A farmers stand against monsanto.

[samhill]

WD, thanks for the explanation and info, I didn't know
what the expiry date was on M's patent. I have nothing
against patents and protection of property rights, it
makes innovation go.
But have you ever tried to copyright or patent your
own DNA. I've been told it's not possible.

[TOM4CWB]

Grassy,

If you expect people to respect your personal property
rights... while saying others can break the rule of law
and NOT respect the property rights of others. WHY?

END of Story. There is NO LAW saying farmers must
deal with or grow RR Canola... in fact many do NOT.

You want to be protected... but are not willing to
extend the same courtesy to others. WHY?

[bucket]

But TOM, I think the issue becomes when does Monsanto's responsibilty end?

If they want to own the crop because it is their technology, then do they also own the problem of volunteers 1,2,or even 5 years down the road?

As an example. If a farmer buys RR canola pays monsanto their fee, his right ends at the end of the growing season. He can not re use the seed. As a matter of fact, if the crop got hailed out and volunteers the following year the farmer is expected to pay monsanto a fee (is true). But if the crop has the odd volunteer in the following crops, its not monsanto's problem.

Do you see the double standard?

[wd9]

Grassfarmer. Yes, but a new business
model would be to not allow the farmer
to use those calves and make more calves
of your 'novel' trait. Sign an agreement
accordingly. You are just too poor to
enforce it, so you give it away. See
option 1 above.

Monsanto says, don't grow my seed, only
sell it. If they didn't, they would be
just like you giving away your novel
idea for almost free.

Not a company representative. I just
have plenty of experience in this in my
former life in medicine and watched my
employer take my patentable ideas. Rules
suck, but are the rules. I'm a farmer,
that is all.

Bucket, this is gonna sound horrible but
if its too expensive, don't buy it.

RR canola in Canada was caught in that
first to file vs first to patent rule
change and got extended. Also, patents
within patents can extend expiry of
older patents.

Samhill, your own DNA is obvious
therefore is not patentable. Fails first
test. Just like no one can patent
canola, a tree, etc.

That said, add a trait to cure cancer in
canola, voila, non obvious, unique,
distinct from every other canola,
therefore patentable.

Bucket, there will always be ambiguity
in law. The more money you have, the
more ambiguous the law is!

Farmers got to suck it up, we have to
pay for technology or don't use it.
Steal it, you're gonna lose.

[TOM4CWB]

BUCKET;
When the guy intentionally reseeded the RR soy for
many years... to make planting SEED... then he
breached the contract signed in the first place not to
reproduce RR soyabeans.

If RR technology voluntary seed reproduces... we know
when we sign the contract this will need to be
controlled... not to be harvested and subsequently
reseeded... Like Bowman did.

Volunteer canola escapes in another crop... are NOT
what Monsanto are going after.

Bowman intentionally broke the law... and knew he
broke the contract law he signed.

""it grew [the case before the US Supreme Court] from
a simple contract violation"

"Bowman was a regular customer for Monsanto’s
herbicide-resistant soya beans for his main crop, but
bypassed the company by purchasing seed for a late-
season crop from a grain elevator known to contain
Monsanto’s transgenic seed. In 2007, Monsanto sued
him. As the case climbed through the court system, it
grew from a simple contract violation to a challenge of
the idea that companies can use patents to limit the
offspring of naturally ‘self-replicating’ technologies."

http://www.nature.com/news/seed-patent-case-in-
supreme-court-1.12445"

[wd9]

Ok, so maybe i was a bit involved in the
Schmeiser Supreme Court case.

That case was not about whether Perk was
a crook, everyone knew he was. Yes
everyone. But whether or not genes were
patentable within a living organism.

This had ramifications not only in ag
but also especially in medicine. If a
company could not recoup on investments,
why would they ever invest millions and
then have someone just copy it and sell
it for less? Canada would have been in
the dark ages going forward.

Since genes were patentable in Canada,
Perky broke the law as he grew
patentable material. Tag line that
somehow never made it to mainstream
media. Just a lot of David and goliath
stuff. It wasn't about Perky, it was
about intellectual property of plants
and animals.

