What I don't understand is why these farmers wouldn't switch back to using old crops/seeds if Monsanto is so prohibitively expensive and using old plants is more economical in long term?
5 Million Farmers Sue Monsanto for $7.7 Billion
191–200 of 225 posts
Re: 5 Million Farmers Sue Monsanto for $7.7 Billion
#192What I don't understand is why these farmers wouldn't switch back to using old crops/seeds if Monsanto is so prohibitively expensive and using old plants is more economical in long term?
Monsanto has highly dubious business practices and a history of very aggressively protecting their intellectual property.
For a picture of what's at stake and what has transpired read up on the story of Percy Schmeiser - a farmer who tried to stand up to Monsanto's bullying tactics. There are many articles on his story, but I found http://www.commonground.ca/iss/0401150/percy_schmeiser.shtml to be particularly informative)
Re: 5 Million Farmers Sue Monsanto for $7.7 Billion
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
"If their seeds blow from a customer's farm to a non customer's farm and the non customer doesn't actively try to remove the Monsanto seeds, they sue" Got a source for that claim? There's an article on huffington post which conflicts with the claim: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/28/monsanto-lawsuit-or...
Got a source for that claim? Who needs a source (or nuanced facts, for that matter) when you've got such an impossibly sticky narrative? True or not, Monsanto will always be known as the people who sued over their seeds. Which is a shame, because there are plenty of perfectly good reasons to hate Monsanto without delving into half-truths.
Agreed. There's the whole moral question of patenting life.
Re: 5 Million Farmers Sue Monsanto for $7.7 Billion
#194And the real winners? The lawyers. Can you imagine making a 40%+ success fee from a $7.7B class action suit?
Re: 5 Million Farmers Sue Monsanto for $7.7 Billion
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
It might make a bit more sense when you add in that Agent Orange wasn't supposed to cause these effects in humans. Dow and Monstanto were struggling to keep up with the demand from the US military and quality control suffered. This led to Agent Orange being contaminated with TCDD (2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzodioxin). True Agent Orange should be 50/50 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D. It was the contamination with the carcinogen that…
guns aren't made or sold with specific intent to kill people. So handguns and machine guns are manufactured for deer hunters?
Machine guns are designed for military use, which I called out as an exception (because the military is generally not legally liable when they use their weaponry). I would be interesting in seeing some statistics on how people use their handguns. Many I know use them for recreational shooting, but store them for use in emergency. Many carry them on their person with the claim that it is for personal defense. I've only personally known one friend who had a chance to use his handgun in self defense, and he was too scared to draw so he just handed over his wallet. Many times a handgun is simply a deterrent, not meant to be fired.
Anecdotes aside, deer hunting is not the only form of hunting. Boar hunting with pistols is common. Small game hunting with .22 pistols is common. Deer hunting with long barrel .44s and .45s is not unheard of, though not necessarily legal in every state. Handguns aren't something I personally agree with very strongly, though. I don't like easily concealable weapons.
Re: 5 Million Farmers Sue Monsanto for $7.7 Billion
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
It might make a bit more sense when you add in that Agent Orange wasn't supposed to cause these effects in humans. Dow and Monstanto were struggling to keep up with the demand from the US military and quality control suffered. This led to Agent Orange being contaminated with TCDD (2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzodioxin). True Agent Orange should be 50/50 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D. It was the contamination with the carcinogen that…
guns aren't made or sold with specific intent to kill people. So handguns and machine guns are manufactured for deer hunters?
