this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 221 points 1 month ago (14 children)

They're not sterile, but they will sue you if they find you've been growing seeds from last year's crops.

[–] [email protected] 79 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Or if your neighbours crops have germinated in your lands

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I don't think they've successfully sued anyone for that. The few cases I saw last time I looked people were intentionally germinating or saving/selling seeds.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

So uhh... hypothetically if one were to live next to a cornfield and acquire some seeds from said field cough somehow cough, would those purely hypothetical seeds grown in one's garden then constitute corn piracy?

Asking for a friend of course.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 month ago

You wouldn't download a corn would you?

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Saving seed for the farms own use is expressly allowed under plant variety protection and patent laws in the U.S.

This is why the seed companies created contracts that they require all growers to sign before being allowed to purchase GMO crops. The prohibition from saving seed is from the signed agreement not from the patent or PVP.

Say if you got grain from the farmer for your bird feeder. Then if you happen to use the grain as seed to plant some for next year's bird feeder


completely legal. You are not bound by the agreement between the farmer/seed company. Unless you try to sell the grain/seed to another person. Then you are in violation of the seed companies patent in the U.S.

Remember that corn shows a severe amount of inbreeding depression. So the F2 plant will not produce as much as the farmers F1 did the year before.

[–] weker01 15 points 1 month ago

That is a reason why most farmers like to purchase seeds every season anyways. It's way more predictable and you may want to change the strain depending on many variables.

Farming, especially commodity crops like wheat, is an extremely risky business. Taking out some risk is often worth it.

Modern farming is way more complicated and scientific than most people realize. The portrayal of farmers as bumbling idiots in popular media is not helping.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago

Why invent technology to control people when you can just use the law?

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[–] [email protected] 85 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Finally. FINALLY. My ulcer grows every time I hear someone quote that list of evil things Monsanto does. Even though yes, they are evil.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yea, they're evil enough with the pesticides, and the hostile takeover of farms. We don't need to make the genetic engineering they're doing, which is actually good work, to also be thrown under the bus

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I would agree if they didn't use their non-sterile plants to take over small farms around their huge ones by suing for theft when farmers used part of the previous crop that had been pollinated with the Monsanto GM pollen. They didn't buy that genome so it was stolen... Fucking wankers.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Monsanto doesn't even exist anymore. It was bought out by the totally not evil company Bayer a while back.

Of course Bayer has suffered quite a bit of indigestion over gobling up that morsel over the years.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

the totally not evil company Bayer

Ah, yes, the totally not evil company that (together with BASF and Hoechst, forming the cartel IG Farben) developed chlorine gas for use in world war I.

The same IG Farben which was the single largest donor to Hitler's election campaign, and main contributor to the construction of Auschwitz, where they produced synthetic petrol and rubber for use in the war and performed all manner of human experiments, including testing their own Zyklon B gas.

The same company that decades after the war was still chaired by well known nazis, and profiting from chemicals developed at Auschwitz.

Yeah, I'm sure Monsanto is in good hands, and feels right at home there.

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[–] [email protected] 58 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

The moratorium is actually since 2000, but only since 2006 in its current form. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_technology

Thankfully, no country, much less any multinational corporation, would ever dare cross the UN's nonbinding, unenforceable moratorium. Can you imagine how stern the tone of the statement of condemnation would be, once it was worded such that a reasonable plurality of countries would agree to back it?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

I’m sure it’s already been done. Just locked away until nothing more than strong concerns can be voiced by ineffective authorities.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 month ago

GMO skepticism or not, Monsanto is one of the most evil companies in the world and a perfect example of what makes the profit motive such an inefficient organizer of production and distribution

[–] Tar_alcaran 40 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Also, most farmers use hybrid crops, which you already can't save, because they're hybrids. (You can save them, but they're not going to produce the same plants you get them from).

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Whether a plant species is hybridized has little effect on whether it grows true from seed or only via cuttings.

Wild maple trees for example do not grow true from seed.

[–] earphone843 20 points 1 month ago

Apples are a prime example.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Wild maple trees for example do not grow true from seed.

How do they reproduce?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Sexual reproduction via flowers+seeds.

When self-fertilizing, the offspring are not identical.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Does anyone else feel like this entire post and most of the comments are coming straight from a Monsanto bot/shill factory?

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Isn't one argument against GMO that they could spread and outcompete other crops? In that case a terminator gene would even be a good thing?

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That's exactly why the original terminator gene was a joint USDA-ARS /delta-pine effort. The USDA-ARS was looking for ways to prevent GMO species from escaping and causing issues.

You know the shit that actually happened. For example -

Creeping Bentgrass

https://www.opb.org/news/article/gmo-grass-oregon-creeping-bent-scotts-monsanto/

Wheat -

https://www.nature.com/articles/499262a

Corn/teosinte

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167880918301075

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

This sounds like the back of a Crichton novel, and I want to read it

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yeah, except the vast majority of seeds are infertile, meaning they can't be replanted, means the "good ol boys" can't survive.

[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Where the fuck do people come up with this shit?

No the "vast majority" of crops are not infertile. They are hybrids. Farmers buy the seeds because of a genetic phenomenon called heterosis AKA hybrid vigor. It takes expertise and a shit ton of money to make hybrid seed. If growers could get the same performance from saving their own seeds only an absolute dumbfuck would buy seeds from a seed company.

Now there are a few species that hybrids can only be made by taking advantage of mutants that have male sterility genes. The resulting hybrids are still fertile (produce viable female gametes) but need an outside source of pollen. Examples: onions, sunflowers and carrots.

The only "sterile" seed sold is seedless watermelon aka triploid seed. Seedless watermelons are only sold because the market demands it thanks to a push by the USDA after being created in Japan pre-WW2. The margins on seedless watermelon seed are often 40-50% less than hybrid diploid seed. And don't get me started on the research cost - 14-15 generations for a new female line versus 7-8 for seeded types.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Most hybrids do not produce fertile seeds. You can test it out if you want but it doesn't work. I used to work for a seed company. Beyond that, without fertilizer the soil itself is dead in the vast majority of farming land.

[–] ryathal 6 points 1 month ago

I have planted seeds from round up ready soy beans. They grew just fine for my needs, which wasn't farming. Farmers have also planted harvested hybrid seeds, Monsanto sues the ones they catch, because it's a contract violation for those that bought seeds.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago (8 children)

They make more money suing farmers for accidentally growing patented crops from natural seed dispersal mechanisms.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

They make their money from royalty payments for GMO traits. It's up to 3x more profit than they get off the seed alone.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Source that research was banned since the 90s? All I'm aware of is that they aren't available commercially and sale and field testing of terminator seeds has been banned since the 00s.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 month ago

Yeah they weren't banned in the 90s. They were developed in the mid 90s with a patent filed in 1998. The UN Convention on Biological Diversity adopted a moratorium in 2000, recommending that governments block field testing and commercial use of terminator seeds, but didn't yet ban research. In 2006 they expanded the moratorium, explicitly prohibiting field trials and emphasizing risks to biodiversity and farmers rights.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'm the guy on the left just because until for-profit corporations are reigned in I don't trust them with control of anything.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

also the 30 bagged lunches...

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Don't we already have enough real shit to worry about tho?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

Whatever the case, fuck Monsanto; free the seed.

https://osseeds.org/

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

You know that Lemmy has made it when the Monsanto shills from Reddit join.

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