I am involved in the agricultural community, and this sort of crowdsourced assertion has been bouncing around in the internet echo chamber for years. It started

I am involved in the agricultural community, and this sort of crowdsourced assertion has been bouncing around in the internet echo chamber for years. It started with Percy Schmeiser: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc._v._Schmeiser http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc._v._Schmeis... You can read that yourself and draw your own conclusions (hint: you can't seed upwards of 90% of your field by driving past it with a truck). This has since then snowballed into the story of Monsanto employing a vast legal team to oppress the poor 'simple farmers'. This is patronizing - farmers (outside of communities that explicitly shun technology) are generally a very well-informed and technologically adept crowd, well used to hacking together electronics packages to make their lives easier (a cool example http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1254445743 http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1254445743). The whole motherhood and apple pie callback to the days of yore definitely doesn't hurt the message though, so it stays around. Anyway, take a look at the material on both sides of this topic.