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

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

#211

Post by linuxftw »

ElfinTrousers wrote: post #169
linuxftw wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source seeds as in the Open Source Seed Initiate [1] come with a GPL-like pledge that you won't restrict creations from seeds based on these seeds [2] > You have the freedom to use these OSSI-Pledged seeds in any way you choose. In return, you pledge not to restrict others’ use of these seeds or their derivatives by patents or other means, and to include this pledge with any transfer of these seeds or their deri…

I'm not against this idea--I'm just frustrated by the fact that this is now something we have to spell out explicitly and back with the threat of legal action, instead of common sense.

Well, you've always had to do this. If you give someone seeds, they would be free to use those seeds to develop patented varieties.

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

#212

Post by forgetfreeman »

gtvwill wrote: post #207
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,…

And if you could do it better you wouldn't be here throwing shade about stuff you only barely understand, you'd be out in a field somewhere dunking on the local farmer's co-op. If you think modern ag is a bunch of ass-backward hicks then explain why some comment section hero hasn't already revolutionized the business. We'll wait.

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

#213

Post by paulmd »

dylan604 wrote: post #67
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.

or end the offensive/defensive patterns used by modern corporations? someone invents a thing, someone else uses thing for evil. what to do? we ban the thing!!! yes, of course, that's the solution. don't punish the one that did the evil.

the federal reserve doesn't think there's empirical evidence that patents have positive societal benefits and they think there are very empirical and measurable harms.

https://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/more/2012-035

this isn't "generally good thing that some people abuse", this is the entire patent system is fundamentally not producing any explicable benefits and significant measurable harm, there is no reason to keep it around.

the scenario about the inventor who comes up with the better lightbulb in his garage doesn't happen. if it does, somebody else copies his idea (it's gotta be fairly trivial for someone to make it in a garage) or opens up their own patent portfolios and finds an overbroad patent that describes some trivial component or practice that is widely used, and drags him into litigation that bankrupts him for the rest of his life.

in software the example would be that you get dragged by someone who has patented "e-commerce on a website" or "software updates over the internet" and the money to have lawyers fight it while you empty your warchest.

no "I would simply..." or "but a law firm would do that pro-bono" is necessary here, either, those are both real-world examples, someone tried to shake down Newegg in 2015 with the e-commerce patent for example. And it worked for a lot of previous victims, none of whom felt like Newegg that it was worth fighting on principle or for direct economic benefit alone.

Patents literally kill companies, and they don't actually produce the intended innovations. And that's the federal reserve saying it. There were debates on ending it in the 50s, and they made the wrong decision.

> If we did not have a patent system, it would be irresponsible, on the basis of our present knowledge of its economic consequences, to recommend instituting one. But since we have had a patent system for a long time, it would be irresponsible, on the basis of our present knowledge, to recommend abolishing it.

The harms have now clearly exceeded the benefits of keeping it. It may not have been worth the trouble of abolishing it in 1958, it is now.

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

#214

Post by bequanna »

fencepost wrote: post #176
saalweachter wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're also a huge pain in the ass to produce, at least in my experience. Producing hybrid corn seeds, for instance, is done by planting the two varieties in the same field, with one combine-width of rows of variety A alternating with rows of variety B. Then you need to wait until variety A is grown and ready to tassel, and de-tassel it before those tassels fully form and release the pollen that drifts onto the corn…

I used to hear about "detasseling corn" as an utterly miserable short-term summer job option for high school students. Walking through cornfields in heavy clothes (to avoid getting cut up by the leaves) in summer in Iowa.

Miserable indeed! I was in Southern MN and did this job for a few weeks in the summer. We started around 5:30am and worked 8-10 hrs per day, rain or shine.

Why do this? At the time (early 2000s) it was an extremely well-paying, unskilled job at $15/hr!

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

#215

Post by bluGill »

trallnag wrote: post #128
pfdietz wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hybrid vigor is also why eugenic nightmares are misconstructed. If some nefarious dictator wanted genetic supersoldiers, he'd breed them by hybridizing sickly inbred strains, and then prohibiting the supersoldiers from themselves reproducing.

can you explain further or maybe link to something? Eugenics can also mean eradicating certain unwanted elements like illnesses or black skin.

Hybrid vigior is known to apply to plants. It isn't clear if it applies to humans. While it is known that marrying your sibling (brother/sister) is bad, and near cousins are a questionable, is it better (for your children) is you are very distant? Should you look to a different continent for a spouse? I don't know for sure, but the evidence I've seen doesn't support that. Unlike with plants, so long as your are more than 5th cousins away (I'm not sure where the line is, so I picked something distant enough that I think everyone will agree it is too far) there doesn't seem to be any advantage in getting more distant.

