They’re not sterile, but they will sue you if they find you’ve been growing seeds from last year’s crops.
No they won’t.
They will sue you if you take your neighbors pesticide resistant seeds, sow them, douse them in pesticide so only the resistant ones survive, and sow your entire field with them.
Classic piracy. The original product is still there; you’re just making a copy.
I mean, I totally agree with all forms of breaking IP law on ethical grounds. But I also recognise that it’s still breaking the law right now.
You getting downvoted for stating what’s factually correct while still disagreeing with it is classic shooting the messenger.
The messenger is getting shot for not bringing receipts. I was about to shoot them too, then I retrieved a receipt: https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2024/01/05/dissecting-claims-about-monsanto-suing-farmers-for-accidentally-planting-patented-seeds/
I have read these receipts and literally the first story is about Percy Schmeiser, a farmer who used seed from plants grown on his own land that had been “contaminated” with genes from a neighboring farm. He had never signed any contract with Mansanto and didn’t take the seeds from his neighbor. Plants on his property were “contaminated” through natural means.
It then ends with a brief note about 700 farmers who settled out of court and lumps them under the guilty umbrella because they settled.
But worst of all, this site that this article is posted on is a propaganda mouth piece for Monsanto. It is owned and funded by the same guy owns and funds Monsanto’s PR company.Sure, I don’t disagree. The difference is I had a source to criticize. You know what info I was working with and can guage how reasonable my claim is. If you go around to people convinced of something and say “Nuh uh”, it doesn’t matter if you’re correct, you’ll be laughed out of the room.
Isn’t classic piracy boarding ships and taking all their shit at gunpoint?
You should be allowed to do that.
I agree, but you aren’t. I think all IP law is stupid, but until i’m president of the universe, it’s still the law.
GMO skepticism or not, Monsanto is one of the most evil companies in the world and a perfect example of what makes the profit motive such an inefficient organizer of production and distribution
Also, most farmers use hybrid crops, which you already can’t save, because they’re hybrids. (You can save them, but they’re not going to produce the same plants you get them from).
Isn’t one argument against GMO that they could spread and outcompete other crops? In that case a terminator gene would even be a good thing?
That’s exactly why the original terminator gene was a joint USDA-ARS /delta-pine effort. The USDA-ARS was looking for ways to prevent GMO species from escaping and causing issues.
You know the shit that actually happened. For example -
Creeping Bentgrass
https://www.opb.org/news/article/gmo-grass-oregon-creeping-bent-scotts-monsanto/
Wheat -
https://www.nature.com/articles/499262a
Corn/teosinte
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167880918301075
This sounds like the back of a Crichton novel, and I want to read it
This hard, sugarless, unripe tomato sure is red though
At this point, I barely even buy tomatoes to put into food anymore. If mom’s been growing them in her greenhouse any given year, I’ll eat a few off the vine. The stuff in stores? Ehh, it barely has flavour.
Finally. FINALLY. My ulcer grows every time I hear someone quote that list of evil things Monsanto does. Even though yes, they are evil.
Yea, they’re evil enough with the pesticides, and the hostile takeover of farms. We don’t need to make the genetic engineering they’re doing, which is actually good work, to also be thrown under the bus
I would agree if they didn’t use their non-sterile plants to take over small farms around their huge ones by suing for theft when farmers used part of the previous crop that had been pollinated with the Monsanto GM pollen. They didn’t buy that genome so it was stolen… Fucking wankers.
Monsanto doesn’t even exist anymore. It was bought out by the totally not evil company Bayer a while back.
Of course Bayer has suffered quite a bit of indigestion over gobling up that morsel over the years.
the totally not evil company Bayer
Ah, yes, the totally not evil company that (together with BASF and Hoechst, forming the cartel IG Farben) developed chlorine gas for use in world war I.
The same IG Farben which was the single largest donor to Hitler’s election campaign, and main contributor to the construction of Auschwitz, where they produced synthetic petrol and rubber for use in the war and performed all manner of human experiments, including testing their own Zyklon B gas.
The same company that decades after the war was still chaired by well known nazis, and profiting from chemicals developed at Auschwitz.
Yeah, I’m sure Monsanto is in good hands, and feels right at home there.
See, totally not evil, yep no evil enterprise here, just the happy little aspirin people, no horrific evil history to be seen La de da t… 🎶
Source that research was banned since the 90s? All I’m aware of is that they aren’t available commercially and sale and field testing of terminator seeds has been banned since the 00s.
Yeah, except the vast majority of seeds are infertile, meaning they can’t be replanted, means the “good ol boys” can’t survive.
Where the fuck do people come up with this shit?
No the “vast majority” of crops are not infertile. They are hybrids. Farmers buy the seeds because of a genetic phenomenon called heterosis AKA hybrid vigor. It takes expertise and a shit ton of money to make hybrid seed. If growers could get the same performance from saving their own seeds only an absolute dumbfuck would buy seeds from a seed company.
Now there are a few species that hybrids can only be made by taking advantage of mutants that have male sterility genes. The resulting hybrids are still fertile (produce viable female gametes) but need an outside source of pollen. Examples: onions, sunflowers and carrots.
The only “sterile” seed sold is seedless watermelon aka triploid seed. Seedless watermelons are only sold because the market demands it thanks to a push by the USDA after being created in Japan pre-WW2. The margins on seedless watermelon seed are often 40-50% less than hybrid diploid seed. And don’t get me started on the research cost - 14-15 generations for a new female line versus 7-8 for seeded types.
