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Plant a Seed, Get Sued?
Friar_MJK writes "Now even traditionally non-tech-savvy farmers are getting the rap for piracy. This isn't your grandma's p2p filesharing, but rather replanting bio-engineered seeds. Somehow the powers-that-be got the idea that replanting seeds grown from your own soil is a crime. A company called Monsanto sells those specially engineered seeds, and according to their license agreements, they make it illegal to replant the seeds harvested from a previous crop. To enforce this, they have brought many hard-working farmers to court and even thrown some in jail. According to the story, the company has not lost a case yet." We've had a couple of stories about Monsanto suing a Canadian farmer, but there hasn't been a lot of U.S. press devoted to the issue.
simple for the farmers. Don't buy their seeds.
Monsanto is the true farmer's Sauron. Monsanto is about chemical factory farming (in other words, anti-Farming). My best friend is a small farmer. He has some livestock, he leases out his tobacco allotment (this is Virginia), and he raises some small "cash crops" which are all legal and vary from year to year. Unless he's not telling me everything. He steadfastly refuses to use chemicals and accept subsidies (except for that tobacco allotment thing).
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
If they can engineer a seed to resist Roundup, why can't they also engineer a seed that has a lower shelf life not allowing them to be saved for another planting season?
...is why these farmers are buying Monsanto seed at all. They buy it because Monsanto has engineered their seeds to be particularly resistant to their own herbacide, Roundup. Farmers just dump Roundup by the ton on their bean fields, and basically forget about it.
Sweet deal for Monsanto, and it makes growing soybeans very easy and profitable of course, but where does all that Roundup go, do you think? Can you say, Water Table? There are a lot of people very worried about the over use of Roundup by a lot of farmers in the midwest.
There was a TV show that gave the story about a farmer somewhere in the US midwest who was approached by Monsanto and asked to cough up. The farmer refused.
So, the lawyers walked in and things started to get nasty.
Then the farmer pointed out that the 'illegal' crops that Monsanto was so annoyed about were not actually planted by him on his property - the Monsanto investigators apparently were unable to use the appropriate maps and GPS units to sort this out.
I think the issue was eventually settled out of court.
The most interesting statistic would be how many false positives were settled before reaching court. Not so much interesting as a masure of how stupid corporations can be, but rather as an indication of how much stress and pain that a corporation can cause without any form of justification or oversight.
Linda Fisher
Deputy Administrator
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Guess for which company she was a lobbyist before being appointed by President Bush.
How far do you think that case would get?
Ok, #1, genetically engineering seeds for crops is a far cry from engineered steriods or drugs. It is finding the genes that tell a crop when to stop growing, or when to trigger certain events. Once we identify those genes it's just a matter of manipulating. Same thing with "roundup ready" soybeans (the same crop being sued over) which is genetically resistant to a particular herbicide that kills all the other weeds in the field, allowing the beans to grow tall. I grew up on a farm, was in FFA in high school, and go to one of, if not THE top Agriculture schools in the nation/world (though my major is technology at said school). I know people whose majors are horticulture, i've heard lectures from researchers and professors who know this stuff on the genetic level. There is nothing wrong with properly engineering crops for higher yields.
#2) The entire point of Monsanto suing the farmers is wrong. They pride themselves on helping to feed teh world. Now if any of you tech geeks would have worked a labor-type job at some point in your life, you'd know the extortion they have on the market. Both the round-up you spray to kill the weeds, and the seeds themselves. Chances are the farmers who were reusing their crops were still using MONSANTO BRANDED WEED KILLER. This is a case of straight up greed, no other way around it.
This is one of several big issues that is giving GM crops such a bad name in the rest of the world.
Europeans are well aware of the issue; the anti-GM protesters have used it very effectively to win support. There are stories in the news of non-GM farmers being sued because of cross-polination that they weren't aware of and had no control over, and it has upset a lot of people.
There are African countries that have refused food aid from the US because it would include GM crops. That grain would be useless to a rural African, because the first thing they would want to do would be to keep a portion of it to plant for next year, even if it was intended as food aid (that's how subsistence farming works).
Personally, I avoid engineered food for other reasons, but the legal issues are certainly helping to put a lot of other people off them as well.
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
(1) Pause for a moment before going into "complain about big corporation" mode.
(2) Monsanto and the farmer had signed an agreement.
