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

worldsensorium.com

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

#251

Post by incompatible »

digitallyfree wrote: post #222

There are two interesting things here from a legal perspective. 1. Licensing works on the commercial seeds because they are patented, and thus the company that makes those seeds can dictate license terms on the farmers. As far as I can tell, these open seeds are not patented and thus their creators can't really impose license terms on the buyers unless they sign a contract before sale. That would be treated solely un…

I suppose a company that wanted to use some of the genes in its own patented products would just get somebody else to open the packet for them so that they wouldn't be bound by any contract.

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

#252

Post by incompatible »

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #37

Article really lacks specifics. The reason so much of the USA grows “patented” seeds is because they’re created specifically to be sprayed with herbicide and not die. There’s no alternative to to patented seeds without making fundamental changes to agriculture practices. Hybrid seeds are also different than open-pollinated in that the children do not grow true to parent. Even if we removed the patents, they wouldn’t…

I'd guess that the people wanting unpatented seeds are the same people who want to avoid the use of additives such as herbicides, pesticides, and fertilisers.

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

#253

Post by UncleEntity »

pfdietz wrote: post #172
f-securus wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the farmer was trying to clear the land with roundup and the accidental gmo modified crops prevented him from doing so. Could he sue for damages?

No, if he didn't save seeds from crop plants on that land. That saving of seeds after spraying was the incriminating act.

How does the doctrine of first sale not apply here?

I could make up some convoluted argument but… the neighbor conducted the first sale so this should have extinguished any further patent claim. Of course, IANAL.

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

#254

Post by UncleEntity »

pfdietz wrote: post #218
quantified wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just like selling a used book violates the copyright?

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

#255

Post by tharkun__ »

Scoundreller wrote: post #64
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…

> returned from ag use for ecological restoration. We don’t really do that. If anything, the opposite now that the land yields more value. Largely we just use the excess to feed animals (ie: 90% energy loss) or ethanol/biodiesel (ie: using land as a 2-3% efficient solar panel, along with lots of inputs). Something like 75% of US corn goes into the above 2.

I'd totally agree w/ this from the "grow corn and then feed cows with it" standpoint.

This is doubly bad if you're displacing natural grasslands and grassland grazing with this. I.e. plant corn on your previous grasslands and cram the cows into some barn.

This came through HN just recently. Another way to do the same though is to go back to what the big buffalo herds were naturally doing. I.e. let your cows actually "trample and shit on the land" and that's what actually keeps it fertile. Then you harvest the cows for meat while keeping their number stable.

Win - win

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

#256

Post by UncleEntity »

Kalium wrote: post #144
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.

Then, without a license, he had no right to exploit the patented technology. The farmer acted in a way that showed a knowing and deliberate exploitation of the patented technology. There seems to be a disconnect here, but I'm not seeing it. Can you help me with what I've missed?

You need a license to produce and sell patented technology.

You don’t need a license to use patented technology which you either bought from a third party, was given or has blown onto your land by the wind.

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

#257

Post by robwwilliams »

hinkley wrote: post #235
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?

'hybrid vigor' is when you take two inbred genetic lines and cross them together to pick up some of the genes you accidentally deleted while selecting for something else. For instance the modern Irish Wolfhound was created by an nobleman who, worried about the breed dying out (there hadn't been a wolf in GB in over a hundred years), bought every wolfhound he could get his hands on, and crossbred them with mastiffs an…

I assume that the backcross is marker-assisted for SNPs in the blight resistance locus.

If that is true it amounts to the same thing you are proposing. Sounds just like making a speed-congenic mouse.

Are they not selecting with markers at all?

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

#258

Post by mminer237 »

Aardwolf wrote: post #5

GPL-3 seeds that turn other seeds into GPL-3 as they inevitably breed around through the wind sounds like an interesting concept

It's an interesting concept, but legally it doesn't make any sense. You can't license what you don't own. If the hybrid seeds are not available in compliance with the GPL, then you would just be violating two licenses.

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

#260

Post by robwwilliams »

a_bonobo wrote: post #15
boomboomsubban wrote: post #3

Do plants engineered to not produce plantable seeds have some kind of advantage, or is it purely so the seed producers can continue selling the seeds? I remember when I first heard of roundup ready crops as a child, that aspect of it completely baffled me both in why and how they would make plants not replantable.

There are no plants engineered to not produce plantable seeds. There's a long-standing moratorium on terminator genes that is generally observed. The reason why you have to rebuy your seeds from the companies is because of hybrid vigor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosis It's still not 100% understand how this actually happens (heaps models and results exist), but when you cross two reasonably distantly related…

It is not just the hybrid vigor. In fact, I would say the main advantage of the F1 hybrids is actually lower phenotypic variance of the crop.

Sure you will have hybrid vigor in an F1, but you can get that vigor with a four-way cross of pure inbred lines too. But the four-way progeny will also be highly variable.

If I were a farmer I too would want the consistent low variance of F1 isogenic progeny. An inbred line optimized for environment X could work. In some (rare) cases engineered inbreds can be even better than F1s but they may not work well out in the real world of environmental flux.

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