These stories have all basically been debunked. Monsanto did sue farmers. But they did so in cases where they had evidence that those farmers were not only planting IP-encumbered seeds, but also spraying them with Roundup. You can't do that accidentally: if your seeds aren't genetically modified, Roundup kills your crop.
I do not think granting someone an exclusive right to sell their new cultivar for 20 years is particularly dangerous, especially when existing variants don’t disappear. I like that someone was incentivized to grow Pink Lady and Cosmic Crisp apples back in the 90s and 2010s and I struggle to see where any cruelty was involved.
This brings back some memories. I was an admin for “Millions Against Monsanto”, a group on the still-nascent Facebook. I ultimately left because the org was overtaken by conspiracy theorists who couldn’t stop yelling about aspartame and antivax nonsense long enough to focus on the very real, and very alarming, actions of Monsanto. At this point in time it was still not considered “normal” to patent biological materials. I’m a bit more pragmatic, since I’ve grown past my college idealism, but I still don’t believe seeds should be considered patentable.
I just found out that farmers spray enough of the chems to kill all the plants off so they can be harvested at the same time. They aren't applying it just to grow, they then pump it full of them and then we eat that. No wonder why people are getting sick from it.
Look at life, or its systemic counterpart capitalism. Look at that attempt at an exponential. In that curve is all the cruelties, all the danger, all the colonialism, by eating other curves, all the failure because physics is linear on a sphere in the sun.
Everytime somebody tries to emotionalize any discourse around any of these topics, look at the defining curve and think for yourself - "yeah, thats life, still preferable to death." - then go and solve that problem, or go an be absolved from that problem. Any vital system is expansive, the trees colonialize the grass by throwing shade. Equality - and thus peace can only be reached by having a equality of arms, by copying working mechanisms.
I can't wait for all the usual Monsanto fanboys to start popping up with comments that show how wildly ignorant they are, with comments like "we need this tech to feed everyone!"
1)Hunger is entirely artificial and is a problem of US farm bill policy and trade policy (not to mention using food to produce fuel that provides less energy than the energy required to grow it.) We pay farmers to grow and then till the food into the ground. Or to ship it to a warehouse where it rots. Massive amounts of food are thrown away by supermarkets. The list goes on.
2)European farmers, who cannot use Roundup or a large swath of other pesticides and herbicides, *have greater per-acre productivity.
These stories have all basically been debunked. Monsanto did sue farmers. But they did so in cases where they had evidence that those farmers were not only planting IP-encumbered seeds, but also spraying them with Roundup. You can't do that accidentally: if your seeds aren't genetically modified, Roundup kills your crop.
The entire concept of IP-encumbered seeds is cruel and dangerous.
I do not think granting someone an exclusive right to sell their new cultivar for 20 years is particularly dangerous, especially when existing variants don’t disappear. I like that someone was incentivized to grow Pink Lady and Cosmic Crisp apples back in the 90s and 2010s and I struggle to see where any cruelty was involved.
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Why, because without IP encumbrance farmers would be developing their own glyphosate-resistant shikimic acid pathway enzymes?
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Yep. Here is another comment of mine where I breakdown one of the most famous examples:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45725426
"IP-encumbered seeds" is a wild phrase.
Speaking of poison, does washing fruit and vegs help? Or is it like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-second_rule
This brings back some memories. I was an admin for “Millions Against Monsanto”, a group on the still-nascent Facebook. I ultimately left because the org was overtaken by conspiracy theorists who couldn’t stop yelling about aspartame and antivax nonsense long enough to focus on the very real, and very alarming, actions of Monsanto. At this point in time it was still not considered “normal” to patent biological materials. I’m a bit more pragmatic, since I’ve grown past my college idealism, but I still don’t believe seeds should be considered patentable.
Where does Monsanto stand now? It’s been many years since HackerNews was AstroTurfed by them.
Monsanto was bought by Bayer who kept the products and killed off the name.
I just found out that farmers spray enough of the chems to kill all the plants off so they can be harvested at the same time. They aren't applying it just to grow, they then pump it full of them and then we eat that. No wonder why people are getting sick from it.
Source?
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Not sure why this was downvoted. AstroTurf?
Anyway, this was really what I was looking for anyway. Thanks.
Look at life, or its systemic counterpart capitalism. Look at that attempt at an exponential. In that curve is all the cruelties, all the danger, all the colonialism, by eating other curves, all the failure because physics is linear on a sphere in the sun.
Everytime somebody tries to emotionalize any discourse around any of these topics, look at the defining curve and think for yourself - "yeah, thats life, still preferable to death." - then go and solve that problem, or go an be absolved from that problem. Any vital system is expansive, the trees colonialize the grass by throwing shade. Equality - and thus peace can only be reached by having a equality of arms, by copying working mechanisms.
Capitalism is not the equivalent of life, it's the equivalent of cancer. It forces uncontrolled growth within the system.
I can't wait for all the usual Monsanto fanboys to start popping up with comments that show how wildly ignorant they are, with comments like "we need this tech to feed everyone!"
1)Hunger is entirely artificial and is a problem of US farm bill policy and trade policy (not to mention using food to produce fuel that provides less energy than the energy required to grow it.) We pay farmers to grow and then till the food into the ground. Or to ship it to a warehouse where it rots. Massive amounts of food are thrown away by supermarkets. The list goes on.
2)European farmers, who cannot use Roundup or a large swath of other pesticides and herbicides, *have greater per-acre productivity.