7 ms·

I see the patenting of life forms as being insidiously evil. In the past we had heirloom seeds which, although proprietary, were not patent protected, so peopl

by D9u 13y ago

I see the patenting of life forms as being insidiously evil. In the past we had heirloom seeds which, although proprietary, were not patent protected, so people who shared their superior seed stock didn't run afoul of courts and lawyers. Call me a pitchfork bearing loon but I find patenting life forms to be egregiously reprehensible.

Blahah 13y ago
We still have heirloom seeds - anyone who wants to can develop their own varieties and share them as freely as they like. Many thousands of people do this. However, those varieties are just extremely unlikely to be as consistently high-yielding as the latest commercial varieties. Patents serve the same purpose in farming as they do elsewhere: it makes it worthwhile for companies to invest the hundreds of millions of dollars it costs to drive crop yields ever higher. I share your moral outrage at the idea of patenting life, and all my own research as well as all the genetic technology produced by our consortium on the C4 rice project will be made free (as in beer and speech). However, agriculture relies on agricultural companies, and they need some way to make money. If people can just take their technology and grow it again themselves, there is no way for them to recoup their investment and we simply won't have better crops.
- rjzzleep 13y ago
  > We still have heirloom seeds - anyone who wants to can develop their own varieties and share them as freely as they like. Many thousands of people do this. However, those varieties are just extremely unlikely to be as consistently high-yielding as the latest commercial varieties. just to chime in here. for a majority of indian farmers - partly which triggered the mass suicide by pesticide - they turned out to be not at all as high yielding as was claimed. now you could say, ahhh, but wait a second. they didn't use as much water and pesticide as they were supposed to, and you might be right. but then it depends on your definition of yield. their own crops had a higher yield given the conditions of the soil, and water.
  - hibikir 13y ago
    Great, if the GMO yields less, the farmer doesn't buy it again, and then the market deals with the problem. Definition of yield? Bushels per acre, or kg per hectare. There's not much of an issue there. The same plant might yield very differently in different fields, just like it yields differently each year. If you are conducting trials, you have to plant a bunch of stuff together vs well known controls. Something that yields 140 bushels per acre on average might give you just 58 in the wrong year. Just look at what happened to most of the US fall crop in 2012. Now, if you plant a variety of plant that does well in X conditions, and you actually plant it in Y conditions, then yeah, pick between changing the condition or using a different variety.
    - rjzzleep 13y ago
      > Great, if the GMO yields less, the farmer doesn't buy it again, and then the market deals with the problem. sounds great. you're assuming that most people are critical of these crops. have any means to research what was mentioned(ie. internet). and have the means to recover from these loans, but if they did why would they need the loans to buy these crops to begin with?
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
  - coin 13y ago
    The farmers' suicides in India caused by GMO has been debunked. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmers%27_suicides_in_India#GM_crops https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmers%27_suicides_in_India#G... http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/17881/are-gmo-crops-to-blame-for-farmer-suicides-in-india http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/17881/are-gmo-cr... http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/nov/05/gmcrops-india http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/nov/05/gmcrops-i... http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v27/n1/full/nbt0109-9.html http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v27/n1/full/nbt0109-9.html
- kiba 13y ago
  Patents serve the same purpose in farming as they do elsewhere: it makes it worthwhile for companies to invest the hundreds of millions of dollars it costs to drive crop yields ever higher. This rest on the assumption that the patent system is the best way to structure a market and incentivize agricultural R&D.
  - svenkatesh 13y ago
    What, in your opinion, is the best way to structure a market and incentivize agricultural R&D?
  - mpyne 13y ago
    More accurately, it rests on the assumption that the patent system actually available now is the best way to structure this market activity. But I don't see GMO opponents offering better incentive structures, I see them making up non-scientific arguments that make no sense.
- zanny 13y ago
