[smackay]

The issue here is that farmers have been planting crops and saving some of the seed generated for the next season probably from Day 1 in agriculture. Monsanto seeks to insert themselves into this highly efficient process, blocking the replanting of seed and instead extracting for themselves a significant amount of money.

Farmers are free to enter into this relationship since the seeds do conver some advantages in reduced use of pesticides etc. but there is a significant problem with cross-contamination from neighboring crops and through the supply chain so Monsanto ends up suing farmers who never had any intention to use their products in order to get everyone to bow to their will and maintain the agri-business model.

[MarkMc]

The Monsanto seeds are only beneficial if used with Roundup Ready pesticide (or a generic equivalent). So let me ask you a hypothetical question: If Monsanto's policy was to only sue farmers whose fields had been cross-contaminated AND who used Roundup Ready pesticide, would that be a fair outcome? It would mean farmers could still use their traditional methods without worrying about cross-contamination as long as they didn't use the Monsanto pesticide.

[smackay]

As far as I know Roundup is a general use herbicide. If it was only licensed for use with Monsanto's GM products then I think Monsanto would have a case - assuming there were equivalent non-Monsanto herbicides freely available. I doubt Monsanto would be pretty happy about that however.

UPDATE: There was supposed to be some form of "terminator" gene included in the GM products to explicitly prevent generation two seeds from being replanted. I guess since we are talking about law-suits that did not really work as expected.

[ihnorton]

Actually, after a serious public kerfuffle, Monsanto pledged not to use this technology:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_technol...

[MarkMc]

I'm curious to know what you mean by 'equivalent non-Monsanto herbicides'. Roundup is specifically designed kill everything except Monsanto's GM crops. Are you saying that farmers with contaminated fields should be able to use a non-Monsanto herbicide which is specifically designed to avoid killing Monsanto's GM crops?

[skosuri]

Glyphosphate (Roundup) is a now off-patent general herbicide that will pretty much kill everything (even your crop) unless it is genetically modified a la Monsanto's RoundUp ready crops. This is often how Monsanto finds people to sue; people that buy Roundup without buying the seeds.

[tptacek]

I thought that was in fact Monsanto's strategy. It's certainly the fact pattern in this particular case.

[johnrgrace]

This isn't a case of a farmer having cross-contamination outside of his control of his saved seedstock, he actively worked to create his own group of seedstock that had their patented gene AND told people he was doing this.