[HN Gopher] Kenyan court declares law banning seed sharing uncon...
___________________________________________________________________
Kenyan court declares law banning seed sharing unconstitutional
Author : thunderbong
Score : 290 points
Date : 2025-12-05 09:09 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (apnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (apnews.com)
| samdung wrote:
| It is sad that the law was enacted in the first place (lobbying
| by 'the usual suspects') and others had to fight to repeal what
| is violating common law, common sense and natural justice.
| nephihaha wrote:
| Yes, the usual suspects, trying to undermine a practice going
| back thousands of years. Those seeds will probably be well
| adapted to the soils and climate of Kenya.
| estsauver wrote:
| For some context on why the original law was introduced:
|
| When you're making a seed that you want to make the best crop
| possible, the way to do that is to take two great lines of maize
| that share relatively little genetics, cross them at the last
| step, and enjoy the hybrid vigour that results. This is one of
| the most important practical advancements we have for getting
| good yields from crops: the yields are dramatically better for
| this seed then if you plant the seed kernels that are made by the
| hybrid. When you plant saved seed (which many poor people are
| forced to do through not being able to afford hybrid seeds) you
| get dramatically worse yields and often even doing things like
| using fertilizer doesn't make economic sense
| (https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/low-quality-low-ret...
| is frequently cited.)
|
| However, to the naked eye, there's basically no distinction
| between a hybrid seed and stored seed. A lot of seed companies
| sell seeds that are coated to help protect the seeds from
| pests/blights, but seed counterfitters have learned how to copy
| this. To distinguish them, you either need to run genetic testing
| or plant them and wait a season. If you get scammed, the result
| can be devestating for a smallholder farmer's family.
|
| I don't necessarily think community seed banks should be banned,
| but I think it's important context to know. There are people for
| whom they really need _any_ seed, crops which are not served
| commercially well, and a whole bunch of other use cases I
| immediately understand for a community seed bank. But seed
| counterfitting is a real problem that is hurting some of the
| world 's poorest people. (I'll also just say I'm not up to date
| on this law, the court case, or how it's been applied in the
| country.)
|
| Disclaimer: I'm one of the founders of Apollo Agriculture and
| still serve on the board, which operates in Kenya and a few other
| countries trying to help smallholders get access to better agtech
| (which includes hybrid seeds and fertilizer and other high roi
| agricultural tools.)
| pessimizer wrote:
| You failed to explain why seeds that might fail to make the
| "best crop possible" would be banned, while leading with a
| promise to do so. Instead, you explained the concept of "hybrid
| vigor."
|
| Then you talked about the counterfeiting of seeds by imitating
| a coating, a concept completely unrelated to a law banning
| sharing seeds, and unlikely to be hindered by it at all.
|
| Unless I am missing something.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| Ole Jeff Monsanto at it again. Testing chemical sprays next
| to Hawaiian elementary schools just doesn't hit the same
| anymore.
| trollbridge wrote:
| Smarter to do it where you can buy off an entire national
| government.
| roenxi wrote:
| Also, are they not capable of buying seeds from reputable
| sources in Kenya? I assume there is some sort of farmer seed-
| shop in most places which has been around for more than a
| year, known to be reputable. If they buy below-market priced
| seeds then those are going to be dodgy. That is why they are
| below market price. These people are poor not stupid. It'd be
| like my buying a cheap Rolex from a street vendor - I might
| buy it, I might not but I'm not going to be confused if it
| turns out to be a fake. It isn't hard to find a reputable
| seller of something and if you go to the unreputable sellers
| the reason it is cheap is because it might be bad quality.
| Don't go to a community seed store that lets in random seeds
| if the quality matters.
|
| I assumed that there was unwritten context where some seed
| vendor with genetically enhanced seeds was corrupting the
| legal process to try and protect their IP.
| dante54 wrote:
| I am kenyan,let me put it into context since its a bit
| nuanced. We have a very corrupt parliament, they were
| bought off way back in 2012 when the law was introduced.
| Mainly by big corpos like Monsanto & the Apollo guy above.