  > it makes it worthwhile for companies to invest the hundreds of millions of dollars it costs to drive crop yields ever higher. I'd figure higher crop yields are incentive enough to invest in higher yield seeds. As in, smart farmers would invest profits into developing better seeds to give them more reliable or higher yields. It doesn't require an artificial profit motive attached to the development of seeds themselves if they are a net gain. That is the same argument I have against big pharma - drugs are useful because they abate symptoms or cure disease. That right there is a motivator to develop drugs - attaching artificial profit motives to their development don't change the fundamentals.
  - davidw 13y ago
    > smart farmers would invest profits into developing better seeds There are several problems with the economics in your response. Specialization is good, economically speaking: farmers should concentrate on being good farmers, not on trying to oversee research projects in far-off universities or labs. By having a market, it's also possible for companies to bring new products to market without charging the farmers a dime unless the products are actually any good. This is also what's known as a coordination problem. Each farmer's profits are probably not that high, so one of them on their own is not going to be able to fund this research. So how do they coordinate their work? Markets provide a pretty good answer. Also, as Blahah mentions, the lack of patents means that there is a free rider problem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_of_labour http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_of_labour http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordination_game http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordination_game http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_rider_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_rider_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_goods http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_goods
    - Blahah 13y ago
      Thanks for linking - I've thought about all these things, but didn't know the terms. Accessing the literature is basically impossible without knowing to call them 'coordination game' or 'free rider problem'.
  - 13y ago
- mcv 13y ago
  > However, those varieties are just extremely unlikely to be as consistently high-yielding as the latest commercial varieties. Are GMO crops really consistently high yielding? I've heard of some statistics that showed this wasn't actually the case. I don't have any source at hand, but I recall reading that in Europe, where GMO crops are far more restricted than in the US, crop yields actually grew faster over the past decades than in the US, where GMO crops are common. Also, monoculture makes your crop awfully vulnerable to new diseases. Genetic diversity is much more robust.
  - manicdee 13y ago
    Generally speaking, GMO crops are lower-yielding than heirloom varieties, unless you apply the requisite fertiliser, pesticides and herbicides. With the addition of those chemicals the GMO crops perform better since they are more tolerant of excess nutrients, and better able to convert the excess nutrients into the desired product.
    - mcv 13y ago
      So if you want to reduce reliance on chemicals (which I do), then GMOs are a bad idea? Personally I'm a big fan of projects that use more natural ways of fighting weeds and pests. I've read about some very effective programs that reduced pests by planting a specific plant around the crop fields, or (re)introducing a predator of that pest.
      - onetimeonly 13y ago
        What do you mean by chemicals? all food production uses chemicals. If you want to reduce monoculture, then monoculture is a bad idea :)
  - mrerrormessage 13y ago
    Maybe someone could research and patent a fungus or virus that only attacks roundup-ready plants? I wonder how much Monsanto would pay to bury that...
- D9u 13y ago
  If people can just take their technology and grow it again themselves, there is no way for them to recoup their investment and we simply won't have better crops. Thousands of years of selective breeding refutes the above statement. It's not always about ROI. Some of us just like variety. I do agree with your sentiment, it's just the legal aspects that I dislike. Oh for a world without money & greed!
SamReidHughes 13y ago
Hi pitchfork bearing loon, feel free to mention specific moral axioms behind your opinion at your own leisure.
jjoonathan 13y ago
They aren't patenting life forms, rather their modifications to life forms. > In the past we had heirloom seeds In the past we didn't have genetic engineering technology that could beat the "heirloom" mixture of selective breeding and snake oil. Now we do, and it has to be funded somehow or society doesn't benefit from that technology.
randomdata 13y ago
Why pick on Monsanto though? Dupont, Bayer, BASF, Syngenta, just to name a few, all have seed patents of their own.
evan_ 13y ago
> I see the patenting of life forms as being insidiously evil. Why?

