So companies producing IP in a critical industry like agriculture have no access to IP protection? If anyone is allowed to sell 2G seeds, then Monsanto will make no money, and no future agriculture company will ever spend money on GMO research if they know they cannot make money from it.
GMO seeds enable greater crop yields which would actually be better for humankind, so making money on GMO seeds is important. The great potato famine in Ireland wiped out a million people. We use more advanced fungicides now, but the chemicals used have a greater chance of causing liver damage than GMO plants. Obviously it would have to be a fair and balanced decision, but we can't throw out common sense because it affects a "critical industry".
Monsanto is an easy company to hate, but we can't make the wrong decision here or else it will affect future generations of companies who want to improve crop yields via GMO products.
If we want to take a look at the big picture, lets do that then.
Whats the cost-benefit of having patents on GMO seeds? Whats the increased cost to society vs disclosure of information? Patents are an barging, where the state gives a state protected monopoly in return for disclosure of information. Lets make a cost-benefit analyze and see where it points (hint, not even with imaginary numbers would patents on GMO seeds ever come up on top).
> no future agriculture company will ever spend money on GMO research
What a lie. Sorry, but I am going to call it what it is. A lie or a serious form of disillusioning. If you can create a better method to farm: vegetable oils, soy, rapeseed, jatropha, mahua, mustard, flax, sunflower, palm oil, hemp, field pennycress, Pongamia pinnata, or algae, you are going to earn serious money. The military would very much like to be able to producer cheaper biofuel, as would a never ending list of companies. Corn is an other, where a better seed would easy earn you billions if sold to the highest bidder.
Sure, you can't go around suing farmers who never heard of your company, but that is a good thing.
I disagree. Monsanto's original business model was: "We have a patent on a herbicide called Round Up, if we can find a way to create seeds that result in plants resistant to our own chemical herbicide then we can sell the seeds too! If we convince farmers using our seeds and chemicals results in better yields and profits we can increase our market share of both." That was the original reason to create the modified seeds.
Do you think they are researching and investing in finding seeds/plants that don't have a tie-in to their chemicals?
EDIT: Their problem is that the patent on Round Up expired so we have other companies that can make and sell the herbicide generically now. Their original business model made sense and was reason enough for them to innovate and create GMO seeds.
Question: Can we now say that modifying genes to make organisms resistant to certain chemicals is no longer non-intuitive?
Having a non-diverse gene pool increases the likelihood of a species getting wiped out.
How does have a large majority of our food coming from the same gene pool help secure our future?
If anything it puts us all at greater risk. While in the short term GMO seeds might help, in the long term it appears we are increasing unnecessary risks. Typical current day view: shortsightedness and sacrificing the future for gaining today.
GMO seeds enable greater crop yields which would actually be better for humankind, so making money on GMO seeds is important. The great potato famine in Ireland wiped out a million people. We use more advanced fungicides now, but the chemicals used have a greater chance of causing liver damage than GMO plants. Obviously it would have to be a fair and balanced decision, but we can't throw out common sense because it affects a "critical industry".
Monsanto is an easy company to hate, but we can't make the wrong decision here or else it will affect future generations of companies who want to improve crop yields via GMO products.