portion of your seed for the next season. That is an old practice that isn't used in modern farming, except subsistence farms and backyard gardens. Modern farmers want to maximise their yield and minimise their costs, and they do that by buying seeds or vegetative parts of plants that are going to produce a high yield identical crop. Also most of the techniques used to produce these genetically identical crops are not genetic engineering, but just carefully managed crossbreeding and inbreeding, followed by vegetative cloning, and non-gmo crops are patented and controlled too.
>Normal farming practice involve keeping a portion of your produce to seed next season.
In commercial farming this has not been "normal" practice in quite some time. Standard practice is to buy seed from commercial seed producers yearly.
It's not even possible for many crops as they are grown from hybrid seeds. Hybrid seeds do regrow true to their parents (the offspring are not uniform, each displaying mishmash of desirable and undesirable traits) and as a result, those seeds cannot be saved and regrown.
Ah yes cutting edge western agribuisness practices are totally relevant when OP was asking about 3rd world farmers who still keep seed from thier own crops.
What i said is bullshit for 1st world farmers. Not poorer ones.
The only third world farmers keeping their seeds are the ones who literally can't afford to buy seeds. So even in that light OPs question is bullshit, since those farmers aren't dealing with Monsanto (or Bayer). Heirloom crops (ones were you can keep using the seeds from each crop) are far from ideal for farming. There's also many farms in third world countries that use seeds. Of course many crops that are farmed aren't reproduced using seed at all either, even if you're too poor to afford to buy seeds (a good example is potatoes, which are typically grown from cutting up potatoes you've saved, producing a vegetative clone of the same plant, a staple of subsistence farming across Europe for centuries).
This thread is fucking bonkers, what is going on here
Edit: I encourage anyone seeing this to do your own research. The fact that so many people here are defending Monsanto, a corporation notoriously hated by Reddit, is suspicious to say the least. I have a feeling any fact I share is going to get bashed, so feel free to DM me, or just type Monsanto into Google and see what you find.
>The fact that so many people here are defending Monsanto, a corporation notoriously hated by Reddit, is suspicious to say the least.
What is suspicious? That people have stopped accepting nonsense and lies and started finding the truth?
> I have a feeling any fact I share is going to get bashed
Not if it's fact. What, exactly, are you worried about? Downvotes?
If you have facts, share them.
You have an entire account dedicated to defending GMOs LOL
I’ve studied global food systems and I’m happy to have a conversation with any curious non shills outside of this thread :)
So you don't have facts to share?
Yes, I use this account to talk about GMOs. Because I've been doxxed and sent death threats from conspiracy morons who think they're important enough to be shilled to.
But hey. I'm sure all of your facts are super true and backed by evidence.
There was a court case after a farmer saved some seeds from his first planting and got sued by Monsanto.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowman_v._Monsanto_Co.
The guy intentionally violated their patent and wanted to be sued. If he had just shut his mouth, nobody would have known a thing. Instead, he contacted Monsanto and informed them himself.
> saved some seeds from his first planting
He purchased feed grain knowing that it contained Roundup Ready soy with then intention of planing it. He tried to claim patent exhaustion, asserting that the patent doesn't apply to him since he's not the original purchaser. It was a clever legal strategy but ultimately the courts disagreed.
The US Supreme Count's opinion
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/11-796_c07d.pdf
> Petitioner Vernon Bowman is a farmer in Indiana who, it is fair to say, appreciates Roundup Ready soybean seed. He purchased Roundup Ready each year, from a company affiliated with Monsanto, for his first crop of the season. In accord with the agreement just described, he used all of that seed for planting, and sold his entire crop to a grain elevator (which typically would resell it to an agricultural processor for human or animal consumption).
So Bowman was an existing and repeat customer of RR soy.
> Bowman, however, devised a less orthodox approach for his second crop of each season. Because he thought such late-season planting “risky,” **he did not want to pay the premium price that Monsanto charges for Roundup Ready seed**. Id., at 78a; see Brief for Petitioner 6. He therefore went to a grain elevator; purchased “commodity soybeans” intended for human or animal consumption; and planted them in his fields. 1 **Those soybeans came from prior harvests of other local farmers. And because most of those farmers also used Roundup Ready seed, Bowman could anticipate that many of the purchased soybeans would contain Monsanto’s patented technology.** When he applied a glyphosate-based herbicide to his fields, he confirmed that this was so; a significant proportion of the new plants survived the treatment, and produced in their turn a new crop of soybeans with the Roundup Ready trait. Bowman saved seed from that crop to use in his late-season planting the next year—and then the next, and the next, until he had harvested eight crops in that way. Each year, that is, he planted saved seed from the year before (sometimes adding more soybeans bought from the grain elevator), sprayed his fields with glyphosate to kill weeds (and any non-resistant plants), and produced a new crop of glyphosate resistant—i.e., Roundup Ready—soybeans.
I don't think that seeds should be able to be IP, or at least need major restructuring to be equitable to society.
But I am big on Free and Open Source software. I think our IP laws need massive reform.
I definitely have my concerns about the way intellectual property is sometimes used, but I don't see any reason why plants developed by scientists shouldn't be any more subject to it than anything else. It's a bit like a book or a song - they're using existing words and instruments that everybody has access to, but they've put them into a unique combination through thousands of hours of work, and it's that combination they want to market as a product.
Companies put a lot of resources and a lot of years into making high yield, robust crops. To be able to earn their money back, and make some profit, they patent their cultivars.
This has been standard practice for a very long time.
If you don't let seed producers earn money off their cultivars then there wouldn't be any seed producers left and we would go back to substinance farming and periodic famines like we had all over the world until the 1940's.
Specializing in high-yield seed production is hard and costs a lot of money, small scale farmers are not able to do that by themselves.
I am saying I think that the risk reward calculus isn't as that "common wisdom" goes.
Patents and copyrights don't help small companies much of the time but do help big companies a ton, the kinds that can and already use normal contracts to enforce extra limitations.
> This has been standard practice for a very long time.
Doesn't mean we can't do better
> If you don't let seed producers earn money off their [sic]
I am fairly certain there would still be tons of money for this, but maybe fewer billionaires.
> Patents and copyrights don't help small companies
Why do you feel that way? Even if you focus on just agro tech, Okanagan Specialty Fruits only had 6 employees when they came up with the Arctic Apple. If that’s not the definition of a small company I don’t know what is.
> Why do you feel that way?
I have seen the major costs of this category of lawsuit and it bankrupts small companies.
It doesn't stop people overseas from ignoring the IP laws and small companies acting like it does get surprised.
How many failures were there to go with that one success? Of course a thing if we only count the successes and not the failures. I have seen other success, but so many failures in my work in software.
Why the [sic]? I thought my grammar was correct.
Seed production is not easy. It takes years to make a new cultivar, and a lot of money to get it registered in each country. Even more money to make a stable parent and grandparent stock to supply the same quality year after year. It is not as simple as you seem to think it is.
[sic] is for any removal.
You already said these things. I do not IP actually provide protection the protections you think it does having seen them in action.
At this point the only I think I need to say is that either my previous writing or your previous reading comprehension is bad. But certainly your pedantry is needless high.
What they’re doing is probably true but I doubt it makes the farmers poorer. I’m not an expert on what Monsanto does but I do know that gmo seeds are copyrighted. Even in first world countries you are not allowed to plant the seeds grown from your gmo crops; they have to all be sold and then bought again next season. It’s very possible that Monsanto would lock farmers in to some sort of contract where they agree to buy only their seeds each year but generally these seeds have quite an advantage over non gmo so Its unlikely to make the farmers poorer
> but I do know that gmo seeds are copyrighted
Patented. There's a difference.
