DuPont Sends in Former Cops to Enforce Seed Patents: Commodities

[MachineGhost]

DuPont Co. (DD), the world’s second- biggest seed company, is sending dozens of former police officers across North America to prevent a practice generations of farmers once took for granted.

The provider of the best-selling genetically modified soybean seed is looking for evidence of farmers illegally saving them from harvests for replanting next season, which is not allowed under sales contracts. The Wilmington, Delaware-based company is inspecting Canadian fields and will begin in the U.S. next year, said Randy Schlatter, a DuPont senior manager.

DuPont is protecting its sales of Roundup Ready soybeans, so called because they tolerate being sprayed by Monsanto Co. (MON)’s Roundup herbicide. For years enforcement was done by Monsanto, which created Roundup Ready and dominates the $13.3 billion biotech seed industry, though it’s moving on to a new line of seeds now that patents are expiring. That leaves DuPont to play the bad guy, enforcing alternative patents so cheaper “illegal beans”? don’t get planted.

“Farmers are never going to get cheap access to these genetically engineered varieties,”? said Charles Benbrook, a research professor at Washington State University’s Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources. “The biotech industry has trumped the legitimate economic interests of the farmer again by raising the ante on intellectual property.”?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-2 ... ities.html

[doodle]

Whoa! Machineghost, you are quoting Bakunin in your signature? A collectivist anarchist?

As far as Dupont, and Monsanto...what can be done? They are simply enforcing their property rights on their patents. Certainly there is nothing complicated about enforcing property rights on land and life? Private property rights come above everything else.

[Pointedstick]

It's beyond me why some farmers buy this stuff. Don't they realize they're enslaving themselves to the biotech firms? Then again, I maybe it's the same thought process that tells some poor people to get $250K mortgages.

[doodle]

They often don't buy it. Their fields become contaminated with it when neighboring farmers crops cross pollinate with theirs. Then the corporate thugs come in and threaten to sue the farmers pants off. Hey, its a free market based on property rights. What could possibly go wrong with that?

[RuralEngineer]

Doodle, your posts have most definitely taken on a trollish demeanor.

As for the seed, the benefits of easy weed control likely offset the increased price of seed. I know quite a few farmers that are anxious for the next version since weeds are starting to develop resistance to Round-Up.

[doodle]

Whoa! RuralE, we have entirely different worldviews....that doesn't make me a troll. 

Ironically, Gumby (who was lambasting me in the last thread) would probably come down on my side on this one. He is terrified of GMO...I don't necessarily share the level of his fear, but they are concering to me.

Is what I said about cross pollination false?

[Pointedstick]

No doodle, you really are becoming a troll. You're hijacking everyone's posts to complain about what you think is wrong with the world. It doesn't help you or anyone else work through your issues, and it's darn rude to the original poster. You should really stop. You should start a new thread if you really want to use this forum as a sounding board for your personal issues relating to capitalism, property rights, natural resource consumption, and morality.

Seriously, start a new thread. Stop hijacking everyone else's threads with provocative bitterness.

[doodle]

I think I'm done with this group think anyways. What was Machine Ghosts original post but a complaint about Duponts actions? This place is an insane asylum where I am critiziced as being a Marxist by people who quote Bakunin in their handles. No one here makes any sense, so I'm done.

[MediumTex]

I think I'm done with this group think anyways. What was Machine Ghosts original post but a complaint about Duponts actions? This place is an insane asylum where I am critiziced as being a Marxist by people who quote Bakunin in their handles. No one here makes any sense, so I'm done.

doodle,

You do seem to be having the same discussion in every thread you post in recently.

The thing that I notice in the overall arc of your recent thinking is a rigidity and what I perceive to be a lack of openness to revising your views.  When that's where you're at, it's often not productive to have extended discussions because they tend to cause an accumulation of frustration rather than helping to relieve it.

Maybe spending some time on other pursuits would be a good change of pace.

We'll be here at the end of your walkabout.

[Pointedstick]

I agree, doodle. Every group has certain implicit shared views and understandings, and in this group, an understanding and appreciation for free markets is one of the ties that bind. You're questioning the foundational morality of free markets, which is why you're rubbing people wrong. It would be like evangelizing bikes and walking on a car forum. Not a wrong opinion… but the wrong place to express it.

We'll still be here if you ever sort out your feelings and conclude that free markets and property rights aren't so bad after all.

[MachineGhost]

I think I'm done with this group think anyways. What was Machine Ghosts original post but a complaint about Duponts actions? This place is an insane asylum where I am critiziced as being a Marxist by people who quote Bakunin in their handles. No one here makes any sense, so I'm done.

Take a chill pill.  I didn't accuse you of being a Marxist, but perhaps overly influenced by the Marxism that you're been reading.  No one here would really doubt that Marx did not have had some valid insights about the weaknesses of capitalism, it's just beating a dead horse as far as prescriptive remedies.