GMO, Monsanto, organic dreadlocked nonsense?

BrutulTM · Mar 25, 2013

Elurin_sl said:
Once again, because Monsanto is a chemical company. They make money from their pesticide. The more of their seed that gets out, the better. Are they making less money from seeds? Sure. But they're not going to go under because they no longer own the exclusive rights to a plant.

Monsanto's patent on glyphosate expired in 2000. It's one of the cheapest herbicides that you can buy, and roundup ready crops make many of their more expensive herbicides unnecessary. They're not making roundup ready plants to sell more roundup. And regardless, Monsanto != GMO. Even if they have an alternate business model, do we really want Monsanto to be the only ones with a financial incentive to improve crop yields?

Eomer · Mar 25, 2013

Caliane_sl said:
to be fair. Chemotheropy will kill you..

That is entirely the point. Burn out the cancer with something way way worse. Kill the cancer cells and everything around them, there is nothing left to regenerate.

Yeah obviously. The specific post I was thinking of though said that chemotherapy will kill you, so to cure your cancer you just need to do some cleansing and strengthen your immune system and blah blah blah. Lumie level shit.

chaos_sl said:
I don't know one way or another. Generally, I feel better when I drink water instead of diet soda, but that doesn't mean anything. There is information out there suggesting that further study is warranted, though.

This is my opinion, and it has zero scientific backing: people condition themselves in to expecting everything that they consume should taste really sweet, or salty, or whatever. I think it's fucking bizarre how much pop (whether diet or not) most people drink. And not just pop, but coffee and energy drinks and juice and so on. What the fuck is wrong with just having some water?

And that habit of everything having to be supercharged with flavor just leads to them having shittier diets overall.

Lithose · Mar 25, 2013

hodj_sl said:
Well I don't totally disagree with you. Definitely eternal ownership of every successive generation shouldn't be a thing, but its not now. But more than two should be, I'd argue.

Probably 20. 20 good years, 20 good crop cycles, should be enough, in my opinion. Its a good, fair limit. Company gets 20 years to make back its investment, that's pretty standard for stuff like patent law, but past that then they should lose rights to it. There are ways to judge the number of successive generations based on the changes in the genome from recombination during reproduction so measuring the limit shouldn't be a complicated or difficult or inhibiting factor.

But again, this is what I posted earlier in terms of lobbying--they don't lobby to change the laws, they lobby to keep patent law under the nebulous set of rules they've produced ad hoc through the patent office and the courts. Now, I don't work around agriculture but going off of tech companies, what these companies tend to do is develop "new patents" off of mainly existing products by changing something small, and then submitting the change as something drastic or product altering to the patent office . Since the Dept of Commerce does not have the resources to properly vet the technical changes in these submissions, they just tend to approve them. This creates a pretty tangled web of patent law which highly trained, private experts (Paid by the lawyers), who back up patent lawyers (Paid by the companies), then bring to the court room to control the market and mold the law through precedence.

I imagine Mosanto uses this process the same way (Hence the Software Alliance filing briefs in their favor) , they make slight alterations to their crops every now and then--hence the money piling in to get new patents approved. They then lobby the Senators to stay away from patent reform (Or hell, even oversight), which would change the way the law is written (Or handled) to require impartial, expert analysis on new patents. (Which would require a bigger budget, obviously, but it's needed)

In other words--you can say that identifying X changes in genome=no more patent, but I seriously doubt those systems exist to do that (And my systems, I mean civil/government systems)...They certainly don't in other fields, which is why Apple can slam down 50 law suits on products that have already waned well past their patent times, because they continue to buy or develop new patents based on small changes, to the same product.

Edit: And note, I'm not saying there should be an end to profits for R&D, I think, for example, one of the problems with our health industry has a lot to do with how the U.S. market is exploited in terms of recouping R&D cost on pharmaceuticals because other countries avoid it. However, we need to get a hold over this patent issue--now. There needs to be an expansion of the patent office to include more technical aspects of patents, and vetting them and we need to have a national discussion on property rights when things can be copied. I'm not a fan of "licensing" software for use, and I'm sure as shit not going to be a fan of licensing my dog for use one day.