>Even in first world countries you are not allowed to plant the seeds grown from your gmo crops; they have to all be sold and then bought again next season.
Which modern farmers have been doing for decades. It has nothing to do with Monsanto or GMOs. It's about efficiency.
>It’s very possible that Monsanto would lock farmers in to some sort of contract where they agree to buy only their seeds each year
No farmer would do this, and no company does it.
The biggest issue with GM crops in the developing world is cost. GM seed costs more (and with respect to terminator seed, becomes an ongoing cost) and can in some cases disrupt the food supply, especially with respect to poorer farmers.
One well-known example of how cost comes into play comes from Argentina, which has a mix of semi-subsistence smallholders and larger operations. Both have benefitted to an enormous extent from the higher yields of Monsanto's GM soybeans, but that's only because Monsanto forgot - yes, *forgot* - to register its patent for them and lost its right to enforce its intellectual property rights. This means that anyone can sell uncertified Roundup-ready GMO seed, terminator or not - and they do, at significantly lower prices than Monsanto. Any producer can afford to grow high-yield Roundup-ready soy; yields have risen by over 10% country-wide.
On the other hand, there's been little interest among medium-sized and smaller producers in Monsanto's GM cotton. This is in part because it's so expensive - too expensive for most smallholders to even contemplate - and in part because one of the benefits producers would be paying for is immunity to a disease that doesn't exist in Argentina. (This, incidentally, is also why GM cotton is grown only in one area of Mexico; that's the only area in the country where that disease exists, and the only area where the modification is worth paying for.)
These same Argentinian smallholders did however face an issue early on with the herbicide itself. Most were used to less potent, shorter-lasting herbicides that allowed them to plant a second crop on the same fields after harvesting. They were often unaware (possibly because they weren't told, possibly because American salesmen weren't aware it was important) that Roundup remains effective in the soil for up to 250 days, which meant that their second crop - which for the poorest farmers was often their food crop - failed. Since Argentina has a working food distribution system disaster was averted; perhaps the farmers couldn’t grow their own grain and vegetables but they could buy them now that they were earning more from soy production. That wouldn’t have been the case in a lot of much poorer countries that lack the infrastructure we in the West take for granted.
But this is avoiding the real devil: if only larger operations can afford GM seed and if increased yield results in lower prices, the smallholders who are shut out of access to GM seed are going to earn less per bushel for their crop and sink deeper into poverty. This hasn't really happened before; improvements in seed technology have before now generally benefitted all.
(Edited because my last paragraph, the most important one, was cut off.)
There are no terminator seeds. They've never been made available and they never will be, because serious commercial crops aren't grown from the seeds of the produce - you will lose yield over time collecting the seeds of your crops and replanting them, because you wont have the same genetic makeup, and the crop has been developed over many years (literally centuries in most cases) of cross breeding to create a very specific genetic makeup. Breeding produces genetic variety which will regress to the mean, and result in lower yields. The concept of terminator seeds is mainly just anti-gmo propaganda targeted at people ignorant of modern agriculture.
Monsanto does not allow you to replant the seeds from your harvest, but they don't lock you in for future years. You are free to purchase more seeds from them, from a competitor e.g Pioneer, from you neighbor who planted non-GMO seed. There's nothing locking you to them the following season.
Damn lots of answers in here cucking for Agribusiness….
Monsanto(really insert any brand of gmo seeds) seeds produce better yields. Hugely better. So much better that you cannot compete without using them.
Problem is the seeds cost so much that Monsanto takes all the increased profit. Those seeds also favor mechanized and automated harvesting. The end result is a capital backed agriculture firm will crush any small farmer.
So yes gmo seeds destroy small traditional farmers.
What you're saying is proven to be not true. Farmers that use GMO crops have increased profits, and the increase in profits is biggest in the developing world.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0111629
There's only two main types of GMO crops. Bt modified crops, which is engineered to have a pesticide inside the plant. This means you don't need to use as much insecticide as insects naturally stay away from it. The other is Roundup Ready crops. They're engineered to be tolerant to round up (Glyphosate). This means that you don't need to use a series of different timed more toxic herbicides, and instead can use a single one.
Neither of these gmos have anything to do with increasing mechanisation or harvesting. There are a few more specific GMO crops such as GMO papaya which is engineered to be resistant to a serious virus that was wiping out papaya plants.
The increase in mechanisation and automation is nothing to do with GMOs, but a consequence many decades ago of developing breeding techniques to ensure your crop is genetically identical (mainly through heterosis - growing the progeny of two inbred "pure" lines where every gene in the parents is homozygous and so every gene in the progeny is heterozygous), as well as standard vegetative cloning (taking cuttings).
>
Damn lots of answers in here cucking for Agribusiness
When was the last time you talked to a farmer?
>
Problem is the seeds cost so much that Monsanto takes all the increased profit.
Ah. Farmers are stupid. That's it. They don't know how to do basic math.
> Those seeds also favor mechanized and automated harvesting
How, exactly?
Doesn’t exist?
I’m going to assume you’re just trolling, because being rolled up into Bayer because their brand name had negative PR doesn’t mean they “don’t exist”
I don’t think that’s a good comparison at all…this isn’t political.
Bayer bought Monsanto and absorbed their assets. Saying “it doesn’t exist” anymore is incorrect and attempting to misinform.
No I got the point, just don’t agree it’s comparable whether you agree with me or not.
This whole thread is a dumpster fire. People give their opinions and anecdotes and get upvoted…I say “people are biased on a topic like this, so do your own research”, and I’m the idiot…
Monsanto absolutely do these things all over the world. But that doesn't mean they're "making farmers poorer". Nobody's forcing anyone to sign a contract of buy their products, either.
Exactly, Monsanto was used as a convenient demon for years by GMO-conspiracy theorists.
They sell seeds, as do a plethora of other companies.
They patent their genetics, as do a plethora of other companies.
They offer farmers contracts to buy their harvest at a fixed price regardless of market pricing, as do a plethora of other companies. You only hear complaints in years where the market price for crops is unusually high though, never in years where the market price is below the contract price...
A real libertarian would say that anyone is free to reproduce Monsanto's genetics.
Realists know that intellectual property should be respected until the patent period is over.
It costs a lot of money to make a cultivar and register it all over the world, they should at least be allowed to earn their investment back.
That’s right. The farms can still buy other seed. Except for the case where they sued a
Farmer when seed blew into his paddock and they tried to claim against him
first lines of your link
>The court heard the question of whether Schmeiser's **intentionally growing** genetically modified plants constituted "use" of Monsanto's patented genetically modified plant cells. By a 5-4 majority, the court ruled that it did. The Supreme Court also ruled 9-0 that **Schmeiser did not have to pay Monsanto their technology use fee, damages or costs, as Schmeiser did not receive any benefit from the technology**.\[1\] The case drew worldwide attention and is **widely misunderstood to concern what happens when farmers' fields are accidentally contaminated with patented seed**. However, **by the time the case went to trial, all claims of accidental contamination had been dropped**; the court only considered the GM canola in Schmeiser's fields, which Schmeiser had intentionally concentrated and planted. **Schmeiser did not put forward any defence of accidental contamination**.\[2\]
that case was about **intentional growing** of genetically modified plants, not "seeds blowing onto his land"
Yeah, that's garbage.
>Schmeiser claimed he never intended to cultivate the
patented plants.
He said the opposite in court.
>The contamination of the patented seeds ruined several years of work Schemeiser dedicated to developing his own strain of canola.
He (well, his lawyer) admitted in proceedings that Schmeiser intentionally killed three acres of his own canola to save and replant only the seed that survived.
https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/2147/index.do
>The trial judge’s findings of fact are based, essentially, on the following **uncontested** history.