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Re: 5 Million Farmers Sue Monsanto for $7.7 Billion
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is reeeeeeeally missing the point. The conversation was about (apparently) the ethics of selling a product which is known to be used a majority of the time for the aim of killing a thing (whether that be deer or human, is up to the owner of the gun/bullet). This should not be a controversial statement. Before someone says "oh but you can use it for target shooting and/or sport!", there is nothing about the funct…
Peter and the sibling comment to this one seem to be ill-informed about firearms. unless you are the worst hunter in the entire world, would never need such a weapon for hunting. It's like a bow and arrow with a grenade on the end. This is false. An AK-47 shoots 7.62x39 cartridges, similar to .308 Winchester, which is a very common load for deer hunting. I own an SKS, which was the predecessor to the AK, and shoots t…
Hey, another SKS hunter! Besides a 30.06, that's hands down the best hunting rifle I've ever used. It doesn't have the range or stopping power of a 30.06, but it's so much more reliable. If you need to get two or three shots out (depending on how many licenses you have) at a herd of deer... the SKS has never let me down when it comes to dropping my limit in a single morning. I've had the 30.06 jam up far too often.
Back at the handgun comment further up the discussion, my grandpa used to carry a .22 pistol with him hunting in case the deer was wounded but not dead. I don't care much for pistols though.
Re: 5 Million Farmers Sue Monsanto for $7.7 Billion
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
Peter and the sibling comment to this one seem to be ill-informed about firearms. unless you are the worst hunter in the entire world, would never need such a weapon for hunting. It's like a bow and arrow with a grenade on the end. This is false. An AK-47 shoots 7.62x39 cartridges, similar to .308 Winchester, which is a very common load for deer hunting. I own an SKS, which was the predecessor to the AK, and shoots t…
What I was saying about the AK-47 is that it's overkill in terms of weapons designed for hunting deer. The AK is designed to work in the sand after being left in the desert for a year and shoot practically like new. The clip is (imho) overkill - you really need more than 5 rounds to take down a single buck? And like you mentioned, full-automatic is dumb for hunting (thought I might appreciate it if I suddenly discove…
you really need more than 5 rounds to take down a single buck?
I have an SKS with 5 rounds in it. I don't need 5 to take down one, but it's not uncommon to fire two or three shots at once. It's nice to know that if you do that, there's still two or three left if the herd swings back around.
Other than that, 5 rounds is the smallest magazine they make. Bolt-action is a great detriment when it comes to hunting.
Re: 5 Million Farmers Sue Monsanto for $7.7 Billion
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can think of an extremely simple experiment that can be run on a field of unknown corn to determine if it is Roundup ready, in a few hours, with only the loss of a couple of corn plants and less than a teaspoon of Roundup.
how does this experiment have any relation to reality? i think you're implying that this farmer happened upon an entire field of crops that he did not plant, then determined that this field was seeded using roundup-ready seeds, and then sprayed roundup on that field. do you really think that the entire field was planted by the wind? do you think that this guy left his fields fallow and then the wind just seeded the e…
My observation is simply that the claim that it doesn't make sense for someone to serendipitously discover that their crops are Roundup-ready isn't really true. Is it the dominant-probability hypothesis? Heck no. It is, however, sufficiently likely that sooner or later it will happen.
In fact, if the genes get out there in the wild, and Monsanto de facto forbids people from discovering this fact, it isn't inconceivable that the genes could spread far and wide without anyone actually noticing until much later.
Re: 5 Million Farmers Sue Monsanto for $7.7 Billion
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
A hundred years is a sliver of time compared to how long agriculture has been going on. People live a hundred years and nobody would argue they're "sustainable" in any sense. You might be doing it right. You might be making a total mess of things but it'll take another fifty years before it collapses. Only time will tell. How dependent are you on fossil fuels? How well would you fare as a farmer if you had no access…
How much would corn cost if the completely insane policy of diverting large amounts of it to ethanol production? It may be insane from a purely scientific point of view, but that doesn't tell the whole story. If you recall from around the 2006 timeframe, before the energy policy changes, we were swimming in corn. It was coming out of ears, sitting in massive stock piles doing nothing, and more was coming in each day.…
> ... other crops require additional multi-million, even multi-billion, dollar outlay of new equipment and infrastructure to get started.
I think this is the problem with modern agriculture. It shouldn't be like that.
If there's a definition of non-sustainable it's surely spelled out quite clearly right there.