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Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

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Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment on GM crops is technically correct but also misleading. Most crops are already grown from hybrid seeds. For reasons of genetics, hybrid seeds cannot be reused in the next season. It's also quite a time-consuming process to reuse seeds, which makes the whole process less cost effective anyway. GM crops have not had a significant effect on this issue.

> For reasons of genetics, hybrid seeds cannot be reused in the next season. Can you provide supporting evidence/materials to back this claim?

F1 hybrids are the first generation (filial-1) offspring of two homozygous parents, both of which breed true for certain genetic factors.

The F1 hybrid is a uniformly heterozygous cross. They will be a consistent and uniform mix of desired genetic factors, much like clones, but all siblings of parents that are themselves like clones.

The F2 generation will be less consistent. The genes will recombine such that the desired high-producing mix of genes will not be present in all offspring. By the F3 generation, it will almost be back to the diversity of a genetically unmanaged population. Harvest times will spread out, such that by the time the slowest plants mature, the fastest ones may already be spoiling or eaten by birds.

F2 seed can be sold and planted the next season, at a lower price, but the yield will be lower than with F1 seed. F3 seed is not economically viable to sell for planting, as the farmers that habitually save seed probably already have F3 or greater from their last crop, or an heirloom cultivar.

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For reasons of genetics, hybrid seeds cannot be reused in the next season. Can you provide supporting evidence/materials to back this claim?

Cash crops use something known as hybrid vigor ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosis ) which breeds together two distinct, albeit mediocre, blends into a single offspring that is sort of like a super plant. The catch though is that it only works for a single generation, and if you were to replant the crop's offspring you would end up with a highly undesirable crop. For this reason, almost no farmers replant using…

> The Bowman case has come about after the 75-year-old farmer bought soybeans from a grain elevator near his farm in Indiana and used them to plant a late-season second crop. He then used some of the resulting seeds to replant such crops in subsequent years.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/12/monsanto...

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Windows 7 was supported with security updates for over 10 years (2009-2020). Second to only Windows XP (13 years) 2. They offered free upgrades to Windows 10 for a long time (a year?) 3. Replacement cycles for consumer desktops/laptops are short relative to OS cycles, with some internet stats saying ~5 years on average. 4. You can still run Windows 7, you just won't get security updates. You're free to repair it o…

13 years of support may very well be above and beyond the norm in the software industry, but that doesn't make it "basically forever".

Relative to software, it's basically forever. At some point you're still riding a horse and demanding that a highway be horse-accessible. It's unreasonable.

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I love listening to people with accents explain things Are there people without accents that explain things? Because that would be a video I want to see.

I suppose by "without accent" you mean "with General American accent"? German or French can be spoken without accent, but English doesn't have one universally agreed "standard accent". What's without accent to the American is just an American accent to everyone else.

This isn't completely true: even within America, there's different accents. So people with a "standard American accent" (generally midwestern) listen to Southerners talk and say they have an accent. There's also northeastern accents (such as the famous Boston accent).

Of course, these days, a lot of the accents are disappearing because of mass communications, so the "American accent" is homogenizing, but those other accents aren't completely gone yet.

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't get from your description what the point or motive would be. Who is locking in whom, for what purpose?

Deere is controlling the marketplace for "repairs." If a farmer is required to use service centers exclusively provided and controlled by Deere, then they are inhibited from using the free market. The right to repair is essential for farmers to be able to choose the best repair options for their situation (self-made repairs, local non-affiliated repair shop, Deere certified). Some people take their cars to the dealer…

>They do this because they value the expertise and depth that the dealers can [sometimes] provide.

You mean the expertise they claim to provide. Dealership mechanics are generally junior mechanics; the really good, highly-experienced mechanics, go work at or start their own independent shops where they get much better pay.

The big reason that you'd want to visit the dealer rather than an independent mechanic is because you really, really, like spending more money than you have to. There's a reason they're called "stealerships".