I have to credit for the defense lawyers
and their strategy for trying to get
Perk off. Rather then proving that the
seeds magically appeared, prove the law
convicting him as a thief of
intellectual property was wrong.

In the end, Percy was a common thief,
plants and animal novel traits are
patentable, no loopholes left to argue.

[bucket]

wd9

No offense taken.

If the farmer had bought even a few bags of token seeds from the retailer, I think this problem would have gone away?

Your thoughts?

[Burbert]

Does the whinning and sniveling ever stop
in Comedian framing????????? Poor little
old framers vs. big Fn multies *****
taking advantage of dumb Comedian framers.
This is Angribusiness at its best, keep
the framers poor and they haveta keep
trying, hence there is product fer the
market place. Nuttin ever changes, just
the size of things. Heil Harper, F
Ritz!!!

[grassfarmer]

For the GMO/Monsanto/Glyphosate lovers.

http://www.naturalnews.com/025534_Roundup_rese
arch_toxic.html

Nice to see people in the real world are waking up to
the dangers of these things. Was talking to some
Hutterites recently who are looking to move their
farming systems away from the GM0/RR model ASAP.
A new age of enlightenment is creeping across the
countryside.

[wd9]

Why waste the time typing that Burp?

I don't think Bowman intended to get
away with anything. I think he knew
exactly what he was doing and was
testing the law. He's 75, just like
Perk. They just keep testing for the
heck of it because they somehow feel the
laws don't apply.

But i think he would have got away with
it if he just wouldn't have said
anything. Not even bought the certified
seed at all.

[wd9]

Grassfarmer, by new age you mean using ethafluralin,
ethametsulfuron-methyl, clopyralid, and quizalofop-p-
ethyl that leach into ground water and are toxic to
fish rather than a 1/2 liter of roundup?

Groundbreaking.

[grassfarmer]

No nothing as backward as that - think cover crops,
crop cocktails, companion crops and livestock. Look
at Gabe Browns work in N Dakota. Reduced fertilizer
use by 90%, sprays by 75% and has healthier soils,
sustainable and profitable production.

[wd9]

If you reduce fertilizer use and
removing energy from that land in the
form of any food, you are taking from
the land. No rotation of any kind
replaces nutrients if you are taking
food off of it.

If you adding manure, you are taking
from other land and is the same as using
fertilizer.

Just like intellectual property, no free
ride.

[wd9]

Here is an article for it:
http://agriculturalinsights.com/gabe-
brown-is-doing-incredible-things-in-
north-dakota/

While it sounds great, green, wonderful,
he has just discovered what farmers have
been doing for 20 years. Zero till with
a crop rotation. I don't even disturb
the straw anymore, strip it and have 3
feet of snow in my cereal fields this
year!

Except its not sustainable, he raping
the land of nutrients if not adding
fert. So much snake oil in Ag its
nauseating.

[grassfarmer]

What infantile nonsense w9 - you truly are a prodigy
of the post WW2 oil and agrochemical brain washing
that thinks the soil is just "dirt" a medium in which
to plant your seeds and fertilizer. It has been
forgotten that the soil is a living thing where you
need to feed the organisms in the soil and they will
do the work for you. This is sustainable - you can
replace nutrients fine N through legume fixation
and most of the other elements are there in
abundance in the soil but inaccessible to the plants
currently because of the way the soils have been
abused. Every time you spray you are killing the
little organisms on the surface that can do the work
of building topsoil for you. With glyphosate you are
tying up more and more elements so they are
inaccessible to the plants hence making the plants
weaker and more susceptible to disease hence the
need for more sprays as a "cure" for the disease in
the conventional thinking. Every time you apply
fertilizer you are making the plants more and more
dependant on ever increasing amounts of it it
because you are breaking the bridge that should
carry the symbiotic relationship between plant and
soil.
You should study up on Dr Christine Jones work out
of Australia. amazingcarbon.com.