Are patented seeds the harbinger of the Beast? One farmer thinks so.
Farming with the Antichrist
Thursday December 4, 2008
Categories: Agrariana
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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Can patented seeds that can spread their technology via pollination?
Check out a documentary call future of food.
Monsanto should profit forever and forever and forever...?
How in the world is it "hypocrisy", a term used by a writer above, to see and denounce the injustice in this? In the last few years I've bought plants at various supermarkets and nurseries that have come with a label warning me not attempt to breed them, because they are patented and "owned" by a company. Do you think that's justifiable? At what point does the pot of flowers, along with their seeds, belong to me? Here's a quote from the article under discussion about what exactly Michael White did:
"A few years ago he and his father were sued by Monsanto for patent violation -- it is illegal to save seed from patented plants for re-planting. At the time of the lawsuit, he said, his retired father hadn't farmed in years. The lawsuit against his 85-year-old father was dropped in the spring of 2006, shortly before White agreed to settle out of court with Monsanto. White will not comment on the details of that settlement. The consent injunction and judgment in the case states that White had planted, saved, cleaned and sold patented seed."
Wow--he bought something, then he "planted", "saved", "cleaned" and "sold" it. Even if all of these things were true, and are, in point of fact, illegal under our perverse, corporation-fondling laws, do we at no time raise the following question: At what moment in the point of sale (or is it more like a share-cropping arrangement with landlord/tenant?) does the thing stop being the property of the seller and become the property of the owner? He buys it, but he can't save it? He can't clean it? He can't plant it? And that's just fine, because poor Monsanto has to make a buck to survive? So then Monsanto can engineer a "terminator" seed that can, in blowing away, possibly infect other plants with sterility?
And Monsanto is justified? Such an opinion seems like either Stockholm Syndrome or Stockholder Syndrome.
A couple of points. All corn in production is not hybrid. I grew open-pollinated corn last season for the specific purpose of conserving a rare genotype. There are thousand so other people doing the same thing. If you had specified commercial production, you would be closer to the truth. Second, there are still good sources for open-pollinated varieties, but one has to search them out. I would think, though,that serious gardeners already know not to buy from the seed rack at K-Mart. Again, many of us are choosing to sacrifice a bit of additional yield or disease resistance in order to maintain some freedom from the Monsantos of the the world. And NAIS is an abomination. It is not only end-times enthusiasts that think centralized corporate or governmental control over food production is a very bad idea.
Thanks to the informative posts from Appalachian Prof, aaron, and Scott Walker--there should be more discussion of these issues at Crunchy Con...
Sally Rogers - IIRC, challenges to patents of GM organisms have arisen under 35 USC 101, questioning whether such organisms could be considered a "manufacture" or "composition of matter". In Diamond v. Chakrabarty (447 US 303), the Supreme Court held that they could. IMHO, this is hardly unprecedented, given that patents on bred plants - which also involve artificial alterations to an organism's naturally-occurring genetic composition - have been available for decades. See the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure, Sec. 2105, for details.
AFAIK, there's no "public interest" (let alone a "creepiness") exception under the US patent system. [There are procedures in place to flag any patent application covering "dangerous" subject matter, but that's mostly WRT security, public safety, etc.] IMHO, the inclusion of such exceptions could prove quite problematic for the patent system unless their boundaries were extremely well-defined. Patent-busting litigators would have a field day with such exceptions - just about anything can be argued as being "not in the public interest" or "creepy" if you really work at it.
As for the antichrist thing - everyone knows that debit cards, not patented seeds, are the antichrist's harbingers....
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