I think the bigger issue here, however, is the question of whether Monsanto should be doing this. Looking at this situaion from Monsanto's point of view, imagine spending hundreds of millions creating genetically modified plants. You sell them to one farmer. He turns around the every year and replants them. This means you make only one sale to each farmer. Now, it seems to me that Monsanto should probably have a two-tier system: buy the seeds for one season (cheap, but you have to buy them each year), or buy seed which you can replant, but you are limited to a specific number of acres each year. There are additional issues of "what happens to the licence when/if the farm is bought by someone else" (which is why a licence should be limited to a certain number of acres per year). And, Monsanto would probably like to prevent resale of the seeds (otherwise the farmers would become competitors with Monsanto, but with no development costs). It makes sense that Monsanto would opt for the "one year only, no replanting" clause because many farmers wouldn't be able to afford an ongoing licence. While you could argue that the one-year-only agreement is meant to suck as much money out of the farmer as possible, there are two things to note: (1) The farmer doesn't need to buy Monsanto, and (2) the fee is $6.50 per acre per year for soy. For a 500-acre farm (which seems like a reasonable family-sized farm) this works out to a little over $3000 per year. This doesn't seem excessive.
http://www.empiresofsteel.com/
Remember this happening in Africa too?
As I recall, Robert Mugabe (I think?) refused to accept gifts of genetically modified corn to his country from the US. As a condition of accepting the gift, he required that the corn be milled, thereby destroying it's capability to grow/sprout/etc, and rendering it impossible for Monsanto and the other giants from having a legal case against him.
I'm really surprised that the farmers are so stupid as to go along with this. Only a few months ago, Wired had an article about the new herbicide resistant coca plants in South America. The plants, as it turns out, were not modified in the lab, but through agressive breading in proximity to the American spraying efforts. No breaking of the law, just simple work. Why are these silly farmers accepting the same treatment? How long before US farmers come up with a soy bean that is resistant to roundup?
I guess it just works out to choice...If US farmers want Monsanto's hands in their pants, they're entitled to choose that. Why heck, as the story points out, it makes farming really easy and feels pretty good at first. I just know that, like taxes, once the hands are there, they're not going to go away, and they'll only squeeze harder over time. Eventually, the farmers will find that they no longer have any choice... suckers...
Drama much? So instead of CHANGING the laws to reflect common sense/ what is best for the world, you dont use the product? That makes sense to you?
I just started listenin to Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig and it mentions how for a very long time it was assumed you owned everything above or below the ground. That is, you owned the airspace above your land hence planes could only fly there with your permision. This was quickly changed to adapt for airplanes.
IP law is an important and good aspect to modern socity but dont let other people decide how it should work. IP is for the PUBLIC good,not the private.
What do you say to the man that has nothing? Cast it away!!
This illustrates perfectly what is wrong with "Intellectual Property." Aside from the egregious abuses that Monsanto has been guilty of in this particular case. For example, suing farmers who DON'T use Monsanto seeds when seeds blow in from a neighboring farm which does, going after farmers who break off the deal (it would be nearly impossible to eradicate all traces of the previously-planted Monsanto seeds, so chances are high that any farm which has ever used Monsanto's seeds still have some lying around in their soil, giving Monsanto grounds for a lawsuit), and many other abuses. While unproven, Monsanto has even been accused of "planting" (in both the sense of planting a seed, and planting evidence) their crops on the farms of those who refuse to use their crops.
To my thinking, arguing that "patents" are applicable to any living organism or any part thereof (including its DNA sequence or any portion thereof) is dangerous and absolutely ludicrous. If someday it becomes possible to genetically engineer humans to cure them of crippling genetic diseases, will that person have to later purchase a "license" to have children, and the children, if they receive the modified gene, will have to also purchase such a license, and so on...
"Intellectual property" is out of control. Time to bring it back to reality (max. 5 year length of copyright/patent, only tangible, non-living, truly unique items patentable, no personal use restrictions) or, better yet, abolish entirely the dated and inappropriate concept that a person (or, worse yet, a pseudo-person known as a "corporation") can OWN an idea. This case makes the perfect argument that such laws do great harm FAR beyond college kids sharing a few movies.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Actually, that's quite common among purebred dogs. My sister is really into purebred basset hounds. She's bought from breeders who have told her that she cannot breed the puppies they sold her. I've always laughed at it because I cannot figure out how they'd ever know about to enforce it.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
So, if these plants are property of Monsanto, and they happen to start growing on my land with no help from me...
I can charge them with tresspassing...
or maybe illegal dumping???
What you people think?
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt. --E.C. Stanton
I can't find a reference to it now, but I think (maybe 5 years ago) that /. had a posting about a new genetic process that Monsanto invented specifically to prevent reseeding.
As I understood it, they had a way to create a crop that you could grow from a seed, but that crop in return wouldn't bare any seeds itself. This of course was great for Monsanto and terrifying for farmers.
The closest I could find online http://members.tripod.com/c_rader0/gemod.htm mentions (search for reseed) that plants can be rasied with sterile male parts. Thank God I'm not a plant, that doesn't sound plesant.
Time flies like an arrow;
Fruit flies like a bananna
In the US, perhaps.
