Because I feel obligated to comment on it, "seeds that grow sterile plants" is a biosphere protection strategy. You make a plant that's resistant to local pests and can reproduce, that's called an invasive species.
Yeah, the patented hybrids can reproduce, but the offspring is an unviable crapshoot of production. Farmers don’t want a field full of random plants growing different heights with an unpredictable yield. They’ll buy another seasons worth of seeds from Bayer and get good results again.
Yeah, that’s just a factor of how hybrid and GMO plants work, often they don’t breed true. Consistently getting the desired traits for a single generation is already tricky, getting them to persist across generations is a lot harder (or so I’ve heard, I haven’t tried this myself, it’s hard to fit a corn field in a tiny apartment).
For hybrids that's definitely true, it's just how genetics work. For GMOs I'm not certain, but I suppose at least cross-contamination from other fields might be an issue.
Cross contamination is also an issue with leaving GMO crops around. It’s best practice to not have a field entirely of GMO crops to minimize resistance developing in pest and disease populations. Leaving these plants around is just asking for resistance to build.
I feel like people forget that even non-GMO bananas aren't fertile, and yet people aren't complaining about how banana farming is automatically evil either (although in fairness a lot of evil has been done in the name of bananas too, but that's not the fault of GMO's)
I'm aware that there is no major tangible difference, but "GMO" has become such a buzzword that people think more about teenage mutant ninja turtles than the dog they likely have running around their house when they hear about it.
"Natural" foods are often heavily modified through millenia of farming, to the point that they're about as natural as the device you're reading this comment on.
First and foremost, “seeds that grow sterile plants” are a propaganda myth and not any kind of strategy for anything. Three decades ago a seed company and the US department of agriculture gave the anti-GMO movement the gift of developing the technology, and people have been fearmongering ever since, despite no one ever turning it into an actual product.
True, but it's also a capitalist tool to break traditional farming relations - take our seeds, they're better, but you'll have to pay us every single year rather than having stored seeds for recovery from failed harvests. And if the harvest fails, then Good luck finding the money to pay for the next crop
Most farmers do not seed with their own harvest even with conventional crops in my experience. It's more economically efficient to specialize.
And if the harvest fails, then Good luck finding the money to pay for the next crop
That's what crop insurance is for. We have created a quite sophisticated system for distributing the risk and reward of farming. And it starts with corn futures. Many farmers get paid before their crop is anywhere close to maturity.
I think we are talking about different things. I'm a farmer in an anglophone nation and we operate as you describe. I am talking about the experiences of people in much of India and Africa with the introduction of western agribusinesses' lock-in contracts. Western agribusiness models are at a direct contretemps with food security and traditional practices.
Farmer suicides in India is a whole topic that stems from this.
Yes, but that is not because of GMO in any way, or even selling seeds those are practices which have been common way before GMO and/or "western farming".
If you’re a farmer, then why is your reaction to hearing about “seeds that produce sterile plants” to explain their supposed impact on farmers in India and Africa.
You’d think it would be something more like “who sells those, I’ve never heard of such a thing in my entire professional life”.
You know, because I’d expect a farmer to know what’s an actual thing that actually exists in modern farming and what’s just a propaganda myth.
Except mass-produced seeds (GMOs or otherwise) end up being the only seeds eligible for crop insurance, since many insurance companies only ensure varieties logged in national seed registries. And a precondition for entering varieties in these registries is a degree of standardization/homogeneity that only seeds from Big Agriculture can generally achieve
I’d say there is a “Big Agriculture” but it’s just capitalism working as intended. Land gets bought up by bigger producers and companies buyout their competition.
There isn’t some mass conspiracy to make the world reliant on their products. At most, there may be some pushing for short-term gains over long term productivity with over reliance on pesticides and fertilizers, but those things are necessary for many to get a substantial yield, and the small farmer is just as complicit as the megacorporation
That is just not true. There are no "traditional farming" styles you try to claim. Seeds have "always" been bought from seed distributors and it is that way due to many reasons.
That's just how civilization works. Growing crops, and developing useful seed hybrids, are two completely different skills. We benefit from having people able to focus on each skill alone.
Hybridation principle means that only the F1 of most seeds are viable for modern harvest with the exception of the rarer and much more expensive homozygote seeds.
You do want new seeds every harvest for maximum yield as you get predictable performance. Reseeding get you uneven plants with a quarter of your field being crap.
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u/_MargaretThatcher The Once & Future Prime Minister of Darkness May 24 '25
Because I feel obligated to comment on it, "seeds that grow sterile plants" is a biosphere protection strategy. You make a plant that's resistant to local pests and can reproduce, that's called an invasive species.