Indigenous Maize: Who Owns the Rights to Mexico’s ‘Wonder’ Plant?
1–10 of 21 posts
Re: Indigenous Maize: Who Owns the Rights to Mexico’s ‘Wonder’ Plant?
#2I'm quite against the private ownership of biological lifeforms, whether the owner is Monsanto or an indigenous village.
Re: Indigenous Maize: Who Owns the Rights to Mexico’s ‘Wonder’ Plant?
#3I'm quite against the private ownership of biological lifeforms, whether the owner is Monsanto or an indigenous village.
A simple upvote is not enough of a show of agreement for this perspective. Genetics should not be own-able.
Re: Indigenous Maize: Who Owns the Rights to Mexico’s ‘Wonder’ Plant?
#4Re: Indigenous Maize: Who Owns the Rights to Mexico’s ‘Wonder’ Plant?
#5I'm quite against the private ownership of biological lifeforms, whether the owner is Monsanto or an indigenous village.
I agree with your sentiment, I do see some nuance here though. This phenotype is very valuable in how it could reduce inputs across industrial agriculture--and industrial agriculture is an extremely competitive and well-developed market. Entrenched interests are change-averse (unless they themselves are exploiting the change), so the very powerful industry will either squash this plant if it threatens their dominance, or squeeze every last penny out of it through patents. The net benefit will be best for everyone involved if the Nitrogen-fixing phenotype is hybridized into every corn cultivar around, which is only likely to happen if big-ag can exploit it for profit. That being the case, can we find a way to reward the farmers who genetically engineered this plant by selecting for the strongest individuals for the last several thousands years? Perhaps we can compensate them proportionately to the western seed companies who will close the last-mile gap getting this valuable trait to market.
Re: Indigenous Maize: Who Owns the Rights to Mexico’s ‘Wonder’ Plant?
#6Previous post on the 'discovery' for reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17721741
Re: Indigenous Maize: Who Owns the Rights to Mexico’s ‘Wonder’ Plant?
#7I'm quite against the private ownership of biological lifeforms, whether the owner is Monsanto or an indigenous village.
A simple upvote is not enough of a show of agreement for this perspective. Genetics should not be own-able.
Genetics is information. Do you believe information should not be ownable? I think we should not be able to own any information. Information is like fire. It takes no space and costs nothing to replicate. Taking the concept ownership developed with physical objects and applying it to information is ridiculous. It's like owning clouds.
Re: Indigenous Maize: Who Owns the Rights to Mexico’s ‘Wonder’ Plant?
#8Discussion in Farm Progress.[1] The maize plant in Mexico requires a 9-month growing season, so it's only useful in near-tropical climates. Work is progressing to see if the trick that plant uses can be adapted to something that grows faster.
For a plant to fix its own nitrogen carries an energy cost. So the plant grows slower. There's a tradeoff here.
[1] https://www.farmprogress.com/biotechnology/nitrogen-fixing-c...
Re: Indigenous Maize: Who Owns the Rights to Mexico’s ‘Wonder’ Plant?
#9I'm quite against the private ownership of biological lifeforms, whether the owner is Monsanto or an indigenous village.
I agree with your sentiment, I do see some nuance here though. This phenotype is very valuable in how it could reduce inputs across industrial agriculture--and industrial agriculture is an extremely competitive and well-developed market. Entrenched interests are change-averse (unless they themselves are exploiting the change), so the very powerful industry will either squash this plant if it threatens their dominance…
> can we find a way to reward the farmers who genetically engineered this plant by selecting for the strongest individuals for the last several thousands years?
In a very concrete sense we cannot, because the people who did it are dead. We're really talking about rewarding (the people we presume to be) their descendants. Is that something we would do in a completely European context? For example, if we found a strain of worm-resistant apple that had been growing in a particular suburb of Manchester since before anyone's grandma could remember, would you consider giving patent rights to anyone who had a tree in their back yard?
Re: Indigenous Maize: Who Owns the Rights to Mexico’s ‘Wonder’ Plant?
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
A simple upvote is not enough of a show of agreement for this perspective. Genetics should not be own-able.
Genetics is information. Do you believe information should not be ownable? I think we should not be able to own any information. Information is like fire. It takes no space and costs nothing to replicate. Taking the concept ownership developed with physical objects and applying it to information is ridiculous. It's like owning clouds.
There is a difference between information naturally occuring and created by someone.