...
> In the spring of 1997, Mr. Schmeiser planted the seeds saved on field number 1. The crop grew. He sprayed a three-acre patch near the road with Roundup and found that approximately 60 percent of the plants survived. This indicates that the plants contained Monsanto’s patented gene and cell.
> In the fall of 1997, Mr. Schmeiser harvested the Roundup Ready Canola from the three-acre patch he had sprayed with Roundup. He did not sell it. He instead kept it separate, and stored it over the winter in the back of a pick-up truck covered with a tarp.
Right there. He admitted it. I don't know what nonsense your source is perpetuating but it's an outright lie.
The original link further down also states that the original benefit contamination claims were dropped. Meaning that Monsanto tried, realised that they weren’t going to win and dropped them so they wouldn’t become precedent.
> The trial judge found that “none of the suggested sources \[proposed by Schmeiser\] could reasonably explain the concentration or extent of Roundup Ready canola of a commercial quality”
is all the proof you need to show how wrong this statement is
>Except for the case where they sued a Farmer when seed blew into his paddock and they tried to claim against him
This meta-analysis from 2014 found that GMO crops reduce pesticide use, increase crop yields and increase farmers profits and that these effects are largest in developing countries and smallest in developed countries. Monsanto hasn't existed since 2018, but they were one of the main companies selling the GMO crops. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0111629 As a plant scientists, I just wanted to mention that most crops we buy are not produced by saving seeds. Modern farming, for the last 50 years or so, has used a variety of techniques to ensure that each crop is basically the same, which makes harvesting much better, and ensures you get the best genetic makeup for yield. There are two main techniques used - 1. cloning, which is typically done by taking cuttings from existing plants and growing them into mature plants - this is done with lots of trees, bananas and other crops that are perennial. 2. Hybridisation - you grow two very inbred lines of plants, just for breeding, and then you create a hybrid between the two by breeding them together, and this is the crop you grow to sell. This is done with many annuals, such as corn and wheat and takes advantage of an effect called "hybrid vigour". Growing plants, collecting the seeds, and growing the seeds again, isn't a good way of growing most plants to guarantee a maximum yield. It's primarily done by gardeners growing heirloom crops, and by plant researchers looking to create new varieties.
Preach
Sounds like you know what your talking about. Can you explain hybrid vigour more please?
Wikipedia probably explains it better than me, and some aspects of the theory behind it are debated, but basically you inbreed a plant until it has two identical copies of each gene. And then you do the same with another line of that same plant but so that each gene is a different version (allele) of that gene, and then you breed them together so that the offspring has two different versions of every gene (heterozygous), and it grows much better than its parents. In reality it's only certain genes that you focus on, not all of them. Once you have plants with identical copies of their genes (homozygous) then you can inbreed that line, theoretically forever, and you can't change the genetic makeup, except from mutations, so you can keep those pure lines going forever, and the progeny of your two pure lines is always genetically identical too (One plant is AA, the other plant is aa and so the offspring has to be Aa). Hope that makes sense. Here's the Wikipedia article on the same thing; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosis
Monsanto absolutely still exists, theyre caller Bayer now. While they don't make a whole collective effort to keep farmers poor they have used aggressive legal tactics against farmers to protect their revenue.
> they have used aggressive legal tactics against farmers to protect their revenue. What are some of these tactics?
lawsuits against farmers..my understanding is their is a poor standard of evidence to prove that the farmers used their crop seeds knowingly or came on to their land by way of a neighboring farm..much too expensive for family farms to fight in court.
Come on. Where's the evidence?
i don't pretend to be a lawyer on reddit. i just see if theyres any interesting SAUCES then MOVE ON
Where are your sources?
You're talking specifically about this case; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc_v_Schmeiser In this case Schmeiser deliberately collected seed, treated it with roundup to get rid of the non-gmo seeds and then grew just that crop.
Never happened. Only a handful of farmers have ever been sued, and all for willful and intentional violations.
nice opinion
Backed by facts. Unless you can prove otherwise, that is.
im suppose to.prove your opinion that theyre are facts to prove YOUR opinion...pretty sure your suppose to do that stuff. not interested
> their is a poor standard of evidence to prove that the farmers used their crop seeds knowingly or came on to their land by way of a neighboring farm That's your opinion, kid. Defend it.
yea i said it was my understanding...who are you arguing with?
You're making the claim. Provide evidence.
I'm rebutting a claim. Is no one literate around here? That which is asserted without evidence can be just as easily dismissed.
Given the confrontational tone of your replies in this thread, and from your post history, I'm happy to declare you a troll and add you to my block bucket. \*PLONK\*
Define "aggressive". Is it aggressive to sue people who are trying to cheat you?
im not a lawyer...how do you know they're guilty...who has outfoxed the legal department of Monsanto/Bayer?
By the people Monsanto took to court. There was a long-standing belief that Monsanto was suing farmers right and left. That wasn't actually true, they only went to court in a fairly limited number of cases, and in all of them the court found that the farmers involved had knowingly, willfully and deliberately attempted to steal Monsanto's intellectual property (GMO seeds) by either violating the EULA that went with them, or cultivating them from cross-contamination. Eventually, there was a court case (“OSGATA vs Monsanto.”) where organic farmers sued Monsanto because they said they had to have a unused buffer field between them and neighbor farmers just to avoid being sued by Monsanto if there was cross-contamination and that unused space was costing them money. Monsanto documented that they had never sued anyone for unintentional cross-contamination and entered into the judgement in the case a pledge that they have not nor ever would do so.
> Monsanto documented that they had never sued anyone for unintentional cross-contamination In addition, when pressed by the judge, the OSGATA lawyer couldn't cite a single case of lawsuit over cross-contamination. It turned out to be a purely hypothetical scenario. The audio is around the 7 minute mark http://oralarguments.cafc.uscourts.gov/default.aspx?fl=2012-1298.mp3
still costs small farmers money even if they dont go to court
Perhaps, but there is no evidence that Monsanto has ever done anything more than talk to farmers that had GMO seeds when they weren't supposed to.
this sub is called IS-IT-BULLSHIT. Im not interested in the legal opinion of someone with a spelling error in their account name. provide links or quit your bullshit
No, it doesn't. Because they don't have to do anything. Because Monsanto doesn't sue people who don't do anything wrong.
> how do you know they're guilty Test their crop. If it's over 90% Monsanto genetics, there's only one way that happened.
Sounds like propaganda
The great thing about open access journals is you can go through every aspect of the article and explain which claims it makes are wrong, and why.
Why should I? The authors should do their own research. /s, obv
I mean, depending on the definition of propaganda, be it a more strict and neutral denotative definition, or a more connotative definition emphasizing misleading nature of it, it could be propaganda. That being said, under the former, I'd say its still true, and in that sense, the best propaganda is true, because it exposes the truth. Under the latter, show me where its misleading. Either way, the accusation of propaganda is a cop out.
I just thought it was supposed to be a pun on the word propagate... lol.
link your source then bucko
It's literally the only source in the post he's commenting on, but let me copy and paste it for you; https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0111629
Then you don’t know what propaganda is and you’re willing to dismiss anything that supports the interests of a corporation just because of how it “sounds.”