OneofOne · Mar 25, 2013

Not to get *too* far off topic, but there's asuperimportant Supreme Court case coming up involving patenting (human) genes. The SC is going to rule on the question of "can you patent genes?" Just kinda shoe-horning it in this thread

Lithose has it on the nose - patent law is going to be (and currently is) a huge issue affecting our lives and this shit needs to get sorted.

Eorkern · Mar 25, 2013

For those who didn't see it, there is an interesting part about Monsanto and the patent on seed in the Food Inc documentary, start at 1:06:00 :

Sorry for esp sub, didnt find better.

hodj · Mar 25, 2013

Lithose_sl said:
But again, this is what I posted earlier in terms of lobbying--they don't lobby to change the laws, they lobby to keep patent law under the nebulous set of rules they've produced ad hoc through the patent office and the courts.

Yeah you do keep asserting this.

I've yet to see any proof of it whatsoever though.

http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/fir...0055&year=2012

Monsanto spent about 5 million bucks on lobbying last year.

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

Most of that was spent not on preserving or altering patent laws or whatever it is you're talking about.

Most of that was spent on keeping the FDA from requiring to put labels on GMO products stating they contain GMOs. The rest was spent on getting new products accepted onto the marketplace.

None of it was spent on trying to preserve or alter patenting laws for genes.

One of the problems here is that its hard to find good sources of news for this stuff because if you search Monsanto and Lobbying all you get are pages upon pages of NaturalNews.com stories, which is the Alex Jones of the GMO universe, but even they report that Monsanto's lobbying dollars are going towards preventing overregulation and labeling of GMO products, not towards patent laws.

Even the hippies aren't complaining about Monsanto's lobbying in regards to patent law. They're complaining that they are lobbying to prevent labeling of their products, to get more of their products accepted to market quicker, etc.

I can't find a fucking single penny they've spent on lobbying on patent laws, and I'm looking right now.

added: I'm finding one source for the claims that they spent lobbying dollars on altering patent laws. Its being made by NaturalNews.com and has no dollar value attached, rather it is claimed that they spent 2.6 million in 2011 on patent laws AND to get things like GMO sugar beets, alfalfa and other things through the approval process faster. Until I can find a dollar value attached to this claim, and from a source other than Natural News.com, I'm going to have to state that there's no evidence for this claim, because NaturalNews.com is not a valid source of information for this topic. They are the Alex Jones' Prison Planet website of the anti vaccine universe.

fanaskin · Mar 25, 2013

Oral Arguments in Bowman v. Monsanto
http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2013...-monsanto.html

Monsanto has kept tight control over its product throughout the years and always requires farmers who want to plant its seeds to sign a technology licensing agreement. That agreement includes a promise not to save and replant seeds. Monsanto has argued that use restriction (or license limitation) is binding on subsequent purchasers - even those who purchase the seeds in a fungible commodity market without agreeing to any restriction. Thus, for Bowman to win, the court needs to find (1) that the rights in the original seeds were exhausted by the time Bowman purchased them from the commodity market and (2) that the exhaustion applies to all future progeny of the seeds. So far, the courts have sided with Monsanto.

hodj · Mar 25, 2013

Here's the primary source for the Natural News.com claims

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/finan.../D9RL51J81.htm

Monsanto Co. spent $2 million in the third quarter to lobby the federal government on issues including regulations for genetically engineered crops and patent reforms, according to a recent disclosure report.

That's slightly more than the $1.9 million Monsanto spent a year earlier and up almost 18 percent from the $1.7 million it spent during previous quarter.

