[mamon]

Because handing out vitamins costs money for each dose, and with GM rice you only need some seed (pun intended) investment and then people, even the poorest ones can grow it by themselves - it is two orders of magnitude cheaper. Also: handouts would make those people dependent on their benefactors moods,being able to grow healthy spiecies of rice solves the problem permanently.

[gnud]

GM rice would also make sustenance farmers dependent on handouts, since they're not allowed to keep and re-plant seeds, but compelled to buy new seeds from the rights holders every season.

[makomk]

The free license for golden rice allows saving and replanting seed - thankfully big biotech wasn't quite that obviously evil in their big positive PR for GMOs act. The caveats are that doesn't cover imports and exports (all consumption must be within the country that grows it), and it only covers subsistence farmers and low-income food-deficit countries according to the FAO. As a general rule, food-deficit countries aren't going to be able to grow enough rice to supply the country because the definition literally requires they can't grow enough calories of food to feed their population. I'm not sure what hapens when a country loses its LIFD status or a farmer has a good year and makes over the threshold to grow it in other countries, but I presume it's not good for anyone except the company owning the patent rights.

[altacc]

Then the problem to solve is the rights & IP. If farmers are allowed to re-plant seeds and future financial liabilities are removed, then GM becomes a great way of solving a lot of problems.

Perhaps GM technology for farming should be considered a large scale problem best solved by public entities, with developments being open source & public domain.

[krageon]

If there is a patenting process someone might contest we can just set a timer for five years after acceptance and wait for the patent trolls to roll all over starving people. GM crops are great, but not as long as we can't guarantee this won't happen with a change to the system as a whole.

[sseveran]

Why would a patent troll sue a rice farmer with no money in a developing country?

[ClumsyPilot]

Is the patent troll going to sue in Somalian court, or does he expect the guy to show up for court in US?

I can't wait to see the proceedings.

[playeren]

Same reason Monsanto sues farmers in India. Protecting IP.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-seeds-of-suicide-how-monsa...