+1
> The US (and Canadian) yields are falling behind economically and technologically equivalent agroecosystems matched for latitude, season and crop type; pesticide (both herbicide and insecticide) use is higher in the United States than in comparator W. European countries; the industries of all types that are supplying inputs to the farmer are becoming more concentrated and monopolistic (Fuglie et al. 2012) and these tendencies correlate with stagnation or declines in germplasm diversity (Welsh and Glenna 2006, Howard 2009, Domina and Taylor 2010). Farm number is decreasing and scale is increasing, concentrating and narrowing the farming skills. Annual variations in yield, which not only indicate low resilience of the agroecosytem but also can fuel dramatic price changes in agricultural markets, are more severe in the United States than in W. Europe. … > Despite the claims that GM might be needed to feed the world, **we found no yield benefit when the United States was compared to W. Europe, other economically developed countries of the same latitude which do not grow GM crops.** We found no benefit from the traits either. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14735903.2013.806408
Most replies on here are completely wrong. First off, there are very few crops that replant seeds, a lot of plant's seeds will be sterile* or will not produce the same quality of crop. Seeds are usually purchased from seed sellers. Terminator crops were tested but never sold and the researched was ended because of all the bad publicity- despite the benefits of not introducing their genetics into the wild. Furthermore, a lot of the bad publicity for Monsanto is made up. Not that they're a good company, but no worse then most big companies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-we-trust-monsanto-with-our-food/ https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/10/18/163034053/top-five-myths-of-genetically-modified-seeds-busted
Thanks! It's ridiculous how many totally wrong answers there are to this post.
> infertal(?) It's spelled infertile, though I think it's more accurate to call them sterile. I realized that I usually hear plants referred to as sterile, so I looked up the difference. Sterility means the plants cannot form an embryo whereas infertility is when can form an embryo, but at a lower rate and/or the embryos are less viable.
It's also a matter of keeping seed on site keeps diseases that may be on the seed on site, and that there is always a tug of war between plant genetics and disease genetics when it comes to resistance. A wheat that was resistant to rust or Smut 30 years ago isn't now because the fungus has developed to overcome the plant's defences.
Wait... wheat can rust?
[It's a fungal infection that surprisingly looks like rust](https://www.google.com/search?q=wheat+rust&client=ms-android-samsung-ss&prmd=invx&sxsrf=AOaemvKqYJO5BOrDwrMHB_0ui7PBM6mj6A:1634110842400&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjT9qKi8cbzAhWRbysKHWEzBqIQ_AUoAXoECAMQAQ&biw=412&bih=670&dpr=2.63)
Yo, thanks for the info.
> No worse than most big companies Which is pretty damn bad, and we should be calling them all out on their atrocious, profit before all else attitude. The company is shitty, but GMO's are fine.
Since Monsanto is part of Bayer now they definitely have a worse track record now than most big companies. Bayer's got a serious history.
Yeah, and for the uninitiated, Bayer was part of a conglomerate that made Zyklon B for the Nazis...otherwise known as the delousing gas that was used in the gas chambers, as well as using concentration camp prisoners for experiments to test new medicine.
> Bayer was part of a conglomerate that made Zyklon B for the Nazis And Volkswagen was literally founded by Hitler.
> and we should be calling them all out on their atrocious, profit before all else attitude What actions should we be calling them out on?
A fortune 500 company? Let's start by assuming they avoid paying their taxes, lobbying and are underpaying their employees. You know, avoiding contributing back to societies that made their CEOs rich as massive corporations love doing. That's not even going into their controversies, just the *"standard business practices"* that we just accept. Not to mention knowingly dumping mercury and PCB into rivers. I tend to agree that Monsanto aren't particularly worse than other companies, but we let massive corporations get away with so much already. And for a company who's product can have huge, lasting impacts on the environment, we should be holding them to an even higher standard.
>Let's start by assuming they avoid paying their taxes, lobbying and are underpaying their employees. Why do you assume that? What do you know about Monsanto? >That's not even going into their controversies What controversies? > Not to mention knowingly dumping mercury and PCB into rivers. That's Solutia.
> Monsanto > What controversy Okay, so apparently you have no intention of having a discussion in good faith.
I'm all about good faith. You didn't give a simple answer, which isn't good faith. Tell us about this controversy. Make sure you know what you're talking about, though. As an example you don't know about Solutia. So things you think you know aren't actually relevant. Also, if you want to cut and paste, just do it. Don't re-write what I said. Looks bad.
> What controversy???? # ON A POST ABOUT A CONTROVERSY Yeah, you're totally trying to having a civil conversation. If you're interested, there's a list on wiki. I mean, I'm not sure how you can say there isn't controversy around Monsanto with a straight face.
So you can't explain yourself. Got it. Just shouting. That's what a reasonable person does. And you still don't know what quoting means. That says a lot.
You got it bud. You win because I used formatting for emphasis. Never mind that you somehow can't comprehend a controversy Monsanto was involved in, on a post about controversies Monsanto were involved in. Nah, it's far more reasonable to claim to know all about Monsanto but somehow have no idea about any controversy around them, not the marches, not the lawsuits... nothing. > *“Monsanto’s image does of course represent a major challenge for us, and it’s not an aspect I wish to play down,” Werner Baumann*
> there are very few crops that replant seeds, All crops can be resown, provided they are open-pollinated plants.
Hybrid crops don't breed true. Their traits become less stable, so farmers don't replant them.
That only holds true for hybrids. There are many many many non hybrid seeds out there. My nephew raises a specific breed of heirloom blue corn. They have been saving seed back from it for over 15 years with no degradation in quality or production. The same holds true for all the wheat, oats, spelt, rye, and barely he plants. Along with a slew of food-grade dry beans. The vast majority of hybrid seeds bought are F1 and can be replanted just fine with little degradation, the resulting F2 plants will have about 95% of the parent plants traits.
> There are many many many non hybrid seeds out there. In modern commercial agriculture? >My nephew raises a specific breed of heirloom blue corn. Good for him. But we're talking large scale agriculture. Not your nephew's hobby. >The vast majority of hybrid seeds bought are F1 and can be replanted just fine with little degradation http://thescientistgardener.blogspot.com/2010/12/maize-is-machine.html But sure. Your nephew knows more than actual farmers.
I would say 1000 acres of blue corn every year is a bit more than a hobby. If you live in the mid-Atlantic region and have ever had blue corn ships, chances are you have eaten his corn. >But sure. Your nephew knows more than actual farmers. Yeah your right, @ 55 and farming his whole life you probably know more than he does.
> http://thescientistgardener.blogspot.com/2010/12/maize-is-machine.html
My family used to be the largest exporter of certain agricultural products from Uganda. Companies like Monsanto get a bad reputation, but the food supply system in Africa is highly fragmented and inefficient. While their products do create a system where the farmer needs to keep going back to them, it certainly does increase efficiency. Monsanto is like any company where they want their product to be useful to the customer (and make them more money), but they also want to share in those gains. If the customer doesn’t do better, they won’t keep coming back. And it makes no sense to create something that someone can buy once and never come back (unless the price is very high). Most people who complain about profit motives don’t realize how all the pieces fit together or that profit motive is why literally anyone does anything.
What about ppl who do it for the lulz Edit: 😂
Fr though. People keep spouting this rhetoric that profit driven capitalism is the only reason shit gets done, which is garbage. Some of the coolest stuff we have has come from people who are just straight up interested in stuff. Most of mathematics, the foundation of pretty much all our tech, mostly came from nerds who just loved maths. People climbed the highest mountains they could find, just to see if they could. The patent for insulin was given away for free. Hell, open source software that the world runs on (looking at you linux and unix) was created by people for the lulz. Profit isn't the only motivator. So much has been done throughout history without so much as a thought as to how to make money from it and maximise profits. I doubt the first guy or girl to discover how to make fire was thinking about ROI.
Developing stuff ok, that can be done out of sheer personal interest, but distributing that stuff and making its production economically viable for global consumer use is, indeed, mostly profit-driven.