The world's largest seed company lobbied Congress and the U.S. Department of Agriculture over regulations that would affect the distribution of genetically engineered crops like the company's Roundup Ready sugar beets and alfalfa, according to the disclosure the company filed Oct. 18 with the House clerk's office.

The company also lobbied Congress on patent protection reforms. Monsanto spends years, or sometimes more than a decade, developing patented strains of genetically engineered crops. Maintaining those patent rights is key to the company's profit model.

The company lobbied the Congress and the Department of Justice on issues surrounding agricultural consolidation and antitrust enforcement.

Seems like the vast vast vast majority of their lobbying dollars are spent on pushing through new products, with some spending on patent laws as well. But anyway, most of the complaints about them from the anti GMO crowd seem to be focused on the GMO crops themselves and how they are regulated/brought to market, and the potential safety issues to the environment and human health that are perceived to be involved here, not patent laws.

Here's a decent article on the patent case that Fanaskin and other's are talking about

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2013/02/monsanto.html

Something interesting to note

The Obama administration pushed the Court not to take the case in the first place, echoing concerns of those filing briefs for Monsanto that a reversal of the lower court's decision could adversely affect other patents involving DNA, nanotechnology or other self-replicating technology, according to the Huffington Post.

Here's a good Salon article on the real issues with Monsanto and its collusion with the Federal Government

http://www.salon.com/2013/03/15/how_...dministration/

The point is this: The US government implicitly wants Monsanto to do what it is doing. They have sided with them, in the courts, at the state level, and at the Federal level in the Legislative and Executive branches, across both parties' reign over this government, for a long long time. Decades. So whatever they spend on lobbying is a drop in the bucket compared to the collusion that already exists between the Feds and the Agriculture community, regardless of what those lobbying dollars are spent on. There's a reason the FDA often has former Monsanto employees working for it, and there's a reason for FDA officials go work for Monsanto. To claim that Monsanto is a separate entity from the US Federal Government would be an absurdity if we look merely at how closely linked the two organizations are. There's very little need for Monsanto to lobby to keep patent laws as they are because the Federal Government wants them kept the way they are. No one is making a major push at changing them.

From the Salon link

In at least one recent instance, the Obama administration has supported that dominance. In Bowman v. Monsanto - the highly publicized case heard by the Supreme Court last month that pits the company against a 75-year-old farmer - the administration argued in favor of Monsanto's position. The case asks whether Monsanto can employ patents to control how farmers use not just its seeds but also their progeny. In his brief the solicitor general argued that if patent rights for Monsanto's crops were reduced, "[t]he incentive to invest in innovation and research might well be diminished."

"It's a great frustration," Carstensen says. "If the Obama administration really cared about technological innovation, they would have come in and tried to free technology from being captured by a single company." Instead, he says, they have "protected Monsanto's interest."

Democrats and Republicans both love Big Ag, and will do pretty much anything in their power to support it.

And the Supreme Court hearing on the Bowman case is related here

http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2013/02/20...anto/id=35787/

Justice Breyer is quoted as saying this

Here, he buys generation two. Now, he can do what he wants with those seeds. But I'll tell you, there is a problem, because the coming about of the third generation is itself the infringement. So the second generation seeds have nothing to do with it. If he went into a room and had a box that he bought from a lab and he put rocks in it and he said, hocus-pocus and lo and behold out came the third generation of seeds, he would have infringed Monsanto's patent with that third generation, would he not?

After a volley between Breyer and Walters, Breyer said:

I am saying the problem for you here, I think, is that, infringement lies in the fact that he made generation three. It has nothing to do with generation two. That has just a coincidence. But that is in fact the way he made these seeds. But he can sell, resell generation 2, he can do whatever he wants with it.

If he sterilizes it and uses them in a circus, he can do it. The only thing he cannot do is he cannot create generation 3, just as he couldn't use generation 2 seeds to rob a bank.

You know, there are certain things that the law prohibits. What it prohibits here is making a copy of the patented invention. And that is what he did. So it's generation 3 that concerns us. And that's the end of it.

