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They're not. They're GMO denialists who recently made misleading claims about the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation work in Africa. If you want a legitimate genetic resources organization, you want Biodiversity International. These guys are just professional activists who, rather than doing something worthwhile, are just looking for something to leech off.

The GMO crops are often immune to diseases that plague traditional crops. They thrive where others die. They produce more per acre. There is a reason farmers buy the GMO seeds and that is that it makes them money.

Right. So how did farmers did before god sent us Monsantos of the world? Oh right, there used to be publicly funded agriculture projects, developing various strains by cross pollination and plain old natural selection.

For farmers in Africa, crop yields have NOTHING to do with GMOs, or even droughts or other natural famines. They have everything to do with piss-poor farming techniques and government. Case and point is Zimbabwe.

http://www.britannica.com/EBch...

And that story is not unique.

Yes they have to go back to buy more seeds but I remember my Grandfather buying new seed in the sixties. He didn't keep seed over year to year either.

I remember my grandfather, back in the 1980s, keeping seeds (oats) to plant next year. Same thing with potatoes and corn for the vegetable garden (also radishes, cabbage, etc. even saved some carrots over winter and ended up with a load of seeds from that).

You could also buy seeds from elevator for seeding. You know, that's where your grandpa most likely got his seeds. But today elevators would get sued for selling "pirated seeds"!!

http://www.grain.org/article/e...

He does not really trust them, and if you put him together with people like this http://www.grain.org/ or that http://www.semencespaysannes.o... (in French)
You'll find that they have lots in common...
Of course he (and other Free Software activists) also use things like planes for instance that are full of "non free" stuff, the position is to use
free software when ever it's possible (and not just "convenient").

Moreover your sentence

This is why the free software movement is garbage. It makes no sense outside the world of software.

makes no sense: many useful things are only useful in their specific fields it does not make them garbage...

And transparence, independence from vendor lock-in, freedom ... makes sense in many "worlds"

http://www.grain.org/article/entries/150-iraq-s-new-patent-law-a-declaration-of-war-against-farmers -- here's a link

if this is such a great idea, why not just set up a medium-sized production plant, make ethanol from "inedible sugar", and make some money?

What do they mean by "inedible sugar", anyway? Bagasse? Ultra-high cellulose sugar cane? It's not a standard term.

Besides, shipping a solid material to homes to make ethanol, then getting rid of the solid waste, is an incredibly inefficient process. You're going to need maybe 150-200 pounds of sugar to fill up the tank of an SUV. Then you have to get rid of maybe a hundred pounds of sludge. Does this thing come with a home forklift?

Darth Cheney will pwn your country and make you buy.

What, instead of forcing GMO's and patents on both local and foreign farmers? That would be welcome everywhere, perhaps in ways you don't expect.

It might cross breed with normal seed and terminate it. What you would be left with is nothing but what the friendly multinational has to offer each year. That might not be good for you.

The whole "rape seed" Monsanto insanity is a good primer on these matters. An normal farmer in Canada was forced to destroy his crops because they were contaminated by neighbors using Monsanto seed. The US has pushed these practices onto the Iraqi puppet government, so you can see where they would really like things to go.

There are fundamental problems with seed patents that need to be corrected. The contamination issue is one that makes the whole idea look foolish and economically harmful.

I don't agree.

In 1999 the last time I had to deal with patents. You had to buy patents for every single country where you plan to make business. An extremely expensive operation. Most young firms prefer to concentrate their capital on key markets such as the US, Japan and the European Union. I knew firms which proposed a world package for patents. But it doesn't change the fact that legally you have to buy patents for each market.

see: http://www.grain.org/briefings/?id=26 Today, all patents in the world are national documents granted under national rules and procedures. The PCT allows patentees to shortcut some of that process, if they wish to seek protection internationally, by allowing for preliminary examination of the application. (An invention must fulfill three criteria to be patentable: novelty, inventive step/non-obviousness and utility/industrial application. These are tested against a review of already existing inventions.) If the application holds up as valid, the inventor proceeds with national filing. The countries in which the application is filed may evaluate the patent independently or accept the findings of WIPO's examiners -- it's up to them.

US or not the patent is useless outside the national border.

Yeah well imagine the surprise of people living in India when they found their rice and spices had been patented by US Corporations and were facing demands for vastly overpriced seeds in order to continue growing what they had for hundreds of years.

Anc check out Iraq's new seed patent laws : http://www.grain.org/articles/?id=6

European Patent Office Upholds Decision to Revoke Neem Patent

Give them gm crops that work in drought conditions, defeats local varmints, etc.

Or how about stopping the promotion of global agri-monoculture and helping them bring back the native crops that work in drought conditions, defeats local varmints, etcetera.

GM crops are not only an environmental disaster waiting to happen (since plants and their pollen have this annoying habit of spreading outside where your plant them), and a corporate bastards' wet dream of controlling global food supplies, they are a solution in search of a problem.

Take this "golden rice" bullshit. The areas they're hyping to grow this stuff already have native crops that provide plenty of vitamin A - but these crops are being squeezed out by globalized agriculture.

I'm surprised no one yet has mentioned the case of the governement of Iceland selling the genetic information of its citizens. Iceland was chosen because of its long history of testing and because its population is small and very genetically homogenous. An "opt-out" scheme is included, so you don't HAVE to give away your genetic information. I believe many were convinced that they were making a contribution to mankind since this will be a very valuable database for tracing genes responsible for, for instance, hereditary diseases. But as this CNN article on the same topic points out:

Selling exclusive rights to a single corporation sets up the possibility for both exploitation of whatever information comes from the research, and for control over access to the benefits it may yield. It is ironic that such exclusive licensing deals make the quintessentially public resource into a private commodity, and may end up denying access to its benefits to the very individuals whose DNA make discoveries possible.

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