11 ms·

Corn Wars

96 points by GabrielF00 11y ago

trhway 11y ago
i guess we're due for DRM built into the corn seeds/DNA. And in some near future one can imagine human designer genes with DRM too. You lose connection or skip monthly payment and your 3rd eye stops working...
- baseballmerpeak 11y ago
  Fashion shows for the latest designer genes
- Zikes 11y ago
  Sounds a bit like Jurassic Park.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Or like Repo Men, the plot being that artificial organs are bought on credit, and if you fail to pay in time, someone will show up and reclaim the company's property.
    - nix0n 11y ago
      I think you mean "Repo Men" not "Repo Man"
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        Right. Edited. Thanks!
    - nvader 11y ago
      Also the plot of Repo! The Genetic Opera.
- sfRattan 11y ago
  Or the development of seeds whose plants do not bear further seeds. Impossible with corn, which is entirely seeds, but possible with many fruits (apples, oranges, peaches). That way the consumer can't buy a piece fruit and plant a fruit tree... She'd have to buy the starter seeds from the company. Call it BRM: Biological Rights (read: Restrictions) Management. Edit: after some googling, I need to read the stories suggested by tartuffe78. They look really good. tartuffe78's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10081875 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10081875
  - giltleaf 11y ago
    They do have the tech for terminator genes, and I think for corn too. Basically, the corn seed is edible but it can't grow. Despite people freaking out about them, none have been marketed and companies have pledged not to sell them. Though feel free to speculate if that's because of public pressure or not.
    - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
      That would be a terrible thing to sell. A farmer plants the seed, the plants grow, the pollen drifts far and wide, and the farmer next door winds up with his crop not sprouting next year. And then come the lawsuits...
      - Kalium 11y ago
        Practically speaking, that wouldn't happen in the first world. As the article mentions, first world farmers basically never keep their seed anyway.
      - Obi_Juan_Kenobi 11y ago
        That's not how terminator works, nor is that how modern agriculture works. Fields for seed are far removed from productive fields. It's trivial to keep them separate from contamination; in fact, it's essential that this is done to make selfs or directed crosses. Terminator was made to address concerns about transgenes entering the wild. Think of it like a mule; you still have offspring, but they're infertile. That's what terminator does. It cannot ruin a crop. Seed is still made and can be sold and eaten. It simply is infertile. A construct was first developed by the ARS and USDA, and they were quite right to pursue this. It's a useful technology.
jerf 11y ago
I am reminded of a comment made about the Melissa virus [1]: While the Melissa license is a bit unclear, Melissa aggressively encourages free distribution of its source code. While the license on genes is a bit unclear, they aggressively encourage free distribution of their source code. How are we going to prevent the Chinese from standing downwind of a farm plot and catching pollen for analysis? (I say "Chinese" only because that's what the story happens to be about... it applies to anyone, of course.) Or sequencing them through mundane means in the US and transmitting the gene code back to China? Physically preventing people from "stealing" your genes is impossible in the long term. Only legal protection can work, and that is probably questionable in the long term too. [1]: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/1999/04/msg00292.html https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/1999/04/msg00292.html
- acqq 11y ago
  The article states the apparent agenda at its end: "The intent of the U.S. government to use food as an ever-more powerful point of leverage to wield over large, increasingly hungry nations like China. The prosecution of Mo Hailong and his circle stands as a warning to the Chinese government, issued through its proxy companies. The ears in the field, the seeds in the ground, even the pollen on the wind, are American-owned and American-protected. They are available to the world as food only if you agree to our conditions and are willing to pay our price." And the US, as the only superpower (1) has many ways of making other nations to comply. One nice example, related to the GM food and the EU opposition of it, can be extrapolated from the links: June 2003: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2003/jun/24/gm.food http://www.theguardian.com/science/2003/jun/24/gm.food "Mr Bush's comments came barely a month after his administration took Europe's ban on GM crops to the World Trade Organisation, saying the moratorium was a barrier to trade." Just a little later: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2003/jul/02/gm.food2 http://www.theguardian.com/science/2003/jul/02/gm.food2 "The European parliament today lifted the ban on genetically modified foods, instead choosing to impose a strict labelling regime that could stave off a trade war with the US." ------ 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potential_superpowers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potential_superpowers
  - deleted 11y ago
tartuffe78 11y ago
Reminds me Paolo Bacigalupi's stories, "Wind-up girl", "The calorie men" and others. He's created a dystopian world of GM crops being the only viable food source on the planet.
- cbd1984 11y ago
  > GM crops being the only viable food source on the planet. They already are. Or do you think maize and the current varieties of wheat, fruit trees, rice, and so on are natural?
  - tomp 11y ago
    They've been selected by humans for millennia, but they are not GM in the usual sense of the world.
    - scott_s 11y ago
      From the submitted article: "Today, it’s estimated that 92 percent of American corn and 94 percent of American soybeans are GMOs, almost all of it produced by Monsanto or DuPont Pioneer, and again, nearly half of the seed sold globally."