Contrary to the poster's assertion whether or not seed is collected and reused depends on the crop and the preference of the farmer. He makes sweeping generalizations based upon his observations of a single crop (corn) in a single locale.
When I was a kid working on farms in Oregon, for example, it was common to collect seed and replant for most crops. Doing otherwise was thought of as wasteful, sloppy, and lazy. It's more common to buy seed now, but then it's generally more profitable to buy seed for many crops than it is (in man-hours) to collect it yourself. And, of course, if you want GM seed you HAVE to buy it, each and every year.
Even so, there are still plenty of farmers who collect and replant, as has been done since the dawn of the agricultural revolution. The original poster is incorrect in stating otherwise.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
They sued an old man who tested to see if his canola seed (non-Monsanto variety) contained traces of the Roundup Ready canola variety, by spraying a small section with Round-up. It lived, and thus contained Monsanto's patented genetics. He did not ever plant this variety, but instead had gotten these traits from windblown pollen in previous years, from others' fields.
However, it was ruled that he's responsible for these traits appearing in his field, despite never using them, and not having a way to prevent them from appearing. He can't control pollen travelling through the air anymore than anyone else. But he's still responsible for some stupid reason.
However, I don't think this would fly in the US. Why? Well, first of all, Canadians tend to do this type of litigation. You know how there's a premium for CD-R's, DVD-R's and other recordable media that is paid to artists, with the assumption that piracy will occur? Well, it's pretty much the same deal here, and will end up the same way such litigation and legislation has in the US.
Yes, this is a "+5 funny" but in reality, most hibred crops are "copy protected". With maize (a.k.a. "corn" in the USA) for instance, it requires an extra cross to stabilize the hibred, but the unstabilized generation performs perfectly well. Don't do the cross, and you have very effective copy protection. The problem with those pesky soybeans is that they don't perform well as an unstabilized hibred.
I've got a better solution..
gather up as much of thier seeds and fly over
as many fields as possible and distribute the seeds
over them, eventually you'll pullute the entire
soybean crop of a nation with thier IP.
at that point something will be done to solve the impasse.
Starman97@Gmail.com (bring it on spammers)
A lot of agro-business seeds will not produce the same kinds of flowers in a second generation.
Also agro-business seeds often will be infertile in a second generation.
The large Agro companies get huge tax writeoffs. They get large subsidies. Meanwhile they buy up smaller seed producing companies and then stop selling the old line seeds that will polinate and reproduce themselves.
This has been going on for a long long time.
Monsanto, one of the world's largest producers of GE crops, has been ordered to pay criminal and civil charges totalling US$1.5 million for bribing an Indonesian government official and concealing the payment as consulting fees.
t ails.html?site_id=45&news_id=1581
More at: http://www.greenpeace.org.au/features/features_de
How is it that a "Dr. GeneMachine" can't tell the difference between a "pesticide" and a "herbicide"?
Every time I've used Roundup it killed the plants deader than dead. Didn't seem to bother the bugs much, tho...
It takes an idiot to do cool things - that's why it's cool!
I grew up on a farm and understand the why this is a problem very well.
Farmers buy seed that is basically very expensive crops harvested and cleaned and separated and tested and treated, that helps it's performance. I.e smashed seends don't grow well, seeds with mold on them don't grow well, seeds that insects eat don't grow well. This is why proportionately seed is much more expensive than feed, which is what most of the crops grown in this country are used for.
Feed usually does contain seeds, just not well protected or near the quality of commercial seed. Growing up, every year my father would always set aside a portion of the harvest to be cleaned and used as seed the next year, if for some reason commercial seed were not available. This is done mainly with wheat and soybeans, due to the population planting issues, and germ rates (wheat and soybeans are planted with a expoentially greater seed/acre density than corn is for example).
Every year, my father would send samples of each vareity from the crop that he saved off to a lab for testing. Information returned would include percent foreign matter (such as weed seeds and hulls) and the most important was the germ rate, which is basically a percentage of how many of the seeds from the sample sprouted when provided warmth, water and nutrients. In other words how many of the seeds are duds.
We could never harvest a crop or clean our saved seed enough to get germ rates within 10% of commercial seed. The equipment we used to harvest it, and our storage methods just weren't as good. Every year that I can remember, after we bought commercial seed, and had planted it, and had a crop come up, we sold the grain we had saved for seed from the previous crop.
That's basically the how and why of why saving seed vs. buying commercial seed. We never were able to determine that we would save enough money by using our own, to make it worth while. Now, for some additional issues related to GMOs (Genetically modified organisms).
