Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

“Open source” seeds loosen Big Ag’s grip on farmers

worldsensorium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 371 posts

Re: “Open source” seeds loosen Big Ag’s grip on farmers

#201

Post by whimsicalism »

wazoox wrote: post #100
HDThoreaun wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patented seeds have funded GMO research which has saved literally hundreds of millions if not billions of lives through famine reduction. Yes it sucks for farmers, but I can't see how it has been anything other than absolute boon for humanity.

> Patented seeds have funded GMO research which has saved literally hundreds of millions if not billions of lives through famine reduction. Sources? References? Sounds like PR bullshit from Syngenta, frankly. For a start, half the world population is living off subsistence agriculture, i.e. not patented nor GMO seeds.

> half the world population is living off subsistence agriculture

Doubt GMOs have yet saved hundreds of millions like the green revolution did, but this claim is false.

Re: “Open source” seeds loosen Big Ag’s grip on farmers

#203

Post by whimsicalism »

Marazan wrote: post #163
HDThoreaun wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patented seeds have funded GMO research which has saved literally hundreds of millions if not billions of lives through famine reduction. Yes it sucks for farmers, but I can't see how it has been anything other than absolute boon for humanity.

There has not been a single famine since the beginning of the 20th century that was not man-made (i.e. due to either people in power preventing aid reaching those who needed it or by people in power stripping people of their food). GMO crops have nothing to do with famine reduction.

I doubt we would call any famine post-20th century apolitical due to how recent they are but many of them likely would not have occurred if food had been easier to grow, political dysfunction aside.

Re: “Open source” seeds loosen Big Ag’s grip on farmers

#204

Post by RajT88 »

Kalium wrote: post #131
RajT88 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ability to patent life itself is a dangerous one. Imagine where these precedents lead when inevitably we start genetically engineering people. If you yourself carry genes engineered by a biotech firm (cancer resistance or laser eye beams, you can pick according to whim), do you have to pay them royalties when you have children?

Even without patents, there's a whole system of plant breeder's rights. The idea is that even without patents, breeding plants for a particular set of characteristics is a ton of work and the rights system is a patent-like way to commercialize. If you have a different idea for solving this particular financial problem, I expect quite a lot of people would love to hear about it.

My point is that patents are abused enough already.

We should not allow patenting of genomes/genes. Full stop. We should rely on those other systems of breeder's rights.

Re: “Open source” seeds loosen Big Ag’s grip on farmers

#205

Post by tptacek »

permo-w wrote: post #199
tptacek wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument is completely orthogonal to the narrative originally presented, which is that farmers who weren't trying to benefit from the patents at all were tangled up in Monsanto lawsuits. That narrative is false, and that's all I'm here to correct. There's a Motte and Bailey thing that happens with these discussions, the bailey being "Monsanto will sue you even if their seeds just happen to blow onto your propert…

an argument designed to appeal to a court is not necessarily moral or true, and this is generally accepted as normal practice

It just has nothing to do with what we're talking about. The notion that Monsanto is suing farmers for seeds just blowing onto their fields false, and thus can't have anything to do with whether seeds should be patentable.

Re: “Open source” seeds loosen Big Ag’s grip on farmers

#206

Post by philipkglass »

jandrese wrote: post #170
efitz wrote: post #56

Most people support patents because they have this romanticized notion of some little guy in his garage inventing the next light bulb. That’s not representative of the mass offensive and defensive patterns of use by modern corporations. We should just end patents, period.

The problem with ending patents is the alternative is medieval guilds that jealously guard their knowledge, sometimes using lethal force. The great thing about patents is that they force people to publish the knowledge so it won't be lost to the sands of time when they close up shop. That said, our current patent system is problematic for sure. The bar for getting a patent has become far too low as systems have becom…

The great thing about patents is that they force people to publish the knowledge so it won't be lost to the sands of time when they close up shop.

That's a benefit that depends on the difficulty of reverse engineering the knowledge from working samples. As analytical instruments and procedures have improved, the relative disclosure benefit of patents has diminished. Worse, patents are increasingly written to hide the key insight in a hay stack of obfuscatory language and irrelevant examples. I can learn a lot from reading a typical 1970s-vintage chemistry patent. I can't say the same about present chemistry patents.

Re: “Open source” seeds loosen Big Ag’s grip on farmers

#207

Post by gtvwill »

epistasis wrote: post #14

Cool and all, but there's not a single mention of "hybrid" on the entire page, which means that this is not targeted at the majority of, say, US agriculture. The general public does not understand agriculture well, and I've noticed that this misunderstanding is stronger among those that have huge huge concerns about seeds and GMOs. Hybridization is a huge benefit, one of the primary reasons to use seeds from somebody…

Fixed water requirements from tree crop farming in states where water is a concern is the dumbest agri business ever. Tbh most of America's farming sucks, bulk corporate welfare keeps most of it propped up and is used to buffer against the efficiency of global markets and y'all do some incredibly dumb stuff like but farms in water restricted areas.

Lol nearly all your beefs feedlot... You do well to feed the masses, but the countries process of getting there is like it's stuck in 1950s. Lol go watch some of ya broadacre boys and they still monocrop tilling thousands of acres by throwing fertilizer at it. Bumpkin stuff, hardly advanced.

Re: “Open source” seeds loosen Big Ag’s grip on farmers

#209

Post by rqtwteye »

twblalock wrote: post #185
rqtwteye wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Most people support patents because they have this romanticized notion of some little guy in his garage inventing the next light bulb. That’s not representative of the mass offensive and defensive patterns of use by modern corporations." I often think that the bigger a company or wealthier a person is they should get less things like tax deductions, patent protection, subsidies and a lot of others.

Penalizing success is a great way to destroy innovation along with the rest of the economy.

I think in total these big organizations and super wealthy people destroy innovation. They produce some cool things but at the expense of suppressing a lot of things smaller players would produce.

Re: “Open source” seeds loosen Big Ag’s grip on farmers

#210

Post by progman32 »

randomdata wrote: post #66
mschuster91 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a farmer with experience growing roundup-ready crops: In order to obtain roundup-ready seeds you have to sign a contract with the vender. In said agreement, you agree to not do such things. The farmer had not entered into any contract with anyone, that is the point. It's not his fault if pollen from his neighbor's field entered his field, even if they contained "patented" technology.

If you are referring to a case where litigation was executed under the terms of patent contract, the farmer – being a member of the public who grants such patents – has still entered into a contract by virtue of choosing to be a member of the public who has agreed that patent contracts are desirable to issue. The public had no obligation to issue the patent, but chose to. The farmer need not be a member of that publi…

How would one choose not to be a member of that public?
Post reply on HN