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment on GM crops is technically correct but also misleading. Most crops are already grown from hybrid seeds. For reasons of genetics, hybrid seeds cannot be reused in the next season. It's also quite a time-consuming process to reuse seeds, which makes the whole process less cost effective anyway. GM crops have not had a significant effect on this issue.

> For reasons of genetics, hybrid seeds cannot be reused in the next season. Can you provide supporting evidence/materials to back this claim?

A lot of commercially sold seedstock is F1 hybrids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F1_hybrid

... first generation crosses between different parent strains. If you sow the seed from F1 hybrids (F2) they don't have a consistent phenotype

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#387
post #210

What many people may not realize is just how long-lived a lot of farm equipment is. There will be tractors out there still working that are 75 years old and just keep getting repaired. Obviously the manufacturers would like to sell those farmers tractors more often than that or, in the very least, generate a revenue stream from existing hardware and honestly that's what I see a lot of computing in vehicles as being:…

I grew up on a citrus farm and I can tell you CAT equipment makes Apple look like an open hardware platform. Parts where unavailable to non dealers they used patents to stop aftermarket and where hostile to hardware hackers that fixed flaws in their design. This was all while they where mechanical. I cannot imagine what it is like owning a CAT machine now that they are computerized. I know my grandfather tended to stick to Massey Ferguson and Minneapolis Molean's for that reason. We only bought CAT and Deere equipment if it was a specialty piece that could not be duplicated with an all purpose tractor like a MF or MM. Which is really CAT's bread and butter. They like the machinery that no one else produces and locking you in to support. They caught onto this long before the automotive and electronics world ever did.

On seed stock it get's even worse, if you are next to a GM farm and get cross pollinated then your stock is tainted and you have to reseed again with clean seeds that will just get tainted in the next spawn.

We did not have this problem with citrus because it is not grown from a seed, all citrus is root-stocked and then hybrid to make sweet citrus. I know it is an issue for corn and grain farmers who do not want to grow GMO crops.

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is this for all farms or just very large ones? i can imagine small time farmers perhaps not having such super seeds / plants?

It's pretty much all farms in the US, since most farms in the US are hard corn or soy farms. It's large and small. Bank owned and family owned. Everyone buys their seed every year. It's not some conspiracy, it's just better business for the farmer.

Heirloom and organic farmers tend to reseed from heritage crops. I will give you they are a small subset of farming but the cross germination is having an effect on them.

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose by "without accent" you mean "with General American accent"? German or French can be spoken without accent, but English doesn't have one universally agreed "standard accent". What's without accent to the American is just an American accent to everyone else.

I take the parent's comment to mean that everybody has an accent. There's no such thing as neutral or reference-frame speech.

The word "accent" implies that it is being compared to some kind of reference. You might be looking for the word "dialect" here.

For example, if you have two speakers with English as a first language and a third from Germany with English as a second language, the native English speakers will probably detect a German accent in the ESL-speaker's dialect.

People get into long internet arguments over this, but the closest thing to a neutral English dialect is General American English, also sometimes called Broadcast English because newscasters, TV personalities, and actors would be trained this dialect so as to not sound like they are "from" anywhere in particular. It used to be common as well for highly-educated or upper-class individuals to hire speech coaches to teach them this dialect in order to "lose their accent". It still may be common for all I know, but I believe the deliberate acquisition of General American is probably on the decline.

Re: Nebraska farmers vote overwhelmingly for Right to Repair

#390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

monsantos 'terminator' seed comes to mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_techno...

The article doesn't specifically mention Monsanto, though I couldn't imagine them not pursuing this technology. Also, thankfully: > As of 2006, GURT seeds have not been commercialized anywhere in the world due to opposition from farmers, consumers, indigenous peoples, NGOs, and some governments. It's a common narrative that Monsanto did release crops into the wild that caused nearby farms to produce sterile crops aft…

It's absolutely misinformation, as is almost everything else you read on the subject of GMOs.
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