16 Jan 2005
Monsanto Suing Farmers Over Piracy Issues

There have been cases of this before, but the scale seems to be expanding. I wonder if anyone at Monsanto has considered the debt they owe to generations of farmers, who carefully selected the seeds that form the base of their patented products.

This is a big reason why I'd never consider planting GM seed. Part of the genius in agriculture is that innovations occur across the broad spectrum of farms and farmers: in a sense, agriculturalists were the original "open source" advocates. This is changing, and the long term effects of this political manipulation of the food supply will turn out just like all the other political manipulations of the food supply have ended throughtout history.

Monsanto Co.'s "seed police" snared soy farmer Homan McFarling in 1999, and the company is demanding he pay it hundreds of thousands of dollars for alleged technology piracy. McFarling's sin? He saved seed from one harvest and replanted it the following season, a revered and ancient agricultural practice.

(link) [Yahoo!News: Science]

00:00 /Agriculture | 1 comment | permanent link