2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumFarmer’s use of genetically modified soybeans grows into Supreme Court case
Farmer Hugh Bowman hardly looks the part of a revolutionary who stands in the way of promising new biotech discoveries and threatens Monsantos pursuit of new products it says will feed the world.
Hells fire, said the 75-year-old self-described eccentric old bachelor, who farms 300 acres of land passed down from his father. Bowman rested in a recliner, boots off, the tag that once held his Foster Grant reading glasses to a drugstore rack still attached, a Monsanto gimme cap perched ironically on his balding head. I am less than a drop in the bucket.
Yet Bowmans unorthodox soybean farming techniques have landed him at the center of a national battle over genetically modified crops. His legal battle, now at the Supreme Court, raises questions about whether the right to patent living things extends to their progeny, and how companies that engage in cutting-edge research can recoup their investments.
What Bowman did was to take commodity grain from the local elevator, which is usually used for feed, and plant it. But that grain was mostly progeny of Monsantos Roundup Ready beans because thats what most Indiana soybean farmers grow. Those soybeans are genetically modified to survive the weedkiller Roundup, and Monsanto claims that Bowmans planting violated the companys restrictions.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/farmers-use-of-genetically-modified-soybeans-grows-into-supreme-court-case/2013/02/09/8729f05a-717c-11e2-ac36-3d8d9dcaa2e2_story.html
LiberalFighter
(50,793 posts)A car company can't dictate how fast I can drive my car or which states I am allowed to drive. Or whether I must junk my car after so many years.
littlewolf
(3,813 posts)so lets see if I have this right. Farmer Joe Smith plants roundup ready beans, harvest them and sells them to the granary. This farmer buys
the beans from the granary and plants them and now the people that developed the seeds and sold them to farmer Joe Smith claim ownership?
Bull$hit.
I do not see how this can be legal, and the only way they can win
is by running up the legal costs to the point the farmer can not keep up.
LiberalFighter
(50,793 posts)If any of the genetics get transferred from one field to another they claim ownership of any products created with the cross pollination.
ShadowLiberal
(2,237 posts)Monsanto should have NEVER been given a patent on genetic modifications, especially on the off spring of seeds Monsanto sells.
Monsanto has a long history of going around suing farmers simply because their neighbors buy Monsanto seeds, and then within a few years nature takes it's course, and the wind blows Monsanto's seeds into the neighbor farmer's land and grows there. That's how nature intended plants to spread their seeds long before anyone farmed them. Monsanto suing people over that is basically extortion or economic terrorism in my opinion, you have no way of protecting yourself from nature taking it's course, except to pay Monsanto the ransom by buying their seeds in the first place, which only gives Monsanto more money to hire lawyers to sue other people in the same situation.
The only reason Monsanto has been able to get away with this for so long is because it's only farmers they go after. If they dared sued home owners all across America and other nations who don't even have a garden just because of their seeds spreading like nature intended then the laws would have been changed and their patents revoked long ago.
Tagish_Charlie
(85 posts)This company is the most evil insidious threat to our well being. Messing with genetics they way Monsanto does is opening up a can of worms that we are presently unable to comprehend. The potential for harm is incalculable. Their arrogance that they know better than God about the genetic nature of creation is nauseating and their assertion that the by can do better than creation is ridiculous and dangerous. Sadly SCOTUS is bought and paid for by business so we know how this case will go. After all aren't corporations people?
Fuck Monsanto