Comment by dogman144

Haha very important disclaimer there, because reading your post sounds a lot like a person who works for big ag.

The other reason these laws exist is a long history by Big Ag (Monsanto, Cargill) doing the following, and has been done in the states for a while:

1) gmo/patented seeds in field on the left, community non-big ag seeds on the right field.

2) Cross-pollination occurs because we’re talking crops. Variations on this.

3) Monsanto sues Farmer John and Jane into the ground next season for stealing tech via the crops he’s growing.

Add in a little bit of fear (encryption backdoors for the children, laws to prevent dangerous counterfeit seeds!), and you have monopoly on farming run by big corps.

Also, US corps have a long history of POC’ing underhanded approaches in Africa.

What could be going on here!?

Edit - Man, rereading, “forced to plant [dangerous] saved seeds,” guess it’s Big Ag + tech startups now pushing this. Maybe… those farmers just want to control their “IP” (saved seeds) so they don’t have to buy them from a cartel of seed providers? This is such a well known problem in the states, is this marketing really working in Africa?

Final edit on the soapbox - other reason why this matters is genetic diversity. Crop blight is a thing. There is no way the natural “herd immunity” of a basket of seed variants in a community is outstripped in effectiveness by a growing monoculture of owned hybrid seeds that stay in front of the blights each season. Coffee rust already jumped the Atlantic from Africa to SA. Often feels like I’ve read this sci-fi novel already (there is a good one - Windup Girl).