Justice Breyer is widely regarded as an anti-patent voice on the Supreme Court, thanks to his dissent in Lab Corp. and his decision in Mayo v. Prometheus, which unfortunately ignored decades of prior Supreme Court precedent and Title 35 of the United States Code. If Bowman loses Breyer he has no chance of prevailing.

Ginsburg also stated

Now, when you buy generation 2, well, there are a lot of things you can do with it. You can feed it to animals, you can feed it to your family, make tofu turkeys. I mean, you know, there are a lot of things you can do with it, all right.

But I'll give you two that you can't do. One, you can't pick up those seeds that you've just bought and throw them in a child's face. You can't do that because there's a law that says you can't do it.

Now, there's another law that says you cannot make copies of a patented invention. And that law you have violated when you use it to make generation 3, just as you have violated the law against assault were you to use it to commit an assault.

Now, I think that's what the Federal Circuit is trying to get at. And so it really has nothing to do with the exhaustion doctrine. It has to do with some other doctrine perhaps that - that somehow you think should give you the right to use something that has as a basic purpose making a copy of itself. Maybe you should, but I don't see that. Where is that in the law?

Seems to me that Monsanto doesn't have to do much of anything to protect its patents, especially not lobbying, because even the Supreme Court's most liberal members support them in the protections patent laws give them, and there's no significant movement in the Legislative branch to alter those laws in the first place.

Caliane · Mar 25, 2013

Elurin_sl said:
Except Monsanto shit is just normal plants, resistant to Round Up. So long as there's a need for pesticides, there will be customers for Monsanto.

Plus, why does Monsanto get to patent the work of thousands (or millions) of other farmers who genetically modified those crops to bring them to where they are now?

Edit: And in response to above by hodj, I fully understand that this is within the law. It even makes sense. But I think it's bullshit and patent law stifles innovation. To argue that the fucking mega corporation that is Monsanto would go bankrupt due to this is ridiculous. Your tax argument is on point. Which shows you that it's even more likely bullshit. The government isn't looking out for us, they're looking out for the companies so that they can keep sucking on that sweet chemical company teat.

that is a supercrop.

Imagine what happens if a roundup resistant crop goes wild. this is ecology 101. Introduce a superior foreign species to a biome not equipped to compete. Since roundup is the prime weedkiller, what happens when that now wild soy/corn is roundup resistant and a weed itself?

Patented crops should be DESTROYED after use, if the second hand owners are not capable of ensuring the seeds are used for feed, etc and NOT planted.. Its incredibly irresponsible to plant any seeds.

Patent laws encourage innovation. If monstanto didn't have the rights to the seeds produced by their crops, then that would destroy innovation, as they and everyone else, would have no reason to keep making new species. their products could be reproduced in 190 days.

Aychamo BanBan · Mar 25, 2013

Celestein_sl said:
I'll preface this saying its mostly anecdotal, but I'm a diet-soda drinker. I remember reading(somewhere, memory fails me) about the actual sweetness taste itself may cause a hunger response(body tastes sweetness, releases chemicals to breakdown/absorb sweetness, finds nothing/something different).

I'll say from personal experience this is something I noticed this long before I read anything about it. I tend to eat 2 meals a day(1 small/medium and 1 large meal a day, and small snacks sandwiched around workouts on those days), so I tend to have fairly large gaps(compared to most) between meals some days.

If I drink mostly water or unsweetened tea throughout the day, the water makes me feel fairly full and I don't really "crave" that next meal.

If I drink mostly diet soda, by later in the day I am very noticeably hungry, the more I drink the hungrier I seem to be.

So well I agree that there isn't enough data to really draw the link to diet soda and making you fatter, as someone who inadvertently tests this hypothesis many times(granted, being only one person), it seems rather obvious to me that there's at least something else going on, be in the sweetness, or some other process.