Most hybrids do not produce fertile seeds. You can test it out if you want but it doesn’t work. I used to work for a seed company. Beyond that, without fertilizer the soil itself is dead in the vast majority of farming land.
Stop your bullshit.
Not only are they fertile, it is standard protocol to purchase competitors hybrid F1 seed and produce F2 seed in most species (except corn). Eventually plant breeders create inbreds (self-pollinating for 6+ generation’s). These inbreds are the used to make new F1 hybrids. In Europe this is referred to as “plant breeders rights”.
In corn they have to get a little bit more creative. Corn breeders have to keep distinct genetically distant breeding pools to maintain heterosis in their the resulting hybrids. They pull traits from a competitors hybrid utilizing backcross breeding into their breeding pools.
I have planted seeds from round up ready soy beans. They grew just fine for my needs, which wasn’t farming. Farmers have also planted harvested hybrid seeds, Monsanto sues the ones they catch, because it’s a contract violation for those that bought seeds.
Don’t we already have enough real shit to worry about tho?
They make more money suing farmers for accidentally growing patented crops from natural seed dispersal mechanisms.
They make their money from royalty payments for GMO traits. It’s up to 3x more profit than they get off the seed alone.
No they don’t. There’s never been any legal action taken for accidentally growing GM crops.
I don’t see any natural means by which those seeds dispersed. Actually, it looks like he knew he was growing seeds that could get him in trouble
Monsanto is evil enough, we do not have to exaggerate how evil they are.
I know that you feel that you are correct because by the strict definition of the word suing, there may never have been a lawsuit, but most laymen are going to understand suing to also include being threatened with a lawsuit and settling out of court.
I feel that I’m correct because by both the strict definition of the word suing, and the inclusion of out of court settlements, I can’t find any examples of Monsanto pursuing any sort of legal action against farmers who accidentally grew their crops when the seeds were spread by natural means.
Don’t get me wrong, the concept of patenting a living thing is ghoulish and evil, and farmers should absolutely be allowed to grow whatever seeds they want. Just don’t misrepresent someone intentionally breaching a contract as something totally accidental and out of their control
Maybe Monsanto is as forgiving as you say, but I don’t believe it. I think it is a lot more likely that the type of farmers insist on regrowing from their own seed are small independents who are too far in debt to even think about fighting. I think they took the first offer given to them because it was just a smidge under the quote given to them by the lawyer they went to see where they first got a letter from Monsanto.
Monsanto is not stupid, if they ask for too much the people will fight it and go even deeper into debt to pay the lawyer and by the time Monsanto gets their cut of the remaining carcass, they won’t even make enough to cover the cost of their own lawyers. But if they make the price just a bit cheaper than the cost of fighting, the victims will hand over every penny that they can squeeze out and then go off to quietly die the slow death left to them in the NDA they had to sign to get the “deal” Monsanto offered.
Or maybe I am just jaded and a giant multinational corporation is doing the right thing for the right reasons and not taking advantage of anyone.Sure, you’ve just described one of the ways that Monsanto is evil. Keeping a deathgrip on the seed production and making the cost of signing another contract just slightly less than the cost of a potential legal battle is scummy as hell. Instead of making things up to be mad at, let’s be mad at them for that.
Does anyone else feel like this entire post and most of the comments are coming straight from a Monsanto bot/shill factory?
You’ve never been on reddit? If someone mentions Monsanto anywhere, the thread gets flooded with shills. There are whole subreddits devoted to finding posts to shill.
That’s what I love about small social media outlets like Lemmy. The big corporations just don’t bother monitoring and influencing us, it’s not worth it. We can speak freely here. You can just tell me your real name and where you live, without fear of someone abducting your family.
The moratorium is actually since 2000, but only since 2006 in its current form. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_technology
Thankfully, no country, much less any multinational corporation, would ever dare cross the UN’s nonbinding, unenforceable moratorium. Can you imagine how stern the tone of the statement of condemnation would be, once it was worded such that a reasonable plurality of countries would agree to back it?
I’m sure it’s already been done. Just locked away until nothing more than strong concerns can be voiced by ineffective authorities.
There would totally be an open letter and dozens of people would sign it
You know that Lemmy has made it when the Monsanto shills from Reddit join.
What about seedless watermelon
That’s treated with a chemical to keep it from making seeds.
Not even close.
Seedless watermelons are a triploid. These are hybrid between a tetraploid female and a diplod male. The plant has three copies of every chromosome and is unable to produce fertile gametes aka completely sterile.
Fruit formation is triggered by fertile diploid pollen (planted in the field In a 4:1 ratio). The fruit then continues to grow without embryo formation in the fruit seeds (pips).
So, the same applies to seedless grapes?
They’re often treated with hormones.
I sort of misspoke with regard to watermelons -
Seedless watermelons are created by crossing a regular watermelon with 22 chromosomes with one that’s been chemically treated to have 44 chromosomes. The resulting hybrid has 33 chromosomes, making it sterile and seedless.
Not the person you replied to but thanks. Doesn’t that contradict the meme ?
This is a bit misleading. You only need to treat the first generation of 2n watermelon with colchicine (which inhibits the movement of chromosomes during metaphase) to produce a 4n watermelon. Once you have a 4n watermelon, subsequent generations do not require colchicine treatment.
Ah, OK. That makes sense. Thank you.
Seriously? I assumed sterile hybrid