by D9u 13y ago

Blahah 13y ago

We still have heirloom seeds - anyone who wants to can develop their own varieties and share them as freely as they like. Many thousands of people do this. However, those varieties are just extremely unlikely to be as consistently high-yielding as the latest commercial varieties. Patents serve the same purpose in farming as they do elsewhere: it makes it worthwhile for companies to invest the hundreds of millions of dollars it costs to drive crop yields ever higher. I share your moral outrage at the idea of patenting life, and all my own research as well as all the genetic technology produced by our consortium on the C4 rice project will be made free (as in beer and speech). However, agriculture relies on agricultural companies, and they need some way to make money. If people can just take their technology and grow it again themselves, there is no way for them to recoup their investment and we simply won't have better crops.

rjzzleep 13y ago
> We still have heirloom seeds - anyone who wants to can develop their own varieties and share them as freely as they like. Many thousands of people do this. However, those varieties are just extremely unlikely to be as consistently high-yielding as the latest commercial varieties. just to chime in here. for a majority of indian farmers - partly which triggered the mass suicide by pesticide - they turned out to be not at all as high yielding as was claimed. now you could say, ahhh, but wait a second. they didn't use as much water and pesticide as they were supposed to, and you might be right. but then it depends on your definition of yield. their own crops had a higher yield given the conditions of the soil, and water.
- hibikir 13y ago
  Great, if the GMO yields less, the farmer doesn't buy it again, and then the market deals with the problem. Definition of yield? Bushels per acre, or kg per hectare. There's not much of an issue there. The same plant might yield very differently in different fields, just like it yields differently each year. If you are conducting trials, you have to plant a bunch of stuff together vs well known controls. Something that yields 140 bushels per acre on average might give you just 58 in the wrong year. Just look at what happened to most of the US fall crop in 2012. Now, if you plant a variety of plant that does well in X conditions, and you actually plant it in Y conditions, then yeah, pick between changing the condition or using a different variety.
  - rjzzleep 13y ago
    > Great, if the GMO yields less, the farmer doesn't buy it again, and then the market deals with the problem. sounds great. you're assuming that most people are critical of these crops. have any means to research what was mentioned(ie. internet). and have the means to recover from these loans, but if they did why would they need the loans to buy these crops to begin with?
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
- coin 13y ago
  The farmers' suicides in India caused by GMO has been debunked. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmers%27_suicides_in_India#GM_crops https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmers%27_suicides_in_India#G... http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/17881/are-gmo-crops-to-blame-for-farmer-suicides-in-india http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/17881/are-gmo-cr... http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/nov/05/gmcrops-india http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/nov/05/gmcrops-i... http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v27/n1/full/nbt0109-9.html http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v27/n1/full/nbt0109-9.html
kiba 13y ago
Patents serve the same purpose in farming as they do elsewhere: it makes it worthwhile for companies to invest the hundreds of millions of dollars it costs to drive crop yields ever higher. This rest on the assumption that the patent system is the best way to structure a market and incentivize agricultural R&D.
- svenkatesh 13y ago
  What, in your opinion, is the best way to structure a market and incentivize agricultural R&D?
- mpyne 13y ago
  More accurately, it rests on the assumption that the patent system actually available now is the best way to structure this market activity. But I don't see GMO opponents offering better incentive structures, I see them making up non-scientific arguments that make no sense.
zanny 13y ago
> it makes it worthwhile for companies to invest the hundreds of millions of dollars it costs to drive crop yields ever higher. I'd figure higher crop yields are incentive enough to invest in higher yield seeds. As in, smart farmers would invest profits into developing better seeds to give them more reliable or higher yields. It doesn't require an artificial profit motive attached to the development of seeds themselves if they are a net gain. That is the same argument I have against big pharma - drugs are useful because they abate symptoms or cure disease. That right there is a motivator to develop drugs - attaching artificial profit motives to their development don't change the fundamentals.
- davidw 13y ago
  > smart farmers would invest profits into developing better seeds There are several problems with the economics in your response. Specialization is good, economically speaking: farmers should concentrate on being good farmers, not on trying to oversee research projects in far-off universities or labs. By having a market, it's also possible for companies to bring new products to market without charging the farmers a dime unless the products are actually any good. This is also what's known as a coordination problem. Each farmer's profits are probably not that high, so one of them on their own is not going to be able to fund this research. So how do they coordinate their work? Markets provide a pretty good answer. Also, as Blahah mentions, the lack of patents means that there is a free rider problem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_of_labour http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_of_labour http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordination_game http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordination_game http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_rider_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_rider_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_goods http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_goods
  - Blahah 13y ago
    Thanks for linking - I've thought about all these things, but didn't know the terms. Accessing the literature is basically impossible without knowing to call them 'coordination game' or 'free rider problem'.
- 13y ago
mcv 13y ago
> However, those varieties are just extremely unlikely to be as consistently high-yielding as the latest commercial varieties. Are GMO crops really consistently high yielding? I've heard of some statistics that showed this wasn't actually the case. I don't have any source at hand, but I recall reading that in Europe, where GMO crops are far more restricted than in the US, crop yields actually grew faster over the past decades than in the US, where GMO crops are common. Also, monoculture makes your crop awfully vulnerable to new diseases. Genetic diversity is much more robust.
- manicdee 13y ago
  Generally speaking, GMO crops are lower-yielding than heirloom varieties, unless you apply the requisite fertiliser, pesticides and herbicides. With the addition of those chemicals the GMO crops perform better since they are more tolerant of excess nutrients, and better able to convert the excess nutrients into the desired product.
  - mcv 13y ago
    So if you want to reduce reliance on chemicals (which I do), then GMOs are a bad idea? Personally I'm a big fan of projects that use more natural ways of fighting weeds and pests. I've read about some very effective programs that reduced pests by planting a specific plant around the crop fields, or (re)introducing a predator of that pest.
    - onetimeonly 13y ago
      What do you mean by chemicals? all food production uses chemicals. If you want to reduce monoculture, then monoculture is a bad idea :)
- mrerrormessage 13y ago
  Maybe someone could research and patent a fungus or virus that only attacks roundup-ready plants? I wonder how much Monsanto would pay to bury that...
D9u 13y ago
If people can just take their technology and grow it again themselves, there is no way for them to recoup their investment and we simply won't have better crops. Thousands of years of selective breeding refutes the above statement. It's not always about ROI. Some of us just like variety. I do agree with your sentiment, it's just the legal aspects that I dislike. Oh for a world without money & greed!

SamReidHughes 13y ago

Hi pitchfork bearing loon, feel free to mention specific moral axioms behind your opinion at your own leisure.

jjoonathan 13y ago

They aren't patenting life forms, rather their modifications to life forms. > In the past we had heirloom seeds In the past we didn't have genetic engineering technology that could beat the "heirloom" mixture of selective breeding and snake oil. Now we do, and it has to be funded somehow or society doesn't benefit from that technology.

randomdata 13y ago

Why pick on Monsanto though? Dupont, Bayer, BASF, Syngenta, just to name a few, all have seed patents of their own.

evan_ 13y ago

> I see the patenting of life forms as being insidiously evil. Why?