Quote (JessiWan @ Mar 9 2024 06:25pm)
Well, back when they still existed.
Basically Monsanto had patented certain seeds for farmers to buy and use. These seeds were called "terminator seeds" because they were genetically engineered to grow only one harvest. If the farmers wanted to plant more next year, they had to buy them all over again from Monsanto.
I am a bit bothered by this, because I feel that Monsanto was unfairly inducing farmers' dependence on them. On the other hand, they poured money and research into engineering these seeds, so they should be able to make money off them. Anyway I wonder how you feel about this.
To be clear, they never commercialized terminator seeds due to protest from farmers/eco activists. to that point though, farmers tend to purchase seed to plant every year anyway as it gives better crop yields than replanting seeds taken from a harvest. Secondly, terminator seeds are a neat technology if you're worried about GMOs escaping into the wild as they're inherently unable to escape and reproduce.
Quote (SwamiVivekananda @ Mar 9 2024 08:41pm)
Look into India's farmer suicide epidemic that was directly caused by Monsanto.
They basically used their modified seeds to "take over" peoples land and then make them more poor then they already were.
To sort of put it into context let's say you are growing corn and then said Monsanto rep comes to your farm and PURPOSELY puts their GMO corn within your corn and now since it's genitically superior now all "your" corn isn't yours it's actually Monsanto's. So within a few growing seasons(years) you go from owning 100acres of farmland to now still owning it but paying Monsanto.
Because most rural Indian farmers are so poor they have to use Monsanto's franken seeds or they wouldn't survive.
Not cause by Monsanto actually. As Monsanto seed sales went up in India, farmer suicides went down.