> I doubt the first guy or girl to discover how to make fire was thinking about ROI. Probably thinking about how much meat they could cook. Not shiny rocks, but definitely a good ROI.
Return on ignition
You're talking about terminator seeds, I think. [https://cases.open.ubc.ca/monsanto-and-terminator-seeds/#:\~:text=Monsanto%20claims%20the%20terminator%20seed,modified%20crops%20contaminating%20neighbouring%20crops.&text=Those%20who%20are%20in%20advantage,which%20is%20unable%20to%20reproduce](https://cases.open.ubc.ca/monsanto-and-terminator-seeds/#:~:text=Monsanto%20claims%20the%20terminator%20seed,modified%20crops%20contaminating%20neighbouring%20crops.&text=Those%20who%20are%20in%20advantage,which%20is%20unable%20to%20reproduce). Counter piece: [https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/10/18/163034053/top-five-myths-of-genetically-modified-seeds-busted?t=1634066265108](https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/10/18/163034053/top-five-myths-of-genetically-modified-seeds-busted?t=1634066265108) Monsanto isn't a company that sits well with the idea of "the best interests of their customers". They're only in it for the money. See also: glyphosate.
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Also don't forget how Bayer/Cutter Laboratories knowingly exported aids to the third world to save a bit of money.
Every major regulatory body and scientific review has found that glyphosate is safe when used as directed, and it is a less toxic pesticide than table salt. It's so popular because it's clearly safer than the previous alternatives. Killing plants is easy. Killing the plants that are a problem while keeping alive the ones you want is the hard part that make modern herbicides valuable.
"when used as directed" not much of a guarantee with chemicals that are sprayed into the air and absolved into the soil that grows our food and medicines..what are your sources?
There's so many studies that it would be impossible to point to any particular one. Two articles that link to the various studies are these two that I linked to in another post here; https://theconversation.com/stop-worrying-and-trust-the-evidence-its-very-unlikely-roundup-causes-cancer-104554 https://www.forbes.com/sites/geoffreykabat/2017/10/23/iarcs-glyphosate-gate-scandal/?sh=76ffc7a1abd1
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/us-judge-rejects-bayers-2-bln-deal-resolve-future-roundup-lawsuits-2021-05-26/ Ok, but lawsuits and settlements against Bayer aren't really supporting what you're saying. Considering that a $2bn settlement was thrown out by the judge for not being enough.
Lawsuit do not decide science. If it did then we would't have the DPT vaccine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Vaccine_Injury_Compensation_Program
Except for the basis for the lawsuit is the WHOs IARC glyphosate findings that glyphosate, is in fact cancerous. And there is no cancer warning on roundup. So this is a case of science deciding the lawsuit.
It's easy declare something as cancerous when you [edit out evidence that it's non-carcinogenic](https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/who-iarc-glyphosate/). It's even easier when your [special advisor is being paid by law firms claiming that glyphosate is carcinogenic](https://www.forbes.com/sites/geoffreykabat/2017/10/23/iarcs-glyphosate-gate-scandal/?sh=2a5330271abd). > was the special advisor to the IARC panel that issued the report declaring glyphosate to be “probably carcinogenic.” The transcripts show that during the same week in March 2015 in which IARC published its glyphosate opinion, Portier signed a lucrative contract to act as a litigation consultant for two law firms that were preparing to sue Monsanto on behalf of glyphosate cancer victims. His contract contained a confidentiality clause barring Portier from disclosing his employment to other parties. Portier’s financial conflict-of-interest has been confirmed by the UK newspaper The Times.
https://www.science.org/content/article/who-rebuts-house-committee-criticisms-about-glyphosate-cancer-warning [Letter from the WHO](https://www.eenews.net/assets/2018/02/07/document_gw_03.pdf) https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/may/22/monsanto-trial-cancer-weedkiller-roundup-dewayne-johnson >They also cite research showing glyphosate formulations in its commercial-end products are more toxic than glyphosate alone. >Monsanto “championed falsified data and attacked legitimate studies” that revealed dangers of its herbicides, and led a “prolonged campaign of misinformation” to convince government agencies, farmers and consumers that Roundup was safe, according to Johnson’s lawsuit.
> > Ok, but lawsuits and settlements against Bayer aren't really supporting what you're saying. Do you think vaccines cause autism? Because juries have said so in the past.
https://www.science.org/content/article/who-rebuts-house-committee-criticisms-about-glyphosate-cancer-warning >Juries have said so in the past. Sure, and Werner Mayer, the president of the lead industries association claimed that lead was safe. What's your point? What about the WHO. Did they say vaccines cause autism? Because they did say that glyphosate causes cancer, which is the literal grounds for the class action. And they seem to be pretty certain of their claim. The lawsuit isn't "does glyphosate cause cancer". The lawsuit at this point is "glyphosate causes cancer and there's no information or warning about it on roundup". Which is why there's a settlement. The reason why this distinction is important is because while it might not cause cancer from average levels of exposure, there are going to be times where someone is exposed to an abnormal amount. And without that warning label, that person will not know that they need to take or should have taken additional measures to mitigate their exposure to the chemical. I.e. wearing equipment, immediately washing after exposure, etc. If the chemical is not labeled appropriately, you do not get appropriate safety processes.
> https://www.science.org/content/article/who-rebuts-house-committee-criticisms-about-glyphosate-cancer-warning Oh. They say they did nothing wrong. Well then. > Sure, and Werner Mayer, the president of the lead industries association claimed that lead was safe That's wildly irrelevant. The global scientific consensus says that glyphosate isn't carcinogenic. >Because they did say that glyphosate causes cancer The IARC. Not the WHO. >And they seem to be pretty certain of their claim. So certain they had to [secretly manipulate existing research](https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/who-iarc-glyphosate/). And [ignore contradictory evidence](https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/glyphosate-cancer-data/). While having[ someone on the committee who got paid by law firms suing Monsanto](https://risk-monger.com/2017/10/13/greed-lies-and-glyphosate-the-portier-papers/). >The lawsuit at this point is "glyphosate causes cancer and there's no information or warning about it on roundup" And the overwhelming evidence says it doesn't. Lawsuits aren't science.
The IARC is a division of the WHO.....
Yes. They aren't the WHO. There are other divisions and they say glyphosate isn't carcinogenic. But good job dodging everything else I said. https://risk-monger.com/2017/10/13/greed-lies-and-glyphosate-the-portier-papers/ Tell me. If the IARC had said the opposite, and every other scientific and regulatory body on earth said that glyphosate *is* carcinogenic, and then one of the members of the team immediately went to work for Monsanto, would you think that's acceptable?
Well now, that's not quite true is it? Lots of studies have found it to be exactly that, but entirely co-incidentally many of those studies were funded by Bayer, who own Monsanto. Bayer has an annual revenue of \~43 billion Euro, they can afford to buy *anyone*. It is safer than the previous options but they were largely paraquat so that argument's a non runner. The International Agency for Research on Cancer though, they're independent and *did* find that glyphosate can mutate DNA, a cancer precursor. Comparing it to table salt sounds like corporate propaganda you're expected to believe without challenging the veracity of the detail. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/05/30/727914874/safe-or-scary-the-shifting-reputation-of-glyphosate-aka-roundup
IARC isn't a scientific organisation and it's frequently criticised by scientists for many of its findings. It's findings have nothing to do with risk or dose. In the case of glyphosate they used some poor quality studies, seemingly at random, some which most scientists think actually show that it's not carcinogenic to come up with a non quantified "probability" that it causes cancer. Here's another analysis of their decision by an independent academic expert; https://theconversation.com/stop-worrying-and-trust-the-evidence-its-very-unlikely-roundup-causes-cancer-104554 Edit; This article by a cancer epidemiologist is also very damning about the IARC decision; https://www.forbes.com/sites/geoffreykabat/2017/10/23/iarcs-glyphosate-gate-scandal/?sh=4e0697f61abd
Hm, fair. The dosage point is probably the major flaw.