    - vonmoltke 11y ago
      The "usual sense of the word" is a politically charged and unscientific one. There is nothing special about merging genes in a lab versus merging genes by forcing plants to grow together in a field. The end result is the same: a hybrid plant.
      - tomp 11y ago
        I don't find this argument convincing. That's like saying, there's nothing special in the Manhattan project, we could as well try putting different combinations of materials in the same room and wait for them to randomly recombine into an atomic bomb.
      - inversionOf 11y ago
dangerlibrary 11y ago
Is there a term for regulatory capture of bodies that aren't really regulatory? This seems a lot like the result of elected folks leaning on the FBI/DOJ about issues that are important to campaign donors. The extreme measures being taken to try to stop something that is impossible to prevent feels like a stunt, like posturing. As the article mentions, the genetic information is available to anyone driving down a road in Iowa or Illinois. The intellectual property paranoia focused on seed engineering companies feels very similar to the domestic patent legislation/litigation discussions of the past decade or so.
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  Ultimately, you're right. But they can slow it down, and they can make a lot of money in the years in between. And even patents only give you 20 years. After that, it's free to anyone, world wide.
- rayiner 11y ago
  Calling this "regulatory capture" eviscerates the meaning of the term. Enforcing laws important to rich corporations/people? Yeah, but that's the history of the world. And here, its a no-brainer for the DOJ/FBI to go after this. It does Americans, not the rich or the poor not anyone, any good if the Chinese can use the fruits of our agricultural R&D for free. The fact that it's easy to violate the patent rights of these agricultural companies is neither here nor there. I can drive over to Ted Turner's land in Montana and pitch a tent, and it'd probably be weeks before anybody noticed. But that doesn't mean he doesn't have a right to eject trespassers from his land. Ultimately, the U.S. has to ask itself a very hard question re: China. Do we want to be in a race to the bottom with them, or do we want to use whatever competitive advantages we have? The Chinese can grow corn as easily as we can. They can't genetically engineer corn like we do, unless they copy our technology. In the long run they'll get the technology--it's inevitable. But its in our self-interest to put that off as long as possible.
  - stephengillie 11y ago
    > It does Americans, not the rich or the poor not anyone, any good if the Chinese can use the fruits of our agricultural R&D for free. It does the Chinese a bit of good. Arguably, it's bad for some residents of the USA but humanity probably benefits overall. I have no sources for this claim. > I can drive over to Ted Turner's land in Montana and pitch a tent, and it'd probably be weeks before anybody noticed. But that doesn't mean he doesn't have a right to eject trespassers from his land. We do have Squatter's Rights, but those usually take most of a decade to kick in. Do you think the laws around GM should have longer statutes of limitations? > The Chinese can grow corn as easily as we can. They have more of all of the same resources as we do - land, raw genetic material (crops), smart people, research facilities. But they apparently can't innovate. Why not? We should look to protect our innovative abilities, more than we protect their products.
autobahn 11y ago
It's almost as if he's asking for these companies to stop innovating. Crop research isn't free, and the government can't (or won't) afford to do it. Obviously the solution is to have companies fund the research and be expected to give it away to the world and not protect what they've created. I wish people stopped the whole "monsanto is evil! GMO is evil!" bullshit, and start lobbying their government to fund public crop genetics research.
ilaksh 11y ago
I guess if the Chinese can't figure it out for themselves then they should just starve. Malthus would be proud of the people in this thread. By the way, population isn't growing nearly as fast as it used to. Also the answer to these problems is high-tech ultra-local subsistence farming (aeroponics/aquaponics/dwarf orchards in/on the home) and the seeds and other genetic enhancements should be open-source. If we leave our food security up to a few giant American companies we are asking for trouble. We meaning the global population, which by and large is currently being fucked over by the system.
- codingdave 11y ago
  Your first sentence is overly harsh. But the gist of what you are saying is correct. I'm not sure HN is the correct venue for discussions of small-scale ag, though. Many people online have bought into the corporate premise that small-scale agriculture cannot produce enough food. They tend to have studies backing their claims, while all I can show is an actual homestead, actually producing food. To be honest, I've stopped caring what people online think. I'll keep just growing my own food, offline. If I am wrong, I am just sustainably feeding my family, using renewable energy instead of fossils fuels, and eating local organic food, all the while teaching my kids a good work ethic, for nothing.
  - afarrell 11y ago
    > actual homestead actually producing food How much land do you have under cultivation, what is your growing season, and how much water do you consume? The fact that your farm can feed your family is not enough to show that your methods, if scaled up, could feed 315 million Americans (plus an unknown number of people we export to) on 914 million acres of farmland. The fact that the argument also comes from corporations does not change its mathematics.
    - erikpukinskis 11y ago
      Jeez, do the math. 3 acres per person. You can grow millions of calories per year per acre. 2500 calories times 365 days is only about a million calories. Potatoes are 17 million calories per acre. There's plenty of space. The problem is meat.
boof 11y ago
this article smells funny...

