[armchairhacker]

> how are you proposing incentivizing developing new varietals if nobody can have patents on any breeds at all?

How do academics make scientific discoveries if the results are public?

Government, industry, and private patronage. People want better crops, they’ll fund and make contests for them

[cyberax]

Well, yes. That's what is happening. The contest is called "market" and "the people" reward competitors by paying them.

Patents are used to enforce the rules so that competitors don't cheat.

Selective breeding requires sometimes _decades_ of commitment and a lot of very boring work. This is not a good fit for academia and even worse fit for government programs.

[skeledrew]

> _decades_ of commitment and a lot of very boring work

Sounds like it's ripe for AI automation. Need less of this nonsense about restricting access because "effort should be rewarded with exclusivity".

[taejo]

How do you propose to use AI to grow fruit trees faster?

[skeledrew]

Not grow faster, but to reduce the R&D effort in increasing yield quality and quantity, similar to what this guy[0] did in his garage. And to directly optimize the production itself, like automatically managing FarmBots[1] at the family and community level. Entire plant food pipeline becomes essentially free, and similar can be done re animal food as well.

[0] https://twitter.com/DouglasYaoDY/status/2070904914050797582 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48706690

[1] https://farm.bot/