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Europe’s seeds are being privatised by patents - and it could threaten food security (www.euronews.com)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

17 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/2037887

Europe has one of the most diverse seed industries in the world. In Germany, the Netherlands and France alone, hundreds of small breeders are creating new varieties of cereals, vegetables and legumes.

Relying on decades of careful selection to improve desired traits like yield, disease resistance and flavour, they adapt seeds to local environments through methods like cross-breeding.

This legion of plant breeders help maintain Europe’s biodiversity and ensure that our food supplies stay plentiful. But their work is under growing threat from the patent industry.

Although it’s illegal to patent plants in the EU, those created through technological means are classified as a technical innovation and so can be patented.

This means that small-scale breeders can no longer freely plant these seeds or use them for research purposes without paying licensing fees.

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[–] [email protected] 82 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Holy shit. Trying to force licenses on growing from seed because someone cross fucking bred its mother plant.. Thats dystopian as fuck.

I know people want to protect strains they produced, but we are all in this together. Dont go blocking a process or method which might make a crop yield more in a certain climate, or resistant to certain bugs, because you protected it first. fucking copyright and patents... How does that shite exist

[–] [email protected] 28 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

This is straight out of Monsanto playbook going back decades. There's a reason why a lot of countries have either passed laws legally shielding local farmers from accidental cross-pollination, or just banning GM seeds, not for any pseudoscience rational, but because of the way agro business uses natural cross pollination as a vector for lawfare and predatory business practices.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

This is the reason golden rice never made any inroads.

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