“as for reusing monsanto seed - thats just asking for problems.”
What do they mean by “reusing seed”? Leftovers from last year? How can that be wrong?
Farmers have to buy new seed from Monsanto every year, in fact, many of Monsanto’s crops self terminate and cannot be grown from the original seed.
Monsato owns the patent and DNA of their seeds. They have created genetically modified seed that is not harmed by their weed killer. So they sell their seed to large farmers who also purchase their weed killer to have a large yield without weeds choking out the crop.
Here is where they get you. You are not allowed to keep ANY seed for the next year, you MUST PURCHASE a new batch of seeds each year. They will sue you (farmers must sign a contract) if you attempt to keep seeds from the previous year. They also will sue farmers who might be neighboring with Monsato farms if their seeds are pollinated by a Monsato plant. They sue for patent infringement even though the farmer can’t really do much about pollen floating to his farm from the Monsato farm.
These people are EVIL. There is profit and then there is plain out abuse and control. There is a town in South Carolina (I think?) that has like an 80% cancer rate... their drinking water for the town is downstream from the factory that makes the weed killer.
Ha! It's an violation of the sales agreement to save any of the harvested grain (such saved grain is traditionally known as seed corn) to replant - the farmer MUST re-buy from the seed producer every year! It's wrong because it interferes with the chemical company's profits, duh! Don't even get me started on ADM...
Monsanto owns the genome of the bio engineered corn - it better not be in your field if you didnt buy it from them
A hundred years ago farmers kept some of the best seeds from their crops to use as seed for the following year.
About 60 or 80 years ago seed companies began producing various different varieties of corn seed for farmers to buy and use as their seed stock. The purchased seed was so much better than the seed farmers grew for themselves that corn yields began to increase at an amazing rate. In the 1950's/60's the seed companies found that by producing 'Single Cross' hybrids yields could be increased even more.
The important thing to know, as it relates to this article, is that Single Cross hybrids are terminal, that is, the corn produced doesn't make good seed, in fact it makes very poor seed, and no farmers have kept corn seed for over half a century.
The result is that yields have gone from 30 or 40 bushels per acre to over 200 bushels per acre.
We are now, more than 60 years later, in the early stages of a similar revolution in the soybean seed arena. With the new herbicide resistant hybrids farmers are now able to raise soybean in nearly weed-free fields, something that has never been possible before, in the entire history of the world. These seeds are terminal also, albeit by law.
As a result, soybean yields are on their way to doubling from just 20 years ago.
Would we be better off without the terminal seeds? Maybe, but all the farmers I know are VERY happy with the new Monsanto seeds, as those seeds allow them to focus on what every farmer lives for, raising as much of the highest quality crops that he can.