I think where we'd both agree is that if you eat X calories + diet soda consistently, you're not going to gain any more weight than X calories + water. But if the one is influencing your hunger levels, you will probably won't be as likely to stick to that regime as a result, leading you into the trap of over-rationalizing the calorie savings of the diet soda(giving you a double penalty, if you're feeling hungry you will take any excuse to rationalize eating more, that's human behavior).

You specifically say the satiety between artificial vs real sweeteners, but what's your opinion on artificial sweeteners vs no sweeteners at all? Since that's the real comparison, since for a lot of these "dieters" the soda is a water replacement, not a soda replacement.

re: Your last paragraph. Agree - avoid them. Lots of sodium, nothing healthy about a diet coke. Nothing unhealthy, but I couldn't argue that a diet coke is as good or better for you than a glass if water. It's like sugar vs HFCS, they're more or less the same in terms of health benefits, but you're better off avoiding both.

ZyyzYzzy · Mar 25, 2013

Speaking of GMO's, I want to engineer a bioluminescent conifer because fuck Christmas lights. Only difficult thing really would be figuring out how to do it in a way that isn't extremely taxing on the plant's metabolism and how to express it only in the distal part of the needles.

fanaskin · Mar 25, 2013

you gotta get the tree needles to randomly grow either red, white or green.

TheBeagle · Mar 25, 2013

Caliane_sl said:
that is a supercrop.

Imagine what happens if a roundup resistant crop goes wild. this is ecology 101. Introduce a superior foreign species to a biome not equipped to compete. Since roundup is the prime weedkiller, what happens when that now wild soy/corn is roundup resistant and a weed itself?

Patented crops should be DESTROYED after use, if the second hand owners are not capable of ensuring the seeds are used for feed, etc and NOT planted.. Its incredibly irresponsible to plant any seeds.

Patent laws encourage innovation. If monstanto didn't have the rights to the seeds produced by their crops, then that would destroy innovation, as they and everyone else, would have no reason to keep making new species. their products could be reproduced in 190 days.

So much this. You just can't have a bunch of farmers out there throwing around glyphosate resistant seeds willy nilly. Especially on these huge monoculture farms. The overuse of roundup ready seeds has created a new breed of roundup resistant weeds. This spirals into even more reliance on ever more toxic chemicals and agricultural practices that lead to more pesticide and nutrient runoff which then have a negative impact on our waterways and ecosystems. This isn't just a bunch of hippy bullshit. The same thing is happening with Bt-crops, but instead of resistant superweeds, we are making resistant superbugs.

In moderation, these kinds of GMO's can be helpful and serve a purpose, but our current culture of huge, monocultured farms with zero biodiversity is the real root of the problem.

hodj · Mar 25, 2013

Remember, they have a patent for a terminator gene that prevents these plants from reproducing past a certain number of lifecycles.

They stopped using it because the anti GMO crowd were afraid the terminator gene would go global and kill all life on Earth.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/465222.stm

The decision by the biotechnology giant Monsanto never to commercialise so-called "terminator gene" technology for crops has been called "a major U-turn that will send shock waves across the industry", by the charity Christian Aid.

Environmental group Friends of the Earth also hailed the announcement saying Monsanto had been forced to "respond to enormous worldwide opposition to its plans".

But a spokesman for the European Association for BioIndustries dismissed much of the criticism of genetically-modified crops as "scandalous propaganda" and said many non-genetically-modified (GM) crops did not produce viable seeds either.

Inserting terminator genes into crops would prevent them from producing fertile seeds, meaning farmers would have to buy new seeds, rather than saving part of their harvest to plant next year's crop.

Monsanto said that after consultations with experts and customers, it was making a public commitment never to commercialise sterile seed technologies.

Damned if they do. Damned if they don't.

