I don't see how Monsanto would ruin family farming -- family farming existed centuries before Monsanto was founded. You can still buy non-GMO seeds, the only reason people buy that stuff is to improve yield.
Traditionally farmers would save a portion of their crop to plant for the next year. There is even a special machine that prepares seed for planting called a "seed cleaner". Enter patented GMO seed which gets planted in a field next to regular seed and is cross pollinated by nature. Now the farmer who didn't plant GMO seed has a crop that contains the GMO patented gene. So if he cleans that seed he is at risk of being sued the next year for patent infringement by monsanto. In fact they have been systematically been suing seed cleaners to to get their client lists and then sue the farmers. Since it is nearly impossible to ensure your crop hasn't been cross pollinated with a GMO crop Monsanto has essentially shut down the traditional way farmers have worked. additionally they are reportedly very aggressive in pursuing farmers and frequently trespass on their fields to take seed samples. That is why they say that they have "ruined" family farming.
Food Inc. is one good documentary where this is discussed in detail among other food related issues.
http://www.slowfoodsanfrancisco.com/blog/policy/monsanto-des...
well... the fact is that a seed is not trivial also, and was not trivially changed in thousands of years by a lot of farmers and other people. Then you change one or a few parts in this seed and you can claim that all the "seed software" is yours. Even if you changed a single line.
Maybe we need a GPL for living creatures?
You are not gaining a profit on the Monsanto work, Those seeds are not provided by Monsanto and as you can not avoid to use genetically contaminated, and identical to other seeds otherwise, you should not face a trial for this.
That's what happened in this case:
That same year, Bowman applied glyphosate-based herbicide
to the fields in which he had planted the commodity seeds
to control weeds and to determine whether the plants would
exhibit glyphosate resistance. He confirmed that many of
the plants were, indeed, resistant. In each subsequent
year, from 2000 through 2007, Bowman treated his second-
crop with glyphosate-based herbicide. Unlike his first-
crop, Bowman saved the seed harvested from his second-crop
for replanting additional secondcrops in later years.
He also supplemented his secondcrop planting supply with
periodic additional purchases of commodity seed from the
grain elevator. Bowman did not attempt to hide his
activities, and he candidly explained his practices with
respect to his second-crop soybeans in various
correspondence with Monsanto’s representatives.
("glyphosate" is the active ingredient in roundup, "glyphosate resistance" is the trait developed and patented by Monsanto.)
If they control or even mess up the computer industry, it's not the same as agriculture.
GMO seeds enable greater crop yields which would actually be better for humankind, so making money on GMO seeds is important. The great potato famine in Ireland wiped out a million people. We use more advanced fungicides now, but the chemicals used have a greater chance of causing liver damage than GMO plants. Obviously it would have to be a fair and balanced decision, but we can't throw out common sense because it affects a "critical industry".
Monsanto is an easy company to hate, but we can't make the wrong decision here or else it will affect future generations of companies who want to improve crop yields via GMO products.
Whats the cost-benefit of having patents on GMO seeds? Whats the increased cost to society vs disclosure of information? Patents are an barging, where the state gives a state protected monopoly in return for disclosure of information. Lets make a cost-benefit analyze and see where it points (hint, not even with imaginary numbers would patents on GMO seeds ever come up on top).
> no future agriculture company will ever spend money on GMO research
What a lie. Sorry, but I am going to call it what it is. A lie or a serious form of disillusioning. If you can create a better method to farm: vegetable oils, soy, rapeseed, jatropha, mahua, mustard, flax, sunflower, palm oil, hemp, field pennycress, Pongamia pinnata, or algae, you are going to earn serious money. The military would very much like to be able to producer cheaper biofuel, as would a never ending list of companies. Corn is an other, where a better seed would easy earn you billions if sold to the highest bidder.
Sure, you can't go around suing farmers who never heard of your company, but that is a good thing.
Why? Because its critical for national security. Is food security any different?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_%28Ireland%29#Food...
Famines these days tend to be more economic than agricultural.
Do you think they are researching and investing in finding seeds/plants that don't have a tie-in to their chemicals?
EDIT: Their problem is that the patent on Round Up expired so we have other companies that can make and sell the herbicide generically now. Their original business model made sense and was reason enough for them to innovate and create GMO seeds.
Question: Can we now say that modifying genes to make organisms resistant to certain chemicals is no longer non-intuitive?
How does have a large majority of our food coming from the same gene pool help secure our future?
If anything it puts us all at greater risk. While in the short term GMO seeds might help, in the long term it appears we are increasing unnecessary risks. Typical current day view: shortsightedness and sacrificing the future for gaining today.
Way to judge inventions based on your personal scales. So the requisite for patents is having big labs?
Just because something looks simple it doesn't mean it doesn't has value, or didn't had talent and R&D behind it. Do you realize there can be research even behind something as simple as the shape of a device, because there's someone thinking how millions of people will interact with it everyday?
That's the perverse thing about patents. Who has the right to judge if an invention is trivial or not.