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

261–270 of 371 posts

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

#261

Post by shawn-butler »

pfdietz wrote: post #247
imtringued wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's nefarious is being coerced to take on foreign debt to buy these seeds and then watching the country fall apart because the food is for domestic consumption and not for export, which means there will be a trade deficit as the seed exporter is not obliged to import products from your country (which violates Say‘s Law that so many people seem to hang onto). So your only option is to send all the bright people in…

[flagged]

Says someone who I would guess has never been hungry a day in his or her privileged life?

There is a valid argument to be made that food scarcity, like housing and medical care should not be subject to capitalist profit-taking. That some information is so beneficial to the common good that it can never be a trade secret.

Also your tone is downright disrespectful and should be moderated.

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

#262

Post by Scoundreller »

tharkun__ wrote: post #255
Scoundreller wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Kinda what Iceland does. Multiple sheep per person. They tag 'em, let 'em roam free and collect them later in the year.

https://www.cntraveler.com/story/iceland-welcomes-tourists-t...

Same with many random islands explorers came across: they'd leave some livestock so when they came back later they'd have some dense and fresh food ready to harvest.

Didn't work so well in Australia. And probably any of the islands most likely.

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

#263

Post by Scoundreller »

mschuster91 wrote: post #200
epistasis wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the most obvious, concentration of market power. The solution to concentrated market power is not to abandon the productivity gains, but to use law and regulate to de-concentrate market power. We could instead ban specialization and the productivity it brings, but that's dealing with the wrong thing. > concentration of genomics Again, solved not by banning specialization, but rather through diversification of the m…

> This has nothing to do with advancing knowledge and specialization, and in fact reducing pesticide usage is only going to be enabled through greater advancement of our ag tech. Or by restructuring how land is used. When you have miles upon miles of corn fields, it's a fucking buffet for corn pests. In contrast, land that has a great variety of usages - corn, wheat, grass for making hay, marijuana, rice, potatoes, b…

> California should stop growing fucking alfalfa only for the Saudis to feed cows with it.

Dairy is like the auto industry: every state seems to think it needs to have its own protected domestic industry, but it's far from a strategic industry when every nation ends up with excess capacity.

Canada, an excellent environment for dairy production, kneecaps itself in this industry. Could be an export juggernaut, but instead, NZ is the biggest dairy product exporter. 20th dairy producer in the world despite being a top6 barley/oat/wheat/hay producer.

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

#264

Post by Scoundreller »

skywal_l wrote: post #65
richbell wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I remember, there was a case where a farmer grew patented plants on his field. They spread to his neighbours field who then got sued by the patent holding company for not licensing that plant. My memory is a bit fuzzy here but you get the idea. You are thinking of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc_v_Schmeise... . He is often heralded by anti-GMO activists as an example of the dangers of GMOs and Mon…

> He deliberately took cultivars from his neighbour's plot You mean stole? Where do you see this in the link you provided? That's what I read in the article. > As established in the original Federal Court trial decision, Percy Schmeiser, a canola breeder and grower in Bruno, Saskatchewan, first discovered Roundup-resistant canola in his crops in 1997.[4] He had used Roundup herbicide to clear weeds around power poles…

> The court heard the question of whether Schmeiser's intentionally growing genetically modified plants constituted "use" of Monsanto's patented genetically modified plant cells. By a 5-4 majority, the court ruled that it did. The Supreme Court also ruled 9-0 that Schmeiser did not have to pay Monsanto their technology use fee, damages or costs, as Schmeiser did not receive any benefit from the technology.

Used their technology, yes, barely. Stole it? Well, the courts unequivocally didn't feel like he damaged (deprived?) Monsanto of anything.

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

#265

Post by hinkley »

robwwilliams wrote: post #257
hinkley wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'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?

They seem to be selecting with their eyeballs. They're jabbing trees with chestnut blight and seeing which ones succumb.

Hence a petri dish for pathogen selection. IE, insane and reckless.

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

#266

Post by pfdietz »

UncleEntity wrote: post #254
pfdietz wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No, obviously not like that at all. In particular, growing plants is copying them. Also, patents are not copyrights.

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

#267

Post by pfdietz »

UncleEntity wrote: post #253
pfdietz wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

He is not reselling individual seeds. He is manufacturing new seeds. He is not allowed to do that, and particularly not allowed to do that with intent.

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

#268

Post by gruez »

UncleEntity wrote: post #253
pfdietz wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

From wikipedia:

>A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention.

In this, letting the plant reproduce arguably falls under "making" (ie. manufacture) of the patented thing (the genetically modified plant).

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

#269

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

tptacek wrote: post #22
luoc wrote: post #20

I remember, there was a case where a farmer grew patented plants on his field. They spread to his neighbours field who then got sued by the patent holding company for not licensing that plant. My memory is a bit fuzzy here but you get the idea. Now, how about reversing that? Think of a GPL-like licensed plant that makes all derived plants also inheriting that license. Legally poisoning the binary distribution format…

No, he got sued by the patent holding company for using those seeds and then spraying them with Roundup , which would have killed off his crop had they not been the patented seeds. This is true of all the cases of people being sued for cultivating "Roundup-Ready" crops: 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 tri…

All made possible because Monsanto controls the seeds and the majority of glyphosate production so they could correlate consumption with who hadn't paid the toll.

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

#270

Post by gruez »

UncleEntity wrote: post #256
Kalium wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This thread is going in circles. As mentioned a few comments ago, it's clearly not the case that the technology "blown onto your land by the wind". The farmer was intentionally engaging in artificial selection to get plants with roundup ready traits. I can be sympathetic to the claim that a patented program magically appeared on your computer because of random bit-flips, but I can't be sympathetic if you deliberately set up a system to generate bit-flips on your computer in a specific way so as to produce the desired program.
Post reply on HN