And the opposing point of view on Terminator genes:

http://www.banterminator.org/The-Issues/Introduction

Why is Terminator a problem? The top 10 largest seed companies control half the world's commercial seed market. If Terminator is commercialized, corporations will likely incorporate sterility genes into all their seeds. That's because genetic seed sterilization would secure a much stronger monopoly than patents - instead of suing farmers for saving seed, companies are trying to make it biologically impossible for farmers to re-use harvested seed.

What impact will Terminator seeds have on farmers? Terminator is a major violation of the rights of farmers to save and reuse their own seeds. Through pollen movement in the first generation, Terminator genes could contaminate farmers' crops - farmers might then unknowingly save and reuse seeds that are contaminated and will not germinate. This could also happen if imported grain contains Terminator genes.

At some point it has to be stated that one side of this issue basically doesn't think a company that has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into researching a product should have the ability to protect that investment past one generation of seeds, ever. That basically if you develop a GMO seed that produces massive crops and is a huge boon to world food production, you lose all rights to profit from that investment as soon as 1 person puts your seeds in the ground, grows them, and harvests the new seeds.

That is an absurdist claim in the current legal framework. If these products were being produced entirely at universities, entirely with US government dollars, and the entire national food chain was nationalized, then the argument for patent protections for the program would be much less salient or relevant, but as it stands, you have one side that ideologically believes farmers are oppressed by these technologies, and wants to do everything they can to destroy this industry because they believe it is poisoning the planet, and you have one side that exists to make these products in order to derive profit. Neither side is really good or bad here. They're just both ideologically opposed to one another for specific reasons, and will fight for their interests. System working as planned.

TheBeagle · Mar 25, 2013

Well to be fair, lateral gene transfer is a real thing and is the basis for recombinant DNA technology. I seriously doubt it would lead to the end of all life on Earth, but it definitely seems like it falls under the 'better safe than sorry' category. Forty years ago, invasive species weren't even a thing. Now we spend tens of billions of dollars trying to clean up or control past mistakes, that while originally well intentioned and effective, ended up ultimately biting us in the ass. Asian carp ring a bell? Cane toads?

hodj · Mar 25, 2013

Well see, the problem is you can't on the one hand complain that Monsanto is suing to protect its patents down multiple successive generations while also claiming they have no right to develop technology to protect their patents by making replanting of successive generations biologically impossible for all intents and purposes. What then are they to do? Invest millions of dollars in research, only to see every penny of potential return flushed down the drain as some other company takes Monsanto seeds they bought from a seed warehouse, and grow a new generation from them, extract the genes from that plant, put it in other plants, and sell it as their own product? That's the end result of Monsanto having no rights to patent its crops past the first generation, as the Supreme Court pointed out.

Lateral gene transfer is a real thing. But it doesn't occur very frequently in nature and certainly isn't going to go out and spiral out of control, leading to the death of all life on planet Earth. At most a second generation crop might get contaminated with it, and die out, and in that case Monsanto should probably be liable for the loss cost to any farmers it affects.

The point is that the anti GMO crowd are never going to be satisfied. They didn't want Terminator genes for the same reason they don't want Monsanto enforcing its patents on successive generations: That's the best way to kill the company and put an end to their evil nature corrupting ways. They are trying to create situations where no matter what Monsanto does, no matter what steps it takes, its always in the wrong. Its wrong for them to make terminator genes. Its wrong of them to sue farmers who knowingly buy round up ready seed and then try to profit from it by spraying it with round up to kill weeds and increase crop production without paying the proper licensing fees.

