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by jackbravo 233 days ago
One common drawback of GM crops is the monopolistic nature of their seeds. They come with a license and a cost to use, you cannot save seeds and use them later. So it seems like a threat to the sovereignty of a Country.

The article briefly mentions that initially some seeds are given with royalty free licenses, but for how long?
2 comments
gruez 233 days ago
1. as others have mentioned in a sibling thread, "saving seeds" isn't really a thing that can be done with modern crops, GMO or not.

2. If you get a productivity boost from GMO, and but then GMO company goes rogue, can't you still go back to planting regular seeds?

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abdullahkhalids 233 days ago
Re 2: on this software engineering forum, the following example will help.

If you have core dependency goes rogue, and you have to switch to an alternate library with similar features, is that a free switch? Think of how many thousands of hours of work are often needed? How many businesses have gone under because of such issues?

Growing a particular variety requires a lot of knowledge gained by each individual farmer from experience. You can't just go back to an old variety for free. It may take several years for yields to go back to previous levels and by then the farmer may have gone under.

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bluGill 233 days ago
Farmers change seeds all the time. One I know tells me that a great variety will terrible in 3 more years, though I'm not clear why. In any case they all are planting several varities ever year - four different ones in a field isn't uncommon - with harvest data to track the difference (different soils need different seeds). Test plots where they do many different side by side are somewhat common. they are always trying different options to see what works to do more. Plus predictions on weather mean different seeds.
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gruez 233 days ago
Ok but going back to the library analogy, GMO bans are like the government banning react.js because they're convinced angularjs (or jquery) is good enough and facebook might go rogue. Shouldn't it be up to individual farmers to decide?
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small_scombrus 233 days ago
The difference I think, is that the libraries are open source, and you don't have to pay Facebook yearly to use React.

Countries can and do ban closed source paid products when they don't trust the provider (e.g. Huawei)

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icpmoles 233 days ago
When you buy hardware that goes rogue you're forced to throw it away and install something new, which costs money for hardware and labor.

When a GMO goes rogue you can just buy a different seed the next planting season, which you were going to do anyway.

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bluGill 233 days ago
The patents are expiring. Many of the useful traits are no longer under patent.

even ignoring that things the patents were easy for golden rice to license. https://www.goldenrice.org/Content2-How/how9_IP.php

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