96 points by GabrielF00 11y ago

i guess we're due for DRM built into the corn seeds/DNA. And in some near future one can imagine human designer genes with DRM too. You lose connection or skip monthly payment and your 3rd eye stops working...

baseballmerpeak 11y ago
Fashion shows for the latest designer genes
Zikes 11y ago
Sounds a bit like Jurassic Park.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Or like Repo Men, the plot being that artificial organs are bought on credit, and if you fail to pay in time, someone will show up and reclaim the company's property.
  - nix0n 11y ago
    I think you mean "Repo Men" not "Repo Man"
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      Right. Edited. Thanks!
  - nvader 11y ago
    Also the plot of Repo! The Genetic Opera.
sfRattan 11y ago
Or the development of seeds whose plants do not bear further seeds. Impossible with corn, which is entirely seeds, but possible with many fruits (apples, oranges, peaches). That way the consumer can't buy a piece fruit and plant a fruit tree... She'd have to buy the starter seeds from the company. Call it BRM: Biological Rights (read: Restrictions) Management. Edit: after some googling, I need to read the stories suggested by tartuffe78. They look really good. tartuffe78's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10081875 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10081875
- giltleaf 11y ago
  They do have the tech for terminator genes, and I think for corn too. Basically, the corn seed is edible but it can't grow. Despite people freaking out about them, none have been marketed and companies have pledged not to sell them. Though feel free to speculate if that's because of public pressure or not.
  - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
    That would be a terrible thing to sell. A farmer plants the seed, the plants grow, the pollen drifts far and wide, and the farmer next door winds up with his crop not sprouting next year. And then come the lawsuits...
    - Kalium 11y ago
      Practically speaking, that wouldn't happen in the first world. As the article mentions, first world farmers basically never keep their seed anyway.
    - Obi_Juan_Kenobi 11y ago
      That's not how terminator works, nor is that how modern agriculture works. Fields for seed are far removed from productive fields. It's trivial to keep them separate from contamination; in fact, it's essential that this is done to make selfs or directed crosses. Terminator was made to address concerns about transgenes entering the wild. Think of it like a mule; you still have offspring, but they're infertile. That's what terminator does. It cannot ruin a crop. Seed is still made and can be sold and eaten. It simply is infertile. A construct was first developed by the ARS and USDA, and they were quite right to pursue this. It's a useful technology.