| They basically wanted full dependence on these companies
| for seeds, without giving farmers a choice. Maize is the
| staple of the country and big bank for anyone who captures
| the supply chain at whatever level. There has always been
| contention on GMOs since contrary to what you may have read
| in your media, kenyan farmers are perfectly capable of
| feeding their families & the nation at large. Now farmers
| fought back the law was suspended in court since 2012 but
| during that period a lot of big seed companies found a way
| to capture the market. Its a victory since the fines and
| jail time were really extreme & seed sharing is an age old
| tradition here, so picture a bunch of foregin companies
| lobbying your government to criminalize your traditions
| because its a direct threat to their business model
|
| That is why this is a big deal and for more context on why
| interfering with agricultural sytems at this scale is a
| doomed excercise; The gates foundation tried this shit in
| Zambia, and it worked they produced more till covid hit,
| supply chains were cut and they are still dealing with a
| famine
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Thank you so much for this first-hand insight! It takes
| the conversation out of theoretical law intentions, and
| into real-world actions.
| rzerowan wrote:
| In fact its basically a monopoly play to sideline the
| longstanding seedbanks that have existed, both government
| ones and co-op based seed banks. Hence the law that
| proposed: Fines could reach up to 1 million Kenyan
| shillings (approximately $7,700) and Offenders risked
| imprisonment for up to two years.
|
| Think about that for a second in a economy where
| approximately 40-50% is subsistence agriculture.
|
| Basically a ploy to force the small farmers off the land
| and leave it to plantation and multicorps.
|
| Its really sad but KE is in the grip of one of the worst
| neoliberal experiments since post Soviet in the early 90s.
| See recent news where all the country's healthdata has been
| auctioned off to the US big pharma for 25years for 1B.
| estsauver wrote:
| Please see linked Harvard study for partial explanation of
| difficulties and challenges in local supply chain.
| xtiansimon wrote:
| > "...are they not capable of buying seeds from reputable
| sources..."
|
| I don't know the answer, but the op's answer does point to
| corruption. This reminds me of early 20th century reforms
| in the meat industry in the United States a hundred years
| ago.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Meat_Inspection_Act
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Era
| estsauver wrote:
| Please try reading the whole comment again, I think you are
| missing most of the comment?
| dante54 wrote:
| I read the comment and for context I am also a farmer, and
| stripping farmers of a choice with excessively high fines
| and jail time will never be correct no matter how you frame
| it or whatever goodwill you pupport to have, you are in it
| for the money not to help out "poor" farmers
| estsauver wrote:
| "I don't necessarily think community seed banks should be
| banned, but I think it's important context to know. There
| are people for whom they really need any seed, crops
| which are not served commercially well, and a whole bunch
| of other use cases I immediately understand for a
| community seed bank. But seed counterfitting is a real
| problem that is hurting some of the world's poorest
| people. (I'll also just say I'm not up to date on this
| law, the court case, or how it's been applied in the
| country.)"
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| That _still_ doesn 't give any context that would support
| the action.
|
| If seed counterfeiting is "a big problem", then banning
| seed sharing is "an even bigger, worse problem". What
| context justifies causing a bigger, worse problem to
| address a smaller problem?
|
| Occam's razor suggests that the primary motivation was
| protecting corporate profits anyways, not addressing seed
| counterfeiting.
| pwg wrote:
| > That still doesn't give any context that would support
| the action.
|
| That's because if the true context in support was given,
| it would be: "because seed sharing reduces our rate of
| sales, and our resulting profits".
| cess11 wrote:
| One reason for running these seed banks is that old fashioned
| seeds actually work better than hybrids and similar in some
| areas where climate change is rampant.
| bluGill wrote:
| This is not clear. The article is talking about traditional
| seeds for which that could be true (I don't know what is
| traditional in Kenya). Other commenters are talking about
| Maize which is from America and thus not traditional in
| Africa and thus there are no traditional seeds in Kenya.
| Maize also benefits greatly from hybridization, but there are
| other plants that do not, if we are talking about Maize you
| are wrong new seeds are much better than traditional, but if
| we are talking about other seeds who knows.
| cess11 wrote:
| See e.g. https://apnews.com/article/kenya-seed-bank-
| agriculture-clima... , which is linked from TFA.
