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You REALLY need to research the facts about RoudUp Ready Seed before you post such completely and totally incorrect statements.
You're right in a way, actually... I should have worded it better. They just keep having to use Roundup... they cannot go back to using any other kind.
You know that movie "Children of Men"? Right after I watched that movie, I read Jane Goodall's book "Harvest for Hope", and right after that I read "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan.
That pretty much did it for me. What's so scary about Monsanto and companies that are following Monsanto's lead is that it's allowing humans to unknowingly consume food that has been grown with seed that can no longer reseed itself. (They do this so that the farmer's must buy seed everytime rather than save money by reseeding. It's more profitable for the seed companies this way.) It seems only logical to me, that if humans keep eating food that is sterile, humans will eventually become sterile as well. This concerns me.
Maybe we are already seeing the effects of eating GMO foods - how many women now struggle to become pregnant or sustain pregnancies, and are having to seek out IVF treatments? Why are there so many more children being born with birth defects? (The CDC has been monitoring birth defects since 1997 and you can find reports published for the past 5 years of their findings at the CDC website if you have the time and patience to click around and read them...) There are so many issues mounting... some are more obvious like the environmental concerns for plants and wildlife... but some are still a bit hidden - within our own bodies and our future generations of humans. Only time will tell...
---" seed that can no longer re-seed itself"--
??????????????????????????
The controversy is because seed companies don't want farmers to buy their seed, then never buy again cuz they are keeping a portion of their harvest for the next years planting.
This has been going on for as long as I can remember , only they called it---"protected varities"
Thus if a seed corn company developed a new variety of wheat,oats, barley--------they wanted to re-coup their cost of researching and developing that variety.
They sure couldn't if they could only sell the seed for one year cuz farmers kept the harvest for seed so they didn't have to buy that new variety the next year.
The USDA grants--"protected variety staus"---( similar to a patten)
This has been going on for years ( long before GMO seed) and has nothing to do with the grain harvested being--sterile.
You're right in a way, actually... I should have worded it better. They just keep having to use Roundup... they cannot go back to using any other kind.
You're right in a way, actually... I should have worded it better. They just keep having to use Roundup... they cannot go back to using any other kind.
I'm sorry, but that's still not right.
RoundUp is a contact herbicide that kills most plants - including crops.
RoundUp Ready Seed is a hybrid that can be sprayed with RoundUp, yet the herbicide will not kill it.
What farmers have to do, before they can purchase RoundUp Ready Seed, is sign a contract guaranteeing that they won't save back seed, and plant it next year. That is all. You can argue that that practice is unfair, and it's a valid point. Nonetheless, farmers can simply choose to plant a different hybrid if they don't want to sign the contract.
The farmers that have been sued are the ones who thought they could get by with saving back seed and planting it the next year, despite having signed the contract saying they wouldn't.
That said, it is truly stupid for any farmer to save back any seed to plant the next year. If you plant new seed corn, you're apt to get nearly 200 bushels per acre yield. If you plant corn out of the bin, you're apt to get 40-50 bushels per acre yield. So really, it's a no-brainer.
Seed companies and chemical companies could have great varieties of GMO wheat out except for wheat farmers reluctance to agree on the protected variety clause and agree not to save seed.
(saving seed in small grains is very common--wheat,oats,barley----and has been for many years as yields don't suffer as they do saving seed corn)
Many diseases currently in wheat could be eliminated, but no company is gonna invest in reserch on wheat without this provision.
Thus, increased yields in wheat have lagged while corn and soybeans have jumped dramaticaly.
Seed companies and chemical companies could have great varieties of GMO wheat out except for wheat farmers reluctance to agree on the protected variety clause and agree not to save seed.
(saving seed in small grains is very common--wheat,oats,barley----and has been for many years as yields don't suffer as they do saving seed corn)
Many diseases currently in wheat could be eliminated, but no company is gonna invest in reserch on wheat without this provision.
Thus, increased yields in wheat have lagged while corn and soybeans have jumped dramaticaly.
You're right.
Soybeans don't lag in yield nearly as bad as corn, when using bin-run seed.
It's interesting that the biggest problem my dad has encountered with RoundUp Ready Soybeans is the volunteer corn - from last year - that was also RoundUp Ready. The herbicide doesn't kill it, so you're kind of back to square one.
You gotta rotate herbicides and seed to LibertyLink to avoid that problem.
Right.
Actually, if it weren't for his age (mid 70s) I think dad would probably rotate in some basic strong older hybrids.
But he's enjoying being able to call FarmService, and just have them spray on the RoundUp with their TerraGator that has a 120 foot boom and GPS. Also, I think that he might be getting to the age where he'd have a little more trouble keeping the cultivator on the row.
The controversy is because seed companies don't want farmers to buy their seed, then never buy again cuz they are keeping a portion of their harvest for the next years planting.
This has been going on for as long as I can remember , only they called it---"protected varities"
Thus if a seed corn company developed a new variety of wheat,oats, barley--------they wanted to re-coup their cost of researching and developing that variety.
They sure couldn't if they could only sell the seed for one year cuz farmers kept the harvest for seed so they didn't have to buy that new variety the next year.
The USDA grants--"protected variety staus"---( similar to a patten)
This has been going on for years ( long before GMO seed) and has nothing to do with the grain harvested being--sterile.
The problem with hybrids is that the crosses must be done by the seed company on a regular basis in order to obtain the hybrid vigor that is sought after.
This chart shows the process. Four inbred lines are used to produce second generation varieties used in producing the eventual third-generation hybrid. The hybrid will not breed true to its type, meaning that its seeds will be a mess: AA, BD, AB, DD, BC, CD, etc. It takes years to stabilize a hybrid in order to get a variety that will breed true.
Now, as an investor in Seed Company Inc., I like this fact because it forces farmers to come back year after year to buy from Seed Company Inc. SCI can also patent its new varieties, thus obtaining a return on their investment. It also means that the farmers in the USA obtain the highest per-acre yield that is possible at this time.
But, as a member of the human race, it worries me a bit that so much of our food supply depends upon Seed Company Inc. (which probably also supplies fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides). It also brings up the possible scenario of a pest or plant disease wiping out a large part of the food supply since so few grain varieties are being grown, thus a very small gene pool. This occurred back in the mid-1980s, I believe, with the southern corn crop, and of course was the reason for the immigration of many Irish into the USA.
Potatoes originated in South America. The natives traded with each other so that a few varieties were available in the Caribbean when Columbus "discovered" the Americas. He brought back these few varieties to Europe where they were used to develop the European varieties of potato. The potato varieties grown in Ireland, thus, were derived from a very small gene pool which did not have the genetic resistance to the disease that caused the Irish Potato Famine. So, many Irish moved to the USA.
It could happen again. (Food supply wipeout, not more Irish coming.)
Now, I am all for increasing the productivity of our farmland, but at what cost? We should keep the gene pool as large as possible in that it allows us to find cures for plant diseases. The patenting of genes is a scary issue.
^^ I see you've run away from your original claims about seed. Even so, you're still making mountains out of molehills.
Virtually every piece of produce you set your hand to is a HYBRID. It is not something that is shocking, it is not scandalous, it is not dangerous, and it is not new.
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