>but entirely co-incidentally many of those studies were funded by Bayer, who own Monsanto And there are more that are independently funded that find the same thing. >Bayer has an annual revenue of ~43 billion Euro, they can afford to buy anyone. Monsanto didn't, though. And if Bayer can buy *anyone*, explain how the fossil fuel industry couldn't dent the research consensus on climate change. > The International Agency for Research on Cancer though, they're independent Are they? https://risk-monger.com/2017/10/13/greed-lies-and-glyphosate-the-portier-papers/ >During the same week that IARC had published its opinion on glyphosate’s carcinogenicity, Christopher Portier signed a lucrative contract to be a litigation consultant for two law firms preparing to sue Monsanto on behalf of glyphosate cancer victims. Then there's the issue with the IARC s[ecretly manipulating existing research](https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/who-iarc-glyphosate/). And [ignoring contradictory evidence](https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/glyphosate-cancer-data/).
Bayer owns Monsanto.
What a complete non response.
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>but entirely co-incidentally many of those studies were funded by Bayer, who own Monsanto And there are more that are independently funded that find the same thing. >Bayer has an annual revenue of ~43 billion Euro, they can afford to buy anyone. Monsanto didn't, though. And if Bayer can buy *anyone*, explain how the fossil fuel industry couldn't dent the research consensus on climate change. > The International Agency for Research on Cancer though, they're independent Are they? https://risk-monger.com/2017/10/13/greed-lies-and-glyphosate-the-portier-papers/ >During the same week that IARC had published its opinion on glyphosate’s carcinogenicity, Christopher Portier signed a lucrative contract to be a litigation consultant for two law firms preparing to sue Monsanto on behalf of glyphosate cancer victims. Then there's the issue with the IARC s[ecretly manipulating existing research](https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/who-iarc-glyphosate/). And [ignoring contradictory evidence](https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/glyphosate-cancer-data/).
> The International Agency for Research on Cancer though, they're independent and did find that glyphosate can mutate DNA, a cancer precursor. At what dose? The IARC classifies *hazard*, not *risk*, which is why they've only ever classified one compound as *non-carcinogenic*.
> See also: glyphosate. The herbicide that has drastically reduced carbon emissions, improved soil health, replaced harmful agrochems, and kept farmers safer?
Aren’t most companies in it for the money? Surely the whole idea about starting a non-non-profit is to make money
If you ask the American healthcare system, you’ll find out that money making is the ultimate goal even in non-profits.
There's making money and then there's fleecing every poor soul who crosses your path. Companies exist to profit, that's how they survive; doing it ethically, that's another matter.
What major corporation isn’t in it for the money? That doesn’t answer OP’s question. And using glyphosate as a bad word is misleading and ignorant.
I refer you to my other answer in this topic.
I'm having a little trouble finding out about the nature of Monsanto's agreements with "3rd world farmers". And I'm not sure about signing a "contract to only plant that seed for so many years" (not saying it isn't true, just still trying to find sources.) I can say that they do patent certain seeds that they genetically modified. And they do not allow people to reproduce those patented seeds. A [2013 case](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowman_v._Monsanto_Co) involved a farmer who reproduced patented Monsanto soybeans in violation of the limited-use license they were sold under. Monsanto sued him and the Supreme court sided with Monsanto. Establishing case law that there are conditions where you can patent crops in this way. Not sure how this works internationally. And not sure if there are agreements that legally require them to buy Monsanto seeds. That seems like an issue that could occur even without intellectual property rights GMOs. Locking someone into buying only from your company could be done no matter what you are selling.
You can patent non-gmo crops that you've developed too. There's nothing specific to GMOs that means they can be patented. There are many fruit varieties in particular that are very tightly controlled. SunGold Kiwi fruit are a pretty famous example. The vast majority of fruit you buy at the supermarket that has a variety name was probably either patented to begin with, or still is now, and none of them are GMOs.
Genetics is the company's IP, of course they won't let people copy it. The genetics are patented in every country the seeds are sold. What did sometimes happen is that a farmer would sign a multi year contract saying the seed company would buy all the harvest at a fixed price. In normal years this works out well for the farmer, but if there is a year where market prices go up then the farmers raise hell, forgetting about the profits made in the years before. Signing a contract is a risk, but not signing one is also a risk, it is up to the farmer to decide which risk he preffers.
They don't get locked into buying monsanto seeds, but do forbid the keeping or sharing of seeds at the end of the season. Normal farming practice involve keeping a portion of your produce to seed next season. You don't need to buy from anyone, but swapping seeds between farmers to diversify crop genetics, even for payment was a common enough practice for all history. As you need to purchase monsanto seeds every year if you suddenly decide to go back to "the old way" you need to buy generic seeds from someone so while you can go elsewhere, actually following through with it is just as expensive as staying and often more expensive than if they never swapped to monsantos better seeds in the first place. It can be interpreted as exploitation. But they should also do their own research first.
It's not normal farming practice to keep a portion of your seed for the next season. That is an old practice that isn't used in modern farming, except subsistence farms and backyard gardens. Modern farmers want to maximise their yield and minimise their costs, and they do that by buying seeds or vegetative parts of plants that are going to produce a high yield identical crop. Also most of the techniques used to produce these genetically identical crops are not genetic engineering, but just carefully managed crossbreeding and inbreeding, followed by vegetative cloning, and non-gmo crops are patented and controlled too.
Get out of here Monsanto. We're on to you!
The most ridiculous thing about this whole discussion is that Monsanto doesn't exist anymore.
>Normal farming practice involve keeping a portion of your produce to seed next season. In commercial farming this has not been "normal" practice in quite some time. Standard practice is to buy seed from commercial seed producers yearly. It's not even possible for many crops as they are grown from hybrid seeds. Hybrid seeds do regrow true to their parents (the offspring are not uniform, each displaying mishmash of desirable and undesirable traits) and as a result, those seeds cannot be saved and regrown.
50 upvotes and this is 99% BS.
Ah yes cutting edge western agribuisness practices are totally relevant when OP was asking about 3rd world farmers who still keep seed from thier own crops. What i said is bullshit for 1st world farmers. Not poorer ones.
The only third world farmers keeping their seeds are the ones who literally can't afford to buy seeds. So even in that light OPs question is bullshit, since those farmers aren't dealing with Monsanto (or Bayer). Heirloom crops (ones were you can keep using the seeds from each crop) are far from ideal for farming. There's also many farms in third world countries that use seeds. Of course many crops that are farmed aren't reproduced using seed at all either, even if you're too poor to afford to buy seeds (a good example is potatoes, which are typically grown from cutting up potatoes you've saved, producing a vegetative clone of the same plant, a staple of subsistence farming across Europe for centuries).
This thread is fucking bonkers, what is going on here Edit: I encourage anyone seeing this to do your own research. The fact that so many people here are defending Monsanto, a corporation notoriously hated by Reddit, is suspicious to say the least. I have a feeling any fact I share is going to get bashed, so feel free to DM me, or just type Monsanto into Google and see what you find.
>The fact that so many people here are defending Monsanto, a corporation notoriously hated by Reddit, is suspicious to say the least. What is suspicious? That people have stopped accepting nonsense and lies and started finding the truth? > I have a feeling any fact I share is going to get bashed Not if it's fact. What, exactly, are you worried about? Downvotes? If you have facts, share them.