| octocop wrote:
| > But seed counterfitting is a real problem that is hurting
| some of the world's poorest
|
| I'm guessing these hybrid seeds you are talking about are
| probably the reason for the counterfitting to begin with. I
| don't imagine them being sold at a reasonable price, but with
| this law maybe you have less competition?
| bluGill wrote:
| What is a reasonable price? Hybrid seeds at 3x the price of
| traditional seeds could well be a great value because at the
| end of the year you get that much better of a crop.
|
| Of course you have to pay for the seeds up front and get the
| reward at the end of the year. Investments are like that, a
| lot of poor farmers could spend 4x their current annual
| income on modern technology (seeds, fertilizer, tractors) and
| at the end of the year have more money left over than they
| had the previous year - but of course they need to get to
| harvest to get all the money. Worse there will be bad years
| where they lose money - it works out on average over 20 years
| but the individual years can be a killer if you start in the
| wrong year.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >Worse there will be bad years where they lose money
|
| Everyone complains about farm subsidies/insurance in the US
| (well at least that's not a farmer), but this is the reason
| they exist. Farming is hard.
| RoyalHenOil wrote:
| I used to work on a farm producing hybrid seed. It is indeed
| very, very expensive compared to non-hybrid seed -- in large
| part because it is a LOT of work to produce, depending on the
| crop.
|
| You have to maintain a separate "father" line and "mother"
| line. You must prevent the mother line from self-pollinating,
| which in some cases (like tomatoes) requires you to
| physically remove the anthers from every single flower, ever
| single day.
|
| You must also prevent it from cross-pollinating with the
| wrong crop, which (for insect-pollinated crops) means you may
| need to grow it under insect-proof netting and then provide
| your own pollinators. That's easy enough if it's a honeybee-
| pollinated crop, but some crops are only pollinated by wild
| insects, so you need to hand-pollinate every flower.
|
| In most cases, the father line needs to be grown intermixed
| with the mother line to ensure good pollination. These are
| usually two wildly different varieties (otherwise, why are
| you hybridizing them?) with different physical features, care
| requirements, planting times, etc. This means you typically
| can't use standard farming equipment (which is designed for
| monocropping at scale) and must plant and care for the crops
| using a lot more physical labor.
|
| Once the mother line is pollinated, the father line must
| removed to ensure it doesn't produce seed that could get
| mixed up with the hybrid seed. While removing it, you have to
| be very careful to not the damage the mother line crop. In
| some crops, you must not even jostle the mother plants too
| much or they'll drop a lot of their seed.
|
| For this reason, F1 hybrid seed is very expensive, especially
| for crops where hybridizing is particularly painstaking. For
| example, the tomato seed I hybridized sold for approximately
| $1 per seed. It was extremely worth it to or customers,
| though, because it meant they could grow several times the
| amount of fruit in the same space with the same inputs.
| dante54 wrote:
| Thats a bs explanation & you know it. Where is the direct
| corelation between seed sharing and counterfeit seeds? Did you
| do any studies? Any research to back your claims? Why
| criminalize a practice that existed well before your companies?
| Farmers that plant every year cant tell good seeds from bad
| seeds? What kind of disrespect is that though?
| lentil_soup wrote:
| I don't understand the context. The idea of banning seed
| sharing is to stop counterfeits? That doesn't make much sense.
| Surely that'll just make it worse, no?
|
| Also, what's the connection to the high yield ones? Is it
| because those get counterfeited the most?
| trollbridge wrote:
| Instead of doing things like securing their supply chains,
| the reaction of the seed companies is to... just make anyone
| else selling seeds illegal.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| It worked so well in the War On Drugs... Don't do the hard
| work of taking down illegal supply chains; simply put the
| end consumers into jail for several years!
|
| /s
| hinkley wrote:
| From Nixon's standpoint it worked great because they put
| brown people in jail.
| Retric wrote:
| Not quite, the counterfeit seeds here are dramatically
| worse to the point where buyers will feel scammed and face
| significant hardship if they mistakenly use them.
|
| Imagine if 90% counterfeit electronics caused house fires,
| the harm is way beyond the purchase price. At that point
| customers start caring a great deal, but corruption is
| difficult to avoid.