jerf 11y ago

I am reminded of a comment made about the Melissa virus [1]: While the Melissa license is a bit unclear, Melissa aggressively encourages free distribution of its source code. While the license on genes is a bit unclear, they aggressively encourage free distribution of their source code. How are we going to prevent the Chinese from standing downwind of a farm plot and catching pollen for analysis? (I say "Chinese" only because that's what the story happens to be about... it applies to anyone, of course.) Or sequencing them through mundane means in the US and transmitting the gene code back to China? Physically preventing people from "stealing" your genes is impossible in the long term. Only legal protection can work, and that is probably questionable in the long term too. [1]: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/1999/04/msg00292.html https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/1999/04/msg00292.html

acqq 11y ago
The article states the apparent agenda at its end: "The intent of the U.S. government to use food as an ever-more powerful point of leverage to wield over large, increasingly hungry nations like China. The prosecution of Mo Hailong and his circle stands as a warning to the Chinese government, issued through its proxy companies. The ears in the field, the seeds in the ground, even the pollen on the wind, are American-owned and American-protected. They are available to the world as food only if you agree to our conditions and are willing to pay our price." And the US, as the only superpower (1) has many ways of making other nations to comply. One nice example, related to the GM food and the EU opposition of it, can be extrapolated from the links: June 2003: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2003/jun/24/gm.food http://www.theguardian.com/science/2003/jun/24/gm.food "Mr Bush's comments came barely a month after his administration took Europe's ban on GM crops to the World Trade Organisation, saying the moratorium was a barrier to trade." Just a little later: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2003/jul/02/gm.food2 http://www.theguardian.com/science/2003/jul/02/gm.food2 "The European parliament today lifted the ban on genetically modified foods, instead choosing to impose a strict labelling regime that could stave off a trade war with the US." ------ 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potential_superpowers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potential_superpowers
- deleted 11y ago

tartuffe78 11y ago

Reminds me Paolo Bacigalupi's stories, "Wind-up girl", "The calorie men" and others. He's created a dystopian world of GM crops being the only viable food source on the planet.

cbd1984 11y ago
> GM crops being the only viable food source on the planet. They already are. Or do you think maize and the current varieties of wheat, fruit trees, rice, and so on are natural?
- tomp 11y ago
  They've been selected by humans for millennia, but they are not GM in the usual sense of the world.
  - scott_s 11y ago
    From the submitted article: "Today, it’s estimated that 92 percent of American corn and 94 percent of American soybeans are GMOs, almost all of it produced by Monsanto or DuPont Pioneer, and again, nearly half of the seed sold globally."
  - vonmoltke 11y ago
    The "usual sense of the word" is a politically charged and unscientific one. There is nothing special about merging genes in a lab versus merging genes by forcing plants to grow together in a field. The end result is the same: a hybrid plant.
    - tomp 11y ago
      I don't find this argument convincing. That's like saying, there's nothing special in the Manhattan project, we could as well try putting different combinations of materials in the same room and wait for them to randomly recombine into an atomic bomb.
    - inversionOf 11y ago

dangerlibrary 11y ago

Is there a term for regulatory capture of bodies that aren't really regulatory? This seems a lot like the result of elected folks leaning on the FBI/DOJ about issues that are important to campaign donors. The extreme measures being taken to try to stop something that is impossible to prevent feels like a stunt, like posturing. As the article mentions, the genetic information is available to anyone driving down a road in Iowa or Illinois. The intellectual property paranoia focused on seed engineering companies feels very similar to the domestic patent legislation/litigation discussions of the past decade or so.