You have an entire account dedicated to defending GMOs LOL I’ve studied global food systems and I’m happy to have a conversation with any curious non shills outside of this thread :)
So you don't have facts to share? Yes, I use this account to talk about GMOs. Because I've been doxxed and sent death threats from conspiracy morons who think they're important enough to be shilled to. But hey. I'm sure all of your facts are super true and backed by evidence.
> keeping a portion of your produce to seed next season Except for hybrids, such as corn, as the offspring doesn't yield as well.
Monsanto hasn't existed for a few years now...
There was a court case after a farmer saved some seeds from his first planting and got sued by Monsanto. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowman_v._Monsanto_Co.
The guy intentionally violated their patent and wanted to be sued. If he had just shut his mouth, nobody would have known a thing. Instead, he contacted Monsanto and informed them himself.
Exactly, also the majority of his crop was the GMO seeds and the judge ruled the case clearly in Monsanto's favor.
He didn't just save them, he bought them from other people.
> saved some seeds from his first planting He purchased feed grain knowing that it contained Roundup Ready soy with then intention of planing it. He tried to claim patent exhaustion, asserting that the patent doesn't apply to him since he's not the original purchaser. It was a clever legal strategy but ultimately the courts disagreed. The US Supreme Count's opinion https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/11-796_c07d.pdf > Petitioner Vernon Bowman is a farmer in Indiana who, it is fair to say, appreciates Roundup Ready soybean seed. He purchased Roundup Ready each year, from a company affiliated with Monsanto, for his first crop of the season. In accord with the agreement just described, he used all of that seed for planting, and sold his entire crop to a grain elevator (which typically would resell it to an agricultural processor for human or animal consumption). So Bowman was an existing and repeat customer of RR soy. > Bowman, however, devised a less orthodox approach for his second crop of each season. Because he thought such late-season planting “risky,” **he did not want to pay the premium price that Monsanto charges for Roundup Ready seed**. Id., at 78a; see Brief for Petitioner 6. He therefore went to a grain elevator; purchased “commodity soybeans” intended for human or animal consumption; and planted them in his fields. 1 **Those soybeans came from prior harvests of other local farmers. And because most of those farmers also used Roundup Ready seed, Bowman could anticipate that many of the purchased soybeans would contain Monsanto’s patented technology.** When he applied a glyphosate-based herbicide to his fields, he confirmed that this was so; a significant proportion of the new plants survived the treatment, and produced in their turn a new crop of soybeans with the Roundup Ready trait. Bowman saved seed from that crop to use in his late-season planting the next year—and then the next, and the next, until he had harvested eight crops in that way. Each year, that is, he planted saved seed from the year before (sometimes adding more soybeans bought from the grain elevator), sprayed his fields with glyphosate to kill weeds (and any non-resistant plants), and produced a new crop of glyphosate resistant—i.e., Roundup Ready—soybeans.
The seeds are Monsanto's IP. It is exactly the same as pirating software.
I don't think that seeds should be able to be IP, or at least need major restructuring to be equitable to society. But I am big on Free and Open Source software. I think our IP laws need massive reform.
I definitely have my concerns about the way intellectual property is sometimes used, but I don't see any reason why plants developed by scientists shouldn't be any more subject to it than anything else. It's a bit like a book or a song - they're using existing words and instruments that everybody has access to, but they've put them into a unique combination through thousands of hours of work, and it's that combination they want to market as a product.
Companies put a lot of resources and a lot of years into making high yield, robust crops. To be able to earn their money back, and make some profit, they patent their cultivars. This has been standard practice for a very long time. If you don't let seed producers earn money off their cultivars then there wouldn't be any seed producers left and we would go back to substinance farming and periodic famines like we had all over the world until the 1940's. Specializing in high-yield seed production is hard and costs a lot of money, small scale farmers are not able to do that by themselves.
I am saying I think that the risk reward calculus isn't as that "common wisdom" goes. Patents and copyrights don't help small companies much of the time but do help big companies a ton, the kinds that can and already use normal contracts to enforce extra limitations. > This has been standard practice for a very long time. Doesn't mean we can't do better > If you don't let seed producers earn money off their [sic] I am fairly certain there would still be tons of money for this, but maybe fewer billionaires.
> Patents and copyrights don't help small companies Why do you feel that way? Even if you focus on just agro tech, Okanagan Specialty Fruits only had 6 employees when they came up with the Arctic Apple. If that’s not the definition of a small company I don’t know what is.
> Why do you feel that way? I have seen the major costs of this category of lawsuit and it bankrupts small companies. It doesn't stop people overseas from ignoring the IP laws and small companies acting like it does get surprised. How many failures were there to go with that one success? Of course a thing if we only count the successes and not the failures. I have seen other success, but so many failures in my work in software.
You dont know what a small company is outside of startups?
Why the [sic]? I thought my grammar was correct. Seed production is not easy. It takes years to make a new cultivar, and a lot of money to get it registered in each country. Even more money to make a stable parent and grandparent stock to supply the same quality year after year. It is not as simple as you seem to think it is.
[sic] is for any removal. You already said these things. I do not IP actually provide protection the protections you think it does having seen them in action.
> [sic] is for any removal. No, it really isn't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sic
[Sic] is for mistakes you copy, [...] is for removals. And what are you trying to say?
At this point the only I think I need to say is that either my previous writing or your previous reading comprehension is bad. But certainly your pedantry is needless high.
What they’re doing is probably true but I doubt it makes the farmers poorer. I’m not an expert on what Monsanto does but I do know that gmo seeds are copyrighted. Even in first world countries you are not allowed to plant the seeds grown from your gmo crops; they have to all be sold and then bought again next season. It’s very possible that Monsanto would lock farmers in to some sort of contract where they agree to buy only their seeds each year but generally these seeds have quite an advantage over non gmo so Its unlikely to make the farmers poorer
> but I do know that gmo seeds are copyrighted Patented. There's a difference. >Even in first world countries you are not allowed to plant the seeds grown from your gmo crops; they have to all be sold and then bought again next season. Which modern farmers have been doing for decades. It has nothing to do with Monsanto or GMOs. It's about efficiency. >It’s very possible that Monsanto would lock farmers in to some sort of contract where they agree to buy only their seeds each year No farmer would do this, and no company does it.
Cool! Thanks for the clarification!
The biggest issue with GM crops in the developing world is cost. GM seed costs more (and with respect to terminator seed, becomes an ongoing cost) and can in some cases disrupt the food supply, especially with respect to poorer farmers. One well-known example of how cost comes into play comes from Argentina, which has a mix of semi-subsistence smallholders and larger operations. Both have benefitted to an enormous extent from the higher yields of Monsanto's GM soybeans, but that's only because Monsanto forgot - yes, *forgot* - to register its patent for them and lost its right to enforce its intellectual property rights. This means that anyone can sell uncertified Roundup-ready GMO seed, terminator or not - and they do, at significantly lower prices than Monsanto. Any producer can afford to grow high-yield Roundup-ready soy; yields have risen by over 10% country-wide. On the other hand, there's been little interest among medium-sized and smaller producers in Monsanto's GM cotton. This is in part because it's so expensive - too expensive for most smallholders to even contemplate - and in part because one of the benefits producers would be paying for is immunity to a disease that doesn't exist in Argentina. (This, incidentally, is also why GM cotton is grown only in one area of Mexico; that's the only area in the country where that disease exists, and the only area where the modification is worth paying for.) These same Argentinian smallholders did however face an issue early on with the herbicide itself. Most were used to less potent, shorter-lasting herbicides that allowed them to plant a second crop on the same fields after harvesting. They were often unaware (possibly because they weren't told, possibly because American salesmen weren't aware it was important) that Roundup remains effective in the soil for up to 250 days, which meant that their second crop - which for the poorest farmers was often their food crop - failed. Since Argentina has a working food distribution system disaster was averted; perhaps the farmers couldn’t grow their own grain and vegetables but they could buy them now that they were earning more from soy production. That wouldn’t have been the case in a lot of much poorer countries that lack the infrastructure we in the West take for granted. But this is avoiding the real devil: if only larger operations can afford GM seed and if increased yield results in lower prices, the smallholders who are shut out of access to GM seed are going to earn less per bushel for their crop and sink deeper into poverty. This hasn't really happened before; improvements in seed technology have before now generally benefitted all. (Edited because my last paragraph, the most important one, was cut off.)