| BigGreenJorts wrote:
| But there's nothing stopping the farmer from observing
| their saved or off brand seed is not as effective and
| buying from the original breeder again..?
| LargeWu wrote:
| Not even just selling seeds. Saving seeds from the crop you
| planted from the previous year can also lead to
| infringement lawsuits.
| estsauver wrote:
| Linked article claimed it was undertaken to prevent seed
| counterfeiting.
|
| Edit: (I personally know basically nothing about the law or
| how it's been implemented.)
| nchmy wrote:
| shouldnt you, as the ceo of a company selling seeds in
| kenya, know about the laws related to saving and selling
| seeds in kenya...?
| geon wrote:
| > Also, what's the connection to the high yield ones?
|
| The high yield seeds are created by cross pollinating certain
| varieties. When the high yield seeds are planted, the new
| seeds should be eaten -not re-planted- since they will give
| poor yield.
|
| So a counterfeiter can just buy cheaper food-seeds and resell
| them as expensive high-yield seeds.
| geon wrote:
| A lot of plants work like that. Apples very rarely come out
| tasting great if the tree is planted from a seed. You need
| to clone a good known apple tree from cuttings instead.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Why does that make it sound like we are truly effed if we
| ever end up in situation where these processes or markets
| fail...
| bitfilped wrote:
| You can look at America to see what happens when seed sharing
| is outlawed (or made effectively illegal through contracts to
| acquire seeds that are then ruthlessly enforced.) Neither path
| is ultimatly friendly to small farmers it seems, so this line
| of thinking doesn't really hold any water to me.
| bluGill wrote:
| That is a "city slicker" read on the American farmer. The
| actually farmers themselves learned long ago that savings
| seeds isn't worth doing even without the contract. The terms
| of the contract look bad from the outside, but to the farmer
| they are "I wouldn't do that anyway"
| thechao wrote:
| What hurt farmer's the worst is the formation of modern
| seed trusts (consolidation); well, on the seed side, at
| least, for small farmers.
| oersted wrote:
| So you are saying that these special hybrid seeds that are the
| first generation of combining two strains are the only ones
| that can perform well? And that using any other seeds, even the
| second generation of that same strain, is so bad and so easy to
| confuse that it should be outright illegal?
|
| That is very hard to believe.
|
| EDIT: I see now I was too quick to judge and that my knowledge
| on the topic was insufficient. Read the excellent comments
| below , they helped me understand how OP makes sense.
|
| Such laws are in place to protect the IP of these special seed
| producers, to make their business model viable. That does have
| merit to a degree, you do want such companies to exist, but
| they should also have to contend with competition from other,
| perhaps less effective but cheaper, sources of seed.
|
| This doesn't have much to do with protecting the farmers from
| being cheated into planting bad seed. And I am skeptical of the
| fact that even second generation seeds are that bad, or that
| these hybrids are really such a life-changing upgrade.
| estsauver wrote:
| Hybrid seeds are ~100 years old and are nearly universally
| adopted across developed agricultural markets. They're as
| controversial as "you should probably use source control" is
| in programming. You may be confusing hybrid seeds with GMOs.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_seed
|
| To state once again, I don't know much about this law or how
| the government believes it's preventing counterfeit seed, but
| bad seed is a huge problem for farmers. I personally want
| farmers to be able to do whatever they want to with their
| farms!
| oersted wrote:
| You have a point there, I was using "hybrid" as a catchall
| for any special seed that comes from a dedicated producer
| as opposed to stored seed. You are right that I don't know
| enough about this, I was just judging your comment on its
| internal argumentation and some basic red flags caught my
| eye.
|
| Would you care to answer the questions I posed? They were
| not rhetorical, I would like to be proven wrong and learn.
|
| PS: I really admire what you are doing with your company, I
| don't want to discount that.
| estsauver wrote:
| Sure--I'll try!
|
| > So you are saying that these special hybrid seeds that
| are the first generation of combining two strains are the
| only ones that can perform well?
