Buying new seeds every season began with hybrid crops in the 1920s.

"Today, hybrid seed production is predominant in agriculture and home gardening, and is one of the main contributing factors to the dramatic rise in agricultural output during the last half of the 20th century. In the US, the commercial market was launched in the 1920s, with the first hybrid maize. All of the hybrid seeds planted by the farmer will be the same hybrid while the seeds from the hybrids planted will not consistently have the desired characteristics. This is why hybrid seed is constantly repurchased by growers for each planting season." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_seed

But at least you still have the option of accepting the mixed results of replanting hybrid seeds.

> Potential, yes; but not with massive financial interests behind it.

This is not necessarily true in every case. pvnick mentioned Golden Rice. The Co-inventor of the genetically engineered, vitamin-A-rich strain of rice Potrykus has spearheaded an effort to have golden rice distributed for free to poor farmers. This required several companies which had intellectual property rights to the results of Beyer's research to license it for free. In fact, Monsanto was one of the first companies to grant free licenses. If the substinence farmer doesn't make more than $10,000 per year, he is freed from paying any royalities. The farmers are even permitted to keep and replant the seeds.

This is in the specific case of Golden Rice. Maybe somebody can jump in and tell a horrific Monsanto story.

True. See "The GM genocide: Thousands of Indian farmers are committing suicide after using genetically modified crops" at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1082559/The-GM-genoc...

This article commits journalistic fraud - it attributes the fact that crops failed due to pests (which can happen to any crop, GM or not) solely to the fact that the crops were GM, and making a false impression that suicides were caused not by crop failures but by the fact that the crops were GM. They imply that "after" means "because", and that's the fraud.

Of course, even GM crops can not protect from all causes of crop failure. But blaming them on every cause of failure is wrong.

The whole thing is complicated (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmers_suicides_in_India) and the Daily Mail has a history of being an awful source.

I agree, it is complicated. That's why it is shameful for Daily Mail to take a complicated story and rewrite it as a single-cause case against GM.

The story confirms that the seeds must be purchased anew with each season.

I seem to recall seeing claims that GM cotton was more susceptible to certain pests, especially if you didn't spray it with the pesticide produced by the manufacturer of the seeds.

The way I read the article, it's mainly pricing of the GM product that led indirectly to their despair. They could've handled the crop failure with the cheaper non-GM seeds.

It's analogous to US students getting into a pickle by accepting large student loans and then finding no jobs in their field. But if they don't take the risk they may lose to those who took the risk. They'd almost all be better off if the student loans weren't available.

Yes, they're patented and copying them is a violation of the "user agreement".

http://grist.org/news/supreme-court-hands-a-big-win-to-monsa...

Yes [1]. But for good reason. It is similar to pharmaceutical companies. They invest millions into inventing products. They should be entitled to a monopoly on the product for some period of time in order to re-coup their investment.

[1] http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Pages/why-does-monsanto-su...

That shiploads are held back is actually a _great_ thing, maybe one of the best things capitalism does.

Yes it means you get to pay more (in some cases a lot more) for your bread. It also means that farmers make more money and enable them to sell their wheat _now_ when they need the money and not after they have been foreclosed and it puts a price floor on the market for wheat, insuring that the crops we need to prevent starvation will not rot on the fields.

I agree that it's good for the sellers (farmers). But how is artificial scarcity and rising prices good against hunger? The argument about rotting crops is a bit weak, AFAIK crops can be stored quite well if kept dry.