5 ms·
Where's the dystopia in a world of GM crops? Sounds perfectly fine to me.
by vectorjohn 11y ago
Where's the dystopia in a world of GM crops? Sounds perfectly fine to me.
- alextgordon 11y agoThe thugs who enforce the law, apparently.
- stephengillie 11y agoThe dystopia is the (obligatorily) evil corporation that uses its control over these crops to control the world.
- Synaesthesia 11y agoAll your food is owned and locked up by major corporations under patent law, for profit purposes which are protected and in league with the government. I have a moral problem with it. Yeah it doesn't really impact me but it impacts poor Mexican farmers and a lot of people in the 3rd world.
- Obi_Juan_Kenobi 11y agoAny novel variety of a crop is locked up in patents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_Patent_Act_of_1930 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_Patent_Act_of_1930 Like all patents, there are limitations, expiry dates, etc. It's been around for nearly a century, yet we haven't arrived at the dystopian future yet.
- makomk 11y agoThe Plant Patent Act excludes "sexual and tuber-propagated plants" - basically, pretty much all the crops you have to replant each season aren't covered, though it does restrict the propagation of fruit trees and the like. Prior to GMOs, sexually-propagated crops like corn were covered by the Plant Variety Protection Act, which is much less restrictive than the utility patents on GMOs - for example, it allows farmers to save and replant seeds, which is illegal with GMOs.
- sampo 11y agoSo why is BASF Clearfield wheat, which is non-GMO, patented?
- makomk 11y agoTo cut a long story short, plants were ineligible for utility patents (in the US at least) because they were considered "products of nature". However, the US Supreme Court decided that because GMOs existed, plants now count as something made by man rather than a product of nature and could be patented - including non-GMO ones produced using traditional breeding techniques that were previously not patentable. It's a strange decision and I'm not sure I follow their logic, but it's the law now.
- dwmtm 11y agoI think you need to draw a better comparison to http://io9.com/5691604/how-ma-bell-shelved-the-future-for-60-years http://io9.com/5691604/how-ma-bell-shelved-the-future-for-60... for this crowd.
- qiqing 11y agoOr poor Chinese farmers, in this case.
- ItsDeathball 11y agoThe dystopian part of it, in "The Calorie Man," at least, is the implication that the global crop blight that wiped out all non-GMO crops was engineered and spread by the GMO companies, which then inherited near-total control over the economy and, thus, the government.
- PsychopompPoet 11y agoSays the dupe in the novel