|
| For a lot of crop systems, yes! There are obviously crop
| systems where you can do clones and some exceptions are
| always present in biology, but basically yes. Yes for all
| the big staple crops except Canola.
|
| > And that using any other seeds, even the second
| generation of that same strain, is so bad and so easy to
| confuse that it should be outright illegal?
|
| I probably wouldn't make it illegal, I think farmers
| should be allowed to do whatever they want to! (My
| completely out of the loop guess is the government is
| trying to help small holder farmers who are reporting
| that they're being scammed by these groups and that they
| lack the resources to do genetic testing to prosecute
| them for the fraud.)
|
| > That is very hard to believe. Such laws are in place to
| protect the IP of these special seed producers, to make
| their business model viable. That does have merit to a
| degree, you do want such companies to exist, but they
| should also have to contend with competition from other,
| perhaps less effective but cheaper, sources of seed.
|
| It's not really an IP protection thing, it's an extremely
| difficult many year process to recover genetics on most
| hybrid crop systems. I don't think most seed companies
| care about folks using saved seed, they know almost all
| farmers will buy good seed if they can.
|
| > This doesn't have much to do with protecting the
| farmers from being cheated into planting bad seed. And I
| am skeptical of the fact that even second generation
| seeds are that bad, or that these hybrids are really such
| a life-changing upgrade.
|
| I think well answered by a parent comment, but the book
| The Wizard and The Prophet is pretty good reading on
| Borlaug and the green revolution. If you look at global
| food capacity vs population, it's probably the single
| most important life upgrade for everyone of modernity.
|
| (Small Edit: I should note that I'm not an agronomist,
| I'm just a guy who codes okay sometimes and that I've
| gotten to spend a lot of time talking to agronomists and
| smallholder farmers trying to make agriculture for small
| farmers work better.)
| dogman144 wrote:
| Universally adopted in part by very well known strong arm
| business practices from Big Ag vs farmers. This is a bad
| faith framing imo. Source - live in ag country
| zdragnar wrote:
| You should do at least a bit of research before you basically
| accuse someone of being a liar and corporate shill for no
| more reason than it fits your generic worldview.
|
| F1 and F2 are commonly accepted terms for first generation
| and second generation seeds from hybrid plants. Because these
| hybrids are created from two stable lines, they are
| themselves unstable and will produce, at best, seeds of
| varying quality and at worst entirely sterile plants.
|
| https://www.parkseed.com/blogs/park-seed-
| blog/understanding-...
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/botany/comments/wq3heg/question_why.
| ..
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=difference+between+first+and.
| ..
|
| If you're going to pay more for a hybrid seed, it should be
| only for a first generation, otherwise you don't know what
| you're going to get. For some crops, like tomatos, that's
| survivable. For others like corn, that could easily be
| devastating. It's like playing russian roulette the slow and
| expensive way.
|
| Note that OP didn't say the seed banks themselves should be
| illegal, but when you can't identify by visual inspection,
| it's very high risk for fraud if they're selling what they
| claim are premium products but are really F2 seeds.
| oersted wrote:
| You are right, my tone was too dismissive. The questions
| were not rhetorical, I was actually trying to understand
| the argument because it didn't make sense from the basic
| knowledge I had. I appreciate this info, that's what I
| wanted.
| hinkley wrote:
| If you don't want to deal with F2 plants, the alternative
| is "landrace", which are collected seeds specific usually
| to a microbiome. They germinate with the most appropriate
| genes already activated (epigenetics) in the germ line.
| Instead of getting seeds from some company in Pennsylvania
| or Oregon you get them from grandpa or the guy at the other
| end of the valley, where the soil and weather patterns are
| identical. And you keep it that way.
|
| The F1 person might also want to buy your seeds because he
| has access to another landrace variety from far away and
| wants to cross them.
| bluGill wrote:
| > So you are saying that these special hybrid seeds that are
| the first generation of combining two strains are the only
| ones that can perform well
|
| Absolutely. The first generation of a hybrid seed will
| produce several times more than either traditional seeds or
| the second generation. You can't reasonably grow your own
| hybrid seeds as you need to keep your fields to grow those
| seeds well separated from any other fields.