These commercial seeds that are GMOs obviously bear a price premium, and what company would want to give that up? I see this as the biggest driving force behind the contracts, licensing and lawsuits. Secondly, Monsanto obviously can't put any kind of guarantee of performance on recycled seed, and most likely wishes to avoid tarnishing their product's reputation. Thirdly, and this I don't really know enough about, but is one reason that they give, is that the original seed is bred in such a way that it's crop produces optimal seed to be resistant to the proper compounds and the possibility that subsequent generations could stray from that original organisms exist. (I just don't know about this, but it sounds plausible enough)
Ironically back on our family farm, we have had mixed success with GMOs. We continue to use traditional methods on about half our crops every year. What happens when everything becomes RoundUp Ready? When volunteer corn starts growing in a bean field, but spraying the beans with roundup doesn't kill it, because last years corn crop was round-up ready? This is why we continue to choose the seed with the location it will be planted in mind, so that we can use our chemicals of choice on it, to control the problems that we know are there. We also use wide varieties of seed from a wide variety of seed suppliers to increase resistance to single variety problems. Sometimes I really don't know how my father keeps this all straight on our mid size farm.
Do we ever plant RoundUp ready crop again as seed the next year? NO. Do we save some each year, as a precaution for things we can't even imagine (shortages, catastrophes, WWIII, etc.)? YES. Hopefully we never ever have to use it. Afterall it really doesn't make that great of seed compared to what is commercially available.
Comments? Questions? please!
-Mikey P
look whos on the receiving end ....
US agribusiness giant Monsanto has agreed to pay a one million US dollar penalty to settle charges of bribing the Indonesian government, the US Justice Department said last week. Criminal charges filed in the District of Columbia charged Monsanto with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) in connection with an "illegal payment" of 50,000 dollars to a senior Indonesian Ministry of Environment official. Assistant Attorney General Christopher Wray said that a bribe by a Monsanto employee was aimed at facilitating the cultivation of genetically modified crops and was falsely certified as "consultant fees" in the company's books and records. The Justice Department said in a statement that the St. Louis, Missouri-based company "agreed to accept responsibility for the conduct of its employees in paying the bribe and making the false books and records entries."
Monsanto said in a statement it regretted the actions of those involved in bribery and that it accepted responsibility. "Monsanto accepts full responsibility for these improper activities and we sincerely regret that people working on behalf of Monsanto engaged in such behaviour," Monsanto's general counsel Charles Burson said as quoted by Reuters. Mr. Burson said the company had taken actions to address the activities in Indonesia.
Monsanto has also agreed to adopt internal compliance measures and cooperate with ongoing criminal and civil investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission. An independent compliance expert is to be chosen to audit the company's program and oversee implementation of the new policies.
Monsanto also settled related civil enforcement proceedings by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which issued an administrative order finding that the company violated Foreign Corrupt Practices Act provisions. "Monsanto consented to the entry of a final judgement in the federal lawsuit requiring it to pay a 500,000 civil penalty, and consented to the Commission's issuance of its administrative order." Mr. Wray warned that: "companies cannot bribe their way into favourable treatment by foreign officials."
This is interesting -
Monsanto bribes officials
Apparently Monsanto doesnt like to play by the rules either.
Monsanto is selling what they call "Terminator technology" (first reference I found: http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/sterileSeed.htm ) to countries where getting enough food to survive for the day could be a problem.
The "technology" is a fancy word for genetically designing the next-generation seeds sterile, so that the farmers can't grow any new plants from the seeds produced from plants grown by Monsanto seeds.
Now, very few things pisses me off to the extent that this kind of behaviour does. (I can actually start sweating, merely thinking about this)
The idea of exploiting the starving seems to be good business for the Monsanto people.
This kind of behaviour - maximizing profits, disregard for human life, and the complete lack of any moral consideration, is, I believe, one of few that is taking us in a direction which ultimately will bring down the sad downfall (sudden, fiery death for the masses is still a threat) of humanity.
To me, the people who profit from selling these "Terminated seeds" (I here refrain from spilling my thoughts too bluntly, especially avoiding a sentence containing a suggested use of the words "Monsanto executives" and "terminate") to starving people, occupy a niche lower in the food chain than people who murder the elderly for money, and those who sell women and children for sexual exploitation and their personal profit.
Please, even if you disagree with my views, let at least the facts about this be known.
It doesn't persist in the soil like 2,4-D and many other broad-spectrum herbicides do
That's what Monsanto wants you to believe, but the truth is that they had to stop calling their product biodegradable because it is persistent. It's also very toxic for plants and animals. Just google for "roundup biodegradable" and see for yourself.
dupont for example has patent EP 744 888 which describes corn(maize) with oleic acid > 55%.
: www.ukabc.org/FAOengl-sv-j.doc+Patent+EP+744+888&h l=en/
l
in mexico you find such plants in the wild for ages...
guess what - it doesnt stop duPont for suing you if such a plants happens to be on your ground
more info here: http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:Ts0FIArHTZ8J
and here: http://www.choike.org/nuevo_eng/informes/2040.htm