Quote:
Originally posted by lurkette
Although Monsanto agreed not to sell their "one-shot" seeds (seeds that develop into sterile plants that you can't use to re-seed next year's crops, so you have to buy from Monsanto every year) this kind of thinking betrays the predatory relationship that could develop.
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Not wanting to threadjack too much but the most terrifying thing is that these patented crops have the potential to contaminate natural crops. There was a court case a while back in which a GM food company was demanding royalties from a farmer whose crops have been contaminated by theirs.
I picture a world in which genetically dominant GM crops aggressively take over leading to monocultures. Unforeseen blight sets in, decimating these monocultures through lack of genetic diversity. Meanwhile, as Rome burns, the GM Nero plays his fiddle - demanding a pound of flesh for his "intellectual property". I've always feared GM food most as a legal issue. Imagine the argument over Aids drugs' patents multiplied by 1000. Imagine 1000 different distros of rice being muscled out of the "market" by one Microsoft Rice with it's horrifying "security holes".
As for these massive corporate subsidies; just a part of the mindbending hypocrisy of the so-called "global free market".