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High Country News reports:
[...] Scotts got permission from the USDA to plant larger fields for seed production. Farmers sowed 80 acres of bentgrass in Canyon County, Idaho, and 420 acres in Jefferson County, Oregon, north of Bend. The Oregon Department of Agriculture picked the site - an irrigated island in the sagebrush sea - to keep the plant far from the Willamette Valley. There, on the western side of the mountains, farmers grow forage and turf grass for a $1 billion-a-year seed industry.
Then two windstorms swept through the eastern Oregon fields in August of 2013, scattering flea-sized seeds well beyond the designated control area. Roundup-resistant pollen fertilized conventional bentgrass plants as far as 13 miles away.
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GMO Grass is Creeping Across Oregon
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(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2018, @12:30PM (8 children)
I can see Monsanto coming after golf-club owners first, then everyone later, RIAA style, that they are due royalties because they have a patent on those seed's DNA.
I'm serious. It happened to my Grandpa. Corn farmer. Monsanto shows up and insist that he buy seed corn from THEM. Grandpa had always saved his seed corn from one planting to the next, or at least that's what he told me... I remember barn fulls of corn... it was always around the farm.... used for everything.
But Monsanto shows up, demands compliance, and has legal staff and lawmakers to back them up. What's grandpa to do? Fight a Suit-Man, when the only known way of getting one out of your hair is either to comply with whatever it wants, or to use a shotgun to remove the head from its mounting?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by shrewdsheep on Monday July 02 2018, @12:48PM (7 children)
Thank you for sharing your story which seems to pop up in conjunction with Monsanto. I would be interested in hearing about the timing. As this has now been going on for more than a decade, I wonder whether documentation standards have been developed to indemnify you from such external claims. I totally believe that the individual farmer caves in when confronted with a multinational but would imagine that over time there must have been some way developed to prove you have not (re)used GMOs deliberately but done your best to avoid them. This by using procedures mutually agreed upon.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday July 02 2018, @02:53PM (2 children)
I'll believe you when I read the settled case law showing efficient and generally applicable use of such defense.
This has only been going on a couple of decades, I imagine the Monstranto legal team has a strategy in place to maximize their rent seeking success for as long as possible.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Monday July 02 2018, @03:17PM (1 child)
I am not making any claim one way or another. I just surmise that if a defense has not been established by case law it could have by mutual agreement or by an actual law. This would be in the interest of the industry but as you suggest a clever legal strategy (AKA corruption) might prevent that.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday July 02 2018, @06:49PM
I'd rather say that it would be in the interest of the farming industry, peoples of the world, general economy, etc. Not in the interests of the individual or even collective GMO industry players.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2018, @02:59PM (2 children)
Wasn't the only farmer to be convicted shown to have collected and specifically bred roundup ready crop for seed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc_v_Schmeiser [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Monday July 02 2018, @06:22PM
You don't need to be convicted to be bankrupted by the law suit.
And I believe that there were a few other cases that were less clear, but which Monsanto also won. I don't know that they've lost any, but why would I expect to?
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(Score: 3, Informative) by sjames on Monday July 02 2018, @07:53PM
That was the FINDING, but it was based on the court believing claims the plaintiff (Monsanto) made that were later proven false. Monsanto claimed that roundup readiness could ONLY happen by genetic engineering. Not through pollen spreading nor through selective breeding. Since then, weeds related to canola have turned up with the resistance and coca farmers (cocaine) in S. America have bred resistant strains (meaning the DEA was providing them with free weed control).
(Score: 3, Informative) by dwilson on Tuesday July 03 2018, @04:46AM
If you bought GMO seed that was contract-laden and saved some to re-plant in breach of contract, you're an idiot and deserve what you get.
If you grow and sell non-GMO seed, saving some for next year's planting (as... everyone, does?) and Monsanto or it's like come knocking, you tell them to Get Fucked (As my neighbour did). If they present compelling evidence your seed has been contaminated with their IP and you think they'll win a court case, or think they'll get around to bringing it to court, you apologize, settle out of court, chem-fallow your land for a year to murder their GMO crap and go down the road to John, Jim, Bob, or whomever-the-fuck-it-is who's anti-GMO and refuses to touch it, buy more non-GMO seed from him, and carry on. If you're smart, you get it tested (yearly!) and establish an iron-clad paper trail to prove you're not touching the stuff (also as my neighbour did) and spend your days cackling, hoping those bastards try again.
- D