Its a religious belief, basically. Humans are above nature, therefore anything they do is unnatural, and unnatural things are bad, even immoral, and must be opposed.

fanaskin · Mar 25, 2013

Yes I do I have a right to say hey the "law" is immoral when you are going to make the entire species dependent on their seed supply, this is too much power in one companies hands.

what it really is, is a base reaction of fear, that it's threatening the species.

you are white knighting a "too big to fail, in agriculture".
-------------

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vandan..._b_192419.html

The region in India with the highest level of farmers suicides is the Vidharbha region in Maharashtra -- 4000 suicides per year, 10 per day. This is also the region with the highest acreage of Monsanto's GMO Bt cotton. Monsanto's GM seeds create a suicide economy by transforming seed from a renewable resource to a non-renewable input which must be bought every year at high prices. Cotton seed used to cost Rs 7/kg. Bt-cotton seeds were sold at Rs 17,000/kg. Indigenous cotton varieties can be intercropped with food crops. Bt-cotton can only be grown as a monoculture. Indigenous cotton is rain fed. Bt-cotton needs irrigation. Indigenous varieties are pest resistant. Bt-cotton, even though promoted as resistant to the boll worm, has created new pests, and to control these new pests, farmers are using 13 times more pesticides then they were using prior to introduction of Bt-cotton. And finally, Monsanto sells its GMO seeds on fraudulent claims of yields of 1500/kg/year when farmers harvest 300-400 kg/year on an average. High costs and unreliable output make for a debt trap, and a suicide economy.

iannis · Mar 25, 2013

Patenting a living organism is completely fucking absurd. Patenting a gene is shoes-on-tits ridiculous. I understand the need for legal fictions, but at some point you might as well patent fucking salt. If that's the answer I have to begin to question if our concept of legalities are even appropriate to the issue. It's also a highly suspicious moral question, but i'm willing to just let that dog lie. In my limited experience talking with people who are not completely ignorant (though hardly experts) things get really, really ugly if you explore that tangent.

Patenting a specific technique to derive that SPECIFIC organism is much less absurd -- you might even be inclined to find that a reasonable approach.

TheBeagle · Mar 25, 2013

What i get from that article is that the real problem is subsidies. The rest of the article was obviously biased and inflammatory. I need to see some evidence that the indian farmers are being forced to buy hyper inflated monsanto seeds with no option to buy or raise normal farm seeds.

Caliane · Mar 25, 2013

fanaskin_sl said:
Yes I do I have a right to say hey the "law" is immoral when you are going to make the entire species dependent on their seed supply, this is too much power in one companies hands.

what it really is, is a base reaction of fear, that it's threatening the species.

you are white knighting a "too big to fail, in agriculture".
-------------

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vandan..._b_192419.html

The region in India with the highest level of farmers suicides is the Vidharbha region in Maharashtra -- 4000 suicides per year, 10 per day. This is also the region with the highest acreage of Monsanto's GMO Bt cotton. Monsanto's GM seeds create a suicide economy by transforming seed from a renewable resource to a non-renewable input which must be bought every year at high prices. Cotton seed used to cost Rs 7/kg. Bt-cotton seeds were sold at Rs 17,000/kg. Indigenous cotton varieties can be intercropped with food crops. Bt-cotton can only be grown as a monoculture. Indigenous cotton is rain fed. Bt-cotton needs irrigation. Indigenous varieties are pest resistant. Bt-cotton, even though promoted as resistant to the boll worm, has created new pests, and to control these new pests, farmers are using 13 times more pesticides then they were using prior to introduction of Bt-cotton. And finally, Monsanto sells its GMO seeds on fraudulent claims of yields of 1500/kg/year when farmers harvest 300-400 kg/year on an average. High costs and unreliable output make for a debt trap, and a suicide economy.

Competition would be great.

however, consider how you are doing it. Right now, Monsanto is winning, because they are out competing everyone else by MILES. In gaming terms, they are Steam. Yeah, you can cry about them having a near monopoly(and no sane economist likes monoplys) and absolutely dominating everyone, driving smaller businesses out of business. but they are doing so, because they are providing a flat out superior product, and innovating at a rate no one else can keep up with.

Any new laws should encourage competition, not stifle the growth of #1.

Linked article. Now I dont know shit about the situation. but if indigenous cotton is so great, why are they using BT-cotton at all?

GMO, Monsanto, organic dreadlocked nonsense?

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