|
| Now not all plants can be hybridized, and even of those that
| can I won't state with confidence that all of them have that
| property. However Maize (corn in US) which is a major world
| crop does act like this.
|
| > Such laws are in place to protect the IP of these special
| seed producers, to make their business model viable
|
| Not exactly. There is some of that for sure, but there is
| also that if you are a seed producer you want to ensure your
| customers get your good seed and not counterfeit that looks
| just like yours (if you cannot examine cell DNA you can't
| tell the difference between a first generation hybrid and any
| other seed).
|
| However the law was written is clearly too broad. It should
| protect the hybrid seeds - nobody wants any seed claimed as
| hybrid that isn't a first generation hybrid. However it
| shouldn't affect any traditionally saved seeds (though where
| hybrid is available nobody wants them except museums)
| miohtama wrote:
| Also none of this is new knowledge. This was taught in my
| high school 30 years ago.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Did you go to high school in the country that made this
| law? In addition, how many farmers in that country get
| high school education?
|
| From what I read getting grades 1-8 is common in Kenya,
| but the high school years of education drop off
| significantly with only around 40% of the population
| getting that education, and making an educated guess that
| would target city people more than those that would be
| farmers.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Kenya
| geon wrote:
| Poor education doesn't make it new knowledge.
|
| If _anyone_ was taught this in highschool, it must have
| been established practice for decades at least.
| hinkley wrote:
| If you lived in the Midwest at any point and heard about
| high school kids getting "detassling" jobs, they were
| forcing hybridization of two corn lines in half the crop by
| removing pollen from the other half. Two strains were
| planted in the same field in stripes.
| jt2190 wrote:
| > I am skeptical of the fact that even second generation
| seeds are that bad
|
| Non-farmers really don't understand how human-engineered
| agriculture has been for the entire history of human
| civilization. For example, corn (maize) does not really exist
| in nature, it's a human-developed thing. Hybridized plants
| still carry the genetic code that allowed them to propagate
| through the ages before human agriculture, and these survival
| traits will very quickly express themselves in the offspring
| (seeds).
| gus_massa wrote:
| I agree. Here is a photo of the wild ancestor of maize,
| compared to a modern one and an hybrid
| https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/721466
| cguess wrote:
| I had a lecture from the main researcher of that paper
| when I was in undergrad, fantastic lecturer and very
| interesting topic. The whole class actually applauded him
| after he finished (that isn't something that happens in
| US universities usually).
| dekhn wrote:
| Do you mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Doebley ?
| See also https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/science/25cre
| ature.html for the story of how maize was traced back to
| teosinte using hybrids and some literature with more
| scientific detail: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/
| article/pii/0168952592...
| hinkley wrote:
| We are still trying to figure out how maize came to be.
| Last I heard we haven't found the smoking gun yet.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| For some context on why the original law was introduced:
|
| $$$.
| dogman144 wrote:
| Haha very important disclaimer there, because reading your post
| sounds a lot like a person who works for big ag.
|
| The _other_ reason these laws exist is a long history by Big Ag
| (Monsanto, Cargill) doing the following, and has been done in
| the states for a while:
|
| 1) gmo/patented seeds in field on the left, community non-big
| ag seeds on the right field.
|
| 2) Cross-pollination occurs because we're talking crops.
| Variations on this.
|
| 3) Monsanto sues Farmer John and Jane into the ground next
| season for stealing tech via the crops he's growing.
|
| Add in a little bit of fear (encryption backdoors for the
| children, laws to prevent dangerous counterfeit seeds!), and
| you have monopoly on farming run by big corps.
|
| Also, US corps have a long history of POC'ing underhanded
| approaches in Africa.
|
| What could be going on here!?
|
| Edit - Man, rereading, "forced to plant [dangerous] saved
| seeds," guess it's Big Ag + tech startups now pushing this.
| Maybe... those farmers just want to control their "IP" (saved
| seeds) so they don't have to buy them from a cartel of seed
| providers? This is such a well known problem in the states, is
| this marketing really working in Africa?