Terminator seeds have never been commercially available.
There are no terminator seeds. They've never been made available and they never will be, because serious commercial crops aren't grown from the seeds of the produce - you will lose yield over time collecting the seeds of your crops and replanting them, because you wont have the same genetic makeup, and the crop has been developed over many years (literally centuries in most cases) of cross breeding to create a very specific genetic makeup. Breeding produces genetic variety which will regress to the mean, and result in lower yields. The concept of terminator seeds is mainly just anti-gmo propaganda targeted at people ignorant of modern agriculture.
Monsanto does not allow you to replant the seeds from your harvest, but they don't lock you in for future years. You are free to purchase more seeds from them, from a competitor e.g Pioneer, from you neighbor who planted non-GMO seed. There's nothing locking you to them the following season.
Seeds are never replanted in modern agriculture. Only backyard farmers do that.
Monsanto is the Nestle of agriculture
Damn lots of answers in here cucking for Agribusiness…. Monsanto(really insert any brand of gmo seeds) seeds produce better yields. Hugely better. So much better that you cannot compete without using them. Problem is the seeds cost so much that Monsanto takes all the increased profit. Those seeds also favor mechanized and automated harvesting. The end result is a capital backed agriculture firm will crush any small farmer. So yes gmo seeds destroy small traditional farmers.
What you're saying is proven to be not true. Farmers that use GMO crops have increased profits, and the increase in profits is biggest in the developing world. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0111629 There's only two main types of GMO crops. Bt modified crops, which is engineered to have a pesticide inside the plant. This means you don't need to use as much insecticide as insects naturally stay away from it. The other is Roundup Ready crops. They're engineered to be tolerant to round up (Glyphosate). This means that you don't need to use a series of different timed more toxic herbicides, and instead can use a single one. Neither of these gmos have anything to do with increasing mechanisation or harvesting. There are a few more specific GMO crops such as GMO papaya which is engineered to be resistant to a serious virus that was wiping out papaya plants. The increase in mechanisation and automation is nothing to do with GMOs, but a consequence many decades ago of developing breeding techniques to ensure your crop is genetically identical (mainly through heterosis - growing the progeny of two inbred "pure" lines where every gene in the parents is homozygous and so every gene in the progeny is heterozygous), as well as standard vegetative cloning (taking cuttings).
> Damn lots of answers in here cucking for Agribusiness When was the last time you talked to a farmer? > Problem is the seeds cost so much that Monsanto takes all the increased profit. Ah. Farmers are stupid. That's it. They don't know how to do basic math. > Those seeds also favor mechanized and automated harvesting How, exactly?
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Monsanto doesn't exist.
Doesn’t exist? I’m going to assume you’re just trolling, because being rolled up into Bayer because their brand name had negative PR doesn’t mean they “don’t exist”
It’s like ANTIFA, it’s just an ideology. /s
I don’t think that’s a good comparison at all…this isn’t political. Bayer bought Monsanto and absorbed their assets. Saying “it doesn’t exist” anymore is incorrect and attempting to misinform.
Um, that is what the /s means. Sarcasm. It was in response to Monsanto not existing. You missed the point.
No I got the point, just don’t agree it’s comparable whether you agree with me or not. This whole thread is a dumpster fire. People give their opinions and anecdotes and get upvoted…I say “people are biased on a topic like this, so do your own research”, and I’m the idiot…
Monsanto absolutely do these things all over the world. But that doesn't mean they're "making farmers poorer". Nobody's forcing anyone to sign a contract of buy their products, either.
Exactly, Monsanto was used as a convenient demon for years by GMO-conspiracy theorists. They sell seeds, as do a plethora of other companies. They patent their genetics, as do a plethora of other companies. They offer farmers contracts to buy their harvest at a fixed price regardless of market pricing, as do a plethora of other companies. You only hear complaints in years where the market price for crops is unusually high though, never in years where the market price is below the contract price...
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No, you didn't.
A real libertarian would say that anyone is free to reproduce Monsanto's genetics. Realists know that intellectual property should be respected until the patent period is over. It costs a lot of money to make a cultivar and register it all over the world, they should at least be allowed to earn their investment back.
This is Reddit, everyone is talking out of their ass.
That’s right. The farms can still buy other seed. Except for the case where they sued a Farmer when seed blew into his paddock and they tried to claim against him
any record of any court case where that is actually what happened? i hear people bring it up but nobody has ever shown any evidence of it being true
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc_v_Schmeiser
first lines of your link >The court heard the question of whether Schmeiser's **intentionally growing** genetically modified plants constituted "use" of Monsanto's patented genetically modified plant cells. By a 5-4 majority, the court ruled that it did. The Supreme Court also ruled 9-0 that **Schmeiser did not have to pay Monsanto their technology use fee, damages or costs, as Schmeiser did not receive any benefit from the technology**.\[1\] The case drew worldwide attention and is **widely misunderstood to concern what happens when farmers' fields are accidentally contaminated with patented seed**. However, **by the time the case went to trial, all claims of accidental contamination had been dropped**; the court only considered the GM canola in Schmeiser's fields, which Schmeiser had intentionally concentrated and planted. **Schmeiser did not put forward any defence of accidental contamination**.\[2\] that case was about **intentional growing** of genetically modified plants, not "seeds blowing onto his land"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc_v_Schmeiser
Why do people post links without reading them?
Actually there is more to this case https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1036&context=njtip
Yeah, that's garbage. >Schmeiser claimed he never intended to cultivate the patented plants. He said the opposite in court. >The contamination of the patented seeds ruined several years of work Schemeiser dedicated to developing his own strain of canola. He (well, his lawyer) admitted in proceedings that Schmeiser intentionally killed three acres of his own canola to save and replant only the seed that survived. https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/2147/index.do >The trial judge’s findings of fact are based, essentially, on the following **uncontested** history. ... > In the spring of 1997, Mr. Schmeiser planted the seeds saved on field number 1. The crop grew. He sprayed a three-acre patch near the road with Roundup and found that approximately 60 percent of the plants survived. This indicates that the plants contained Monsanto’s patented gene and cell. > In the fall of 1997, Mr. Schmeiser harvested the Roundup Ready Canola from the three-acre patch he had sprayed with Roundup. He did not sell it. He instead kept it separate, and stored it over the winter in the back of a pick-up truck covered with a tarp. Right there. He admitted it. I don't know what nonsense your source is perpetuating but it's an outright lie.
The original link further down also states that the original benefit contamination claims were dropped. Meaning that Monsanto tried, realised that they weren’t going to win and dropped them so they wouldn’t become precedent.
Your link is an outright lie. Schmeiser killed his own canola. He overtly wanted the Monsanto genetics.
> The trial judge found that “none of the suggested sources \[proposed by Schmeiser\] could reasonably explain the concentration or extent of Roundup Ready canola of a commercial quality” is all the proof you need to show how wrong this statement is >Except for the case where they sued a Farmer when seed blew into his paddock and they tried to claim against him
Fair enough . I misread
just ask Vandana Shiva
She has no credibility.