AnimalMuppet 11y ago
Ultimately, you're right. But they can slow it down, and they can make a lot of money in the years in between. And even patents only give you 20 years. After that, it's free to anyone, world wide.
rayiner 11y ago
Calling this "regulatory capture" eviscerates the meaning of the term. Enforcing laws important to rich corporations/people? Yeah, but that's the history of the world. And here, its a no-brainer for the DOJ/FBI to go after this. It does Americans, not the rich or the poor not anyone, any good if the Chinese can use the fruits of our agricultural R&D for free. The fact that it's easy to violate the patent rights of these agricultural companies is neither here nor there. I can drive over to Ted Turner's land in Montana and pitch a tent, and it'd probably be weeks before anybody noticed. But that doesn't mean he doesn't have a right to eject trespassers from his land. Ultimately, the U.S. has to ask itself a very hard question re: China. Do we want to be in a race to the bottom with them, or do we want to use whatever competitive advantages we have? The Chinese can grow corn as easily as we can. They can't genetically engineer corn like we do, unless they copy our technology. In the long run they'll get the technology--it's inevitable. But its in our self-interest to put that off as long as possible.
- stephengillie 11y ago
  > It does Americans, not the rich or the poor not anyone, any good if the Chinese can use the fruits of our agricultural R&D for free. It does the Chinese a bit of good. Arguably, it's bad for some residents of the USA but humanity probably benefits overall. I have no sources for this claim. > I can drive over to Ted Turner's land in Montana and pitch a tent, and it'd probably be weeks before anybody noticed. But that doesn't mean he doesn't have a right to eject trespassers from his land. We do have Squatter's Rights, but those usually take most of a decade to kick in. Do you think the laws around GM should have longer statutes of limitations? > The Chinese can grow corn as easily as we can. They have more of all of the same resources as we do - land, raw genetic material (crops), smart people, research facilities. But they apparently can't innovate. Why not? We should look to protect our innovative abilities, more than we protect their products.

autobahn 11y ago

It's almost as if he's asking for these companies to stop innovating. Crop research isn't free, and the government can't (or won't) afford to do it. Obviously the solution is to have companies fund the research and be expected to give it away to the world and not protect what they've created. I wish people stopped the whole "monsanto is evil! GMO is evil!" bullshit, and start lobbying their government to fund public crop genetics research.

ilaksh 11y ago

I guess if the Chinese can't figure it out for themselves then they should just starve. Malthus would be proud of the people in this thread. By the way, population isn't growing nearly as fast as it used to. Also the answer to these problems is high-tech ultra-local subsistence farming (aeroponics/aquaponics/dwarf orchards in/on the home) and the seeds and other genetic enhancements should be open-source. If we leave our food security up to a few giant American companies we are asking for trouble. We meaning the global population, which by and large is currently being fucked over by the system.

codingdave 11y ago
Your first sentence is overly harsh. But the gist of what you are saying is correct. I'm not sure HN is the correct venue for discussions of small-scale ag, though. Many people online have bought into the corporate premise that small-scale agriculture cannot produce enough food. They tend to have studies backing their claims, while all I can show is an actual homestead, actually producing food. To be honest, I've stopped caring what people online think. I'll keep just growing my own food, offline. If I am wrong, I am just sustainably feeding my family, using renewable energy instead of fossils fuels, and eating local organic food, all the while teaching my kids a good work ethic, for nothing.
- afarrell 11y ago
  > actual homestead actually producing food How much land do you have under cultivation, what is your growing season, and how much water do you consume? The fact that your farm can feed your family is not enough to show that your methods, if scaled up, could feed 315 million Americans (plus an unknown number of people we export to) on 914 million acres of farmland. The fact that the argument also comes from corporations does not change its mathematics.
  - erikpukinskis 11y ago
    Jeez, do the math. 3 acres per person. You can grow millions of calories per year per acre. 2500 calories times 365 days is only about a million calories. Potatoes are 17 million calories per acre. There's plenty of space. The problem is meat.

boof 11y ago

this article smells funny...