Yup, from my understanding, pretty much every modern farm (including family farms) get's their seeds from one of like three companies. Monsanto is the only one I can think of with certainty off the top of my head. I think Cargill is another one, but I'm not 100% on that. All of these companies hold the patents for their seeds, meaning farmers can only plant them once. They can't legally take the seeds from their fully grown crops and replant them the next year as we have for literally thousands of years.
They're now legally required to destroy or surrender the seeds at the end of every harvest, or face lawsuits for patent infringement. If a farmer could just cut out the price of buying seeds every year, food would be A LOT cheaper.
Didn’t know that about the seeds!
Would love to see weather manipulation put to good use. If it can be put to bad, why not good?
Yup, from my understanding, pretty much every modern farm (including family farms) get's their seeds from one of like three companies. Monsanto is the only one I can think of with certainty off the top of my head. I think Cargill is another one, but I'm not 100% on that. All of these companies hold the patents for their seeds, meaning farmers can only plant them once. They can't legally take the seeds from their fully grown crops and replant them the next year as we have for literally thousands of years.
They're now legally required to destroy or surrender the seeds at the end of every harvest, or face lawsuits for patent infringement. If a farmer could just cut out the price of buying seeds every year, food would be A LOT cheaper.
Percy vs. Goliath is a good movie on this subject.