Is patent law having an adverse effect on farming and what people in the U.S. and many parts of the world are able to grow and eat?
Short answer to your title, Monsanto has already gone too far. Short answer to your question, yes. The fact is "round up ready" soybeans should not be patented in the way it is. Because the soybeans are now a different strain of soybeans. Thats what they should be treated as, a new strain. When you crossbreed varieties to get a new strain, you get something new. You don't "own" it. And you shouldn't. Its a plant, it belongs to the earth. It should belong to everyone. For years farmers have been able to source their own seed from their own farms. Circular system in which the farmer is able to grow this years crop from the remains of last years. This technique has been used since people first started planting crops and growing things! Monsanto should not be allowed to screw with that. Its food, not technology. No one is going out and making counterfeit "round up ready" soybeans. Why bother? Its everywhere already. If you invent, or cross strain or whatever a new crop you should expect farmers to take it and run with it. Farming is a tough enough life as is without Monsanto running around playing "crop police." What they are doing to this old man and countless farmers like him is shameful. Monsanto operates on shady patent law that they basically invented and put, or bought, into law by themselves. Its a monopoly of the worst kind.
I agree. The title is only meant to invite discussion. It's very sad that a company that obviously employs a lot of geneticists would promote their current model of operation. I think your statement, "It's food, not technology" is dead on and should be something that more consumers, if not all should take to heart.
Oh no, not at all. If I can ask though, do you have an idea of how your dad feels about this? I imagine that farmers have a lot to say about the subject, but unfortunately the majority of people are very far removed from the realities of modern agriculture and understand very little about what goes on between farm and table, much less the stuff that happens before crops are even harvested.
I might call him up tomorrow and ask him, because I'm really not sure. I know that he definitely plants the soybeans in question. Soybeans are a great cash crop. If I get a hold of him, I'll be sure to update you. He's a very outspoken guy with a lot of opinions so I'm sure he has something to say.
Totally stupid that one can patent an organism. By this logic, a dog breeder who makes a new crossbreed should be able to patent that dog. If the Court has any common sense (and they most certainly don't, see 'racial entitlements' as evidence [or Citizen's United, or Bush v. Gore, or...you get my point]), they'll put an end to this. Indians should try to patent corn and see how far they get.
It is totally stupid, but I don't think that's ever going to be a successful legal argument. Patents are there to do a stupid thing, keeping anyone but the patent holder from using an idea that many other than the patent holder could get good use out of, in order to encourage people to develop patentable ideas. The way to argue against it is not to point out that the patents are stupid, it's to point out that they don't achieve their goal. We never got any traction arguing against software patents on the grounds that an algorithm is a mathematical object, no matter how strongly many of us felt that software patents were stupid for that reason, but we are finally, too slowly and without being able kill off the notion that patent holders deserve any consideration at all yet, making some progress on the grounds that they actually impede what they were meant to encourage. Likewise, I think the only way for farmers to defeat the patenting of organisms will be to fund, or maybe even participate in, the development of GMOs of their own, maybe through a trade organization. Then they get unencumbered seeds, and any conflicts with Monsanto pile up as evidence that encumbered organisms impede progress.