|
| Final edit on the soapbox - other reason why this matters is
| genetic diversity. Crop blight is a thing. There is no way the
| natural "herd immunity" of a basket of seed variants in a
| community is outstripped in effectiveness by a growing
| monoculture of owned hybrid seeds that stay in front of the
| blights each season. Coffee rust already jumped the Atlantic
| from Africa to SA. Often feels like I've read this sci-fi novel
| already (there is a good one - Windup Girl).
| throwaway243123 wrote:
| How does that suing pass muster is any court of law?
| dogman144 wrote:
| Good question
| PythagoRascal wrote:
| Does it need to? Unfortunately, a threat of a lawsuit by a
| large company is weapon enough to make people buckle.
| Peteragain wrote:
| More expensive lawyers.
| banku_brougham wrote:
| Read "confessions of an economic hitman", you'll get the
| gist
| dekhn wrote:
| From what I've read, the articles about Monsanto suing
| innocent farmers is misleading.
| dogman144 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowman_v._Monsanto_Co.
| dogman144 wrote:
| " The usual Monsanto claim involves patent infringement
| by intentionally replanting patented seed"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_legal_cases
|
| Edit - Can't reply again looks like but to the response
| below, yes many view this approach as effectively leading
| to enforcing what you state. Which is why it is so
| horribly underhanded to me, and seeing supporting
| narratives in hackernews was striking.
| noworriesnate wrote:
| Doesn't this mean that farmers will no longer be able to
| reuse their own seeds then, if a neighbor has GMO seeds?
| throwup238 wrote:
| No, it doesn't. From their "commitment" [1] which was
| affirmed by the courts as binding in a 2010s court case (
| _Organic Seed Growers & Trade Ass'n v. Monsanto_):
|
| _> We do not exercise our patent rights where trace
| amounts of our patented seeds or traits are present in a
| farmer's fields as a result of inadvertent means._
|
| [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20101023123618/http://www
| .monsan...
| DANmode wrote:
| Meaning it didn't happen, or the farmers aren't as innocent
| as the word innocent legally implies?
|
| Comment could be considered misleading...
| banku_brougham wrote:
| >"My grandmother saved seeds, and today the court has said I
| can do the same for my grandchildren without fear of the police
| or of prison," he said.
|
| Unconscionable to support such a law IMO.
| teyc wrote:
| If hybrid seeds provide economic and material benefit then the
| laws should be written to prevent counterfeits, not
| specifically banning people from replanting.
| thatgerhard wrote:
| Good!
| oregano wrote:
| Seed sharing is fundamental to human civilization. It is a human
| right. Companies like Monsanto that belligerently interfere with
| this by claiming "ownership" of seeds are nothing less than evil.
| sejje wrote:
| This is a new human right I didn't even know I had
| IAmBroom wrote:
| The comments in this thread make it abundantly clear there's
| nothing new about the right. Seed sharing predates your "TIL"
| knowledge of it.
| sejje wrote:
| There's nothing new about the practice. It becoming a human
| right would certainly be new.
|
| That's like saying backhanding your kid is a human right.
| Every human on the planet practiced it forever.
| oregano wrote:
| Perhaps because you have never had to think about the role
| agriculture plays in civilization.
|
| Encourage you to look into this issue more.
| sejje wrote:
| I'm likely more connected to agriculture than you think.
| And I think seed-sharing should be enshrined legally.
|
| That's not the same as human rights. I think it's a silly
| practice lately to start proclaiming all these things are
| human rights. Particularly (not this case) when those
| things have to be given to them by other humans.
| alkonaut wrote:
| I don't know what exactly "seed sharing" means (and the
| article doesn't describe it fully) but merely owning
| anything communally, or owning property - which includes
| the right to transfer it - seems like obvious human
| rights.
|
| What's actually a human right and what isn't will depend
| on who you ask, but just "Everyone has the right to own
| property alone as well as in association with others."
| seems to be applicable (UN Charter SS17)? It doesn't feel
| like "random thing I think is important is a human right"
| at all?
| banku_brougham wrote:
| 9th Amendment, US Constitution, ratified 1789:
|
| >The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights,
| shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained
| by the people.
| wslh wrote:
| Sadly, there is no tax that Nature itself can collect on
| Monsanto and others
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-12-05 23:01 UTC)