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posted by janrinok on Wednesday December 28 2016, @11:31PM   Printer-friendly
from the getting-your-5-a-day dept.

Frank Morton has been breeding lettuce since the 1980s. His company offers 114 varieties, among them Outredgeous, which last year became the first plant that NASA astronauts grew and ate in space.

For nearly 20 years, Morton's work was limited only by his imagination and by how many different kinds of lettuce he could get his hands on. But in the early 2000s, he started noticing more and more lettuces were patented, meaning he would not be able to use them for breeding. The patents weren't just for different types of lettuce, but specific traits such as resistance to a disease, a particular shade of red or green, or curliness of the leaf.

Such patents have increased in the years since, and are encroaching on a growing range of crops, from corn to carrots — a trend that has plant breeders, environmentalists and food security experts concerned about the future of the food production.

https://ensia.com/features/open-source-seeds/


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29 2016, @08:15PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29 2016, @08:15PM (#447182)

    What little Jill Stein has said about patents leans in the direction of protectionism/anti-piracy.

    In this interview, she chastises universities for making getting patents a top priority.
    A conversation with Jill Stein: what the Green Party candidate believes [vox.com]

    This site attempts to put words in her mouth.
    (They use the same verbiage for other Liberal folks.)
    I side with Jill Stein on healthcare issues [google.com]

    Given her other positions as well as her decades as a physician who prescribed drugs, I find it difficult to believe that she would have been worse on this issue than the Red or Blue nominee.

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]