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

#216

Post by pfdietz »

StrictDabbler wrote: post #85
burkaman wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the story they want to tell is that they were sued for cultivating seeds that accidentally wound up on their fields, but the facts established at trial were that, however the seeds ended up there, the farmers deliberately exploited the patented system. I don't understand the distinction you're making. "cultivating seeds" and "deliberately exploiting the patented system" mean the same thing in this case. Spraying th…

It's not illegal to purchase and bulk-spray Round-up to an incompatible crop. It's just stupid. It is expensive and it will kill the plants. The lawsuit alleged that the farmer's behavior was so stupid that he must have known his crop was Roundup-Ready. That's not consistent with accidental pollination. It suggests that he deliberately cultivated or obtained seeds that were Roundup-Ready and that he knew his crop wou…

It's worse than that: the farmer knew there was slight contamination of his field with Roundup Ready plants. So, he deliberately sprayed the field with Roundup to kill all the others, applying artificial selection to concentrate the trace of contamination. I believe he repeated this more than once. So, he was guilty of engaging in deliberate production of not trace, but concentrated patented seeds.

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

#217

Post by lathyrus_long »

epistasis wrote: post #132
badcppdev wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hybridisation sounds like a bug not a feature. You get a benefit but with quite an extreme tradeoff. To be clear I understand that hybrids are current best practice. But the hybrid practice seem antithetical to open source agriculture. BTW would you say that seed producers have no motivation to develop non-hybrids that will perform as well as hybrids?

> But the hybrid practice seem antithetical to open source agriculture. I disagree, open source ag is completely compatible with hybridization. And if open source couldn't somehow deal with the benefits of hybridization, then open source ag is not a route we should follow. Farming is a transformation of inputs into food. It's not about seeds and propagating seeds every season... that's just an attachment to a practic…

It's not fundamentally incompatible, but non-proprietary hybrids are extremely rare. The effort to maintain the two parents and do the cross is much greater than that of saving seed from an open-pollinated variety, so very few growers will undertake that even given the chance. Even if multiple growers do, the smaller population of plants in each of the pure lines increases the chance of significant divergence between sites, at which point the multiple production sites implicitly become multiple different varieties.

Anyone interested here might also wish to read Carol Deppe's "Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties". She's a Harvard-trained geneticist and amateur vegetable breeder, with special interest in open-pollinated varieties derived from proprietary F1 hybrids. Her book extensively discusses the underlying biology, the practical breeding process, and the legal situation of such work.

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

#218

Post by pfdietz »

quantified wrote: post #198
edmundsauto wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The farmer may have claimed they weren't trying to. The fact they used Roundup, which would have killed their crop if it weren't the GM seeds, indicates otherwise.

Some other farmer's trash blows into my field, it's mine.

And if you then spray Roundup on that trash to concentrate the patented trait, you've deliberately violated the patent.

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

#219

Post by spywaregorilla »

tptacek wrote: post #98
cnity wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God forbid the farmers benefit for free in some way from the unpredictable and uncontrollable pollination of a plant genetically engineered to be a highly successful cultivar. I'm not attacking you here, but the logic decided by the courts may be lawful but it is not moral (in my opinion). It's as if a noisy neighbour hosts a late night party and you happen to enjoy the music. The neighbour notices and decides to cha…

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…

That seems utterly irrelevant. Trying to benefit is irrelevant. Trying to steal is what is relevant.

Consider the case where the gene edited crops actually implemented a dependency on roundup, and the neighboring farms were forced to use round up rather than did so because it was simply more useful.

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

#220

Post by tptacek »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #219
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…

That seems utterly irrelevant. Trying to benefit is irrelevant. Trying to steal is what is relevant. Consider the case where the gene edited crops actually implemented a dependency on roundup, and the neighboring farms were forced to use round up rather than did so because it was simply more useful.

No such dependency exists. The only rational reason to spray a crop with RoundUp is that you know you've sowed RoundUp Ready seeds; in any other circumstance you'd simply be killing your crop off. If you contrive a counterfactual where that's not the case, then obviously different fact patterns matter. It's like saying "well, sure, he shot the guy, but consider an alternate universe where shooting someone with a gun doesn't hurt them but instead immediately brings them to their recommended daily allowance of thiamine".

The claim that Monsanto sues people for accidentally or unwillingly having their patented seeds sown is simply false, full stop.

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