Bowman vs Monsanto, genetically modified soybean case

OmCheeto

This reminds me of a thread when I first arrived at PF:

And, then, much later, Monsanto, who claims to always invent new seeds, had the cheek to steal an old Indian wheat variety and patent it as an invention. That was struck down in a four-month legal battle in the European patent office.

My apologies if this is a bit off topic, but that was a good, and enlightening thread, as should be all PF threads.

This thread strikes me as kind of whiny. Kind of like the last four years.

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ps. I hope edward is a PF friend of mine. He's a freakin' genius, IMHO.

Averagesupernova

Quote by edward

What I am wondering is, where does this all end? There is no silver bullet. How many generations of chemicals will we spray on the soil until nothing will grow on it but soap bubbles?

I still think that the rice link was appropriate.

If you have been paying attention to all of this as long as I and others I know have then you would have asked this question about where it will end 30 years ago or more. Weeds have been developing resistance to herbicide since herbicides first came out. Most of us knew when Roundup ready crops became available that they were not the magic silver bullet. However, it was the best system most farmers had ever seen concerning weed control. Roundup is still quite effective on most weeds and will continue to be sprayed as long as it is effective. Then there is the issue of species shift. What that means is one weed is wiped out but another one takes it's place since that competition is no longer there. You may say that it shouldn't be an issue if Roundup actually kills everything. Guess what? It never has killed everything. There are some plants with shiny/waxy leaves that Roundup has always had trouble controlling. I get the feeling that you assume that all of a sudden this has become a problem when it has really been an issue for many years.

nitsuj

Quote by russ_watters

Monsanto makes great products that help people and make money. It is ridiculous to call them evil.

They sure do!

I would also guess their net "winnings" from litigation is a very small component of their net income.

In other words their business model isn't to entrap farmers into patent infringement, that'd be ~~evil~~ a poor practice & self defeating.

edward

Quote by Averagesupernova

If you have been paying attention to all of this as long as I and others I know have then you would have asked this question about where it will end 30 years ago or more. Weeds have been developing resistance to herbicide since herbicides first came out. Most of us knew when Roundup ready crops became available that they were not the magic silver bullet. However, it was the best system most farmers had ever seen concerning weed control. Roundup is still quite effective on most weeds and will continue to be sprayed as long as it is effective. Then there is the issue of species shift. What that means is one weed is wiped out but another one takes it's place since that competition is no longer there. You may say that it shouldn't be an issue if Roundup actually kills everything. Guess what? It never has killed everything. There are some plants with shiny/waxy leaves that Roundup has always had trouble controlling. I get the feeling that you assume that all of a sudden this has become a problem when it has really been an issue for many years.

Well isn't that wonderful that you knew weed and insect resistance was going to happen 30 years ago. Did you share that with anyone?? Apparently Monsanto didn't.

Edit.

"Farmers do not think resistance is a problem until they actually have it," Johnson said. "And they think the chemical companies can turn on the spigots and produce a new herbicide whenever they want. The problem is, since Roundup is so effective, there's not been any money for new herbicide discovery."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0414153529.htm

What does it matter when I realized that the problem was emerging, let alone what does it have to do with this discussion? The fact that weeds and insects have become resistant to current methods of control is the necessary reason for the change to new GMO crops and herbicides.

How long will it be until there will have to be another change? Then another? That was my point and you totally misconstrued it. You can think 30 years back but you can't seem to think 30 years forward.

Farmers, plant geneticists, chemists, and agronomists recently have been engaged in an arms race against weeds, particularly weeds that have evolved resistance to the common herbicide glyphosate. A second generation of herbicide-tolerant crops has been developed to battle resistant weeds, but they have sparked concerns about overreliance on chemical controls.

Introduced in the 1980s, glyphosate has been the best-selling herbicide since 2001. Monsanto, which markets glyphosate as Roundup, introduced crops engineered to be tolerant of glyphosate in the late 1990s, and farmers now plant Roundup Ready herbicide-tolerant corn, soybeans, and cotton on the majority of cultivated acres in the U.S. Thanks to the popularity of the firm’s Roundup Ready trait, last year 94% of soybean acres were herbicide-tolerant, as was 73% of cotton acreage and 72% of corn acreage, according to the Department of Agriculture.

Farmers liked glyphosate because it vastly simplified weed control. But it also led to the emergence of resistant weeds that are increasingly hard to kill.

For their part, Dow and Monsanto insist that the lessons learned from overreliance on glyphosate are changing farming practices. Never again, they say, will it be the norm to use the same herbicide, year after year, on the same crop in the same location. They dispute estimates that the use of 2,4-D or dicamba will greatly increase. And both firms have developed new, low-drift formulations of these herbicides that they say will minimize off-field migration.

Never again, they say, will it be the norm to use the same herbicide, year after year, on the same crop in the same location. Yet that is exactly what they are doing all over again.

For those interested in the problems with weed and insect resistance to current chemicals and GMO crops there is a video in the link below.

http://cen.acs.org/articles/90/i21/War-Weeds.html

I suppose will now recieve a warning for going off topic.

Averagesupernova

edward, why are you thinking I cannot/will not think 30 years forward? Can YOU tell me what will be happening in ag in 30 years? I seriously doubt it. Anyone actively engaged in farming knew about resistance to herbicide long before Monsanto came out with Roundup ready. It didn't take me to tell anyone. From my knowledge in the industry I would say that agronomists have been recommending additional tank mixes for the last 8 years or so to combat resistance to glyphosate. Diacamba and 2,4-D have been used on corn for many years and still have relatively good kill. So, worst case, farmers would go back to weed control with those chemicals like they did pre-Roundup.
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Now, I realize this thread is about soybeans, so I will try to stay on topic. Know what weed control consisted of in soybeans pre-roundup? There were chemicals that worked well to kill grass in soybeans, but that's about it. No good broadleaf control post-emergence existed. The first method was to walk the beans and pull the weeds. Next came walking with a back-pack sprayer with a VERY high rate of Roundup to spot spray weeds. Next came specialized rigs that people rode on to spot spray weeds. They varied in size from holding probably 3 to 6 people. Not sure of how much area each person could cover width-wise. I am guessing 6 to 12 feet of width per person. Walking soybean fields was not uncommon in the late 1980s. Of course, farms have gotten alot larger since then and you can credit that partly to Roundup whether you consider it a good thing or a bad thing.
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What exactly do you want from me? I'm telling you how history has unfolded and how things work and you come with:

Well isn't that wonderful that you knew weed and insect resistance was going to happen 30 years ago. Did you share that with anyone??

Maybe it will satisfy you to know this: If everything went organic, many many many people would have to go back out onto the farm. You cannot abandon the technology that has evolved and expect to continue doing the same things in ag that you are doing the day before you abandon the technology. So are you interested in going back to the farm? Someone will have to do it. We cannot do it organically with the number of people we have on farms now.

Hurkyl

Quote by edward

Well isn't that wonderful that you knew weed and insect resistance was going to happen 30 years ago. Did you share that with anyone??

Er, isn't that common knowledge?

edward

Quote by Hurkyl

Er, isn't that common knowledge?

Apparently not to farmers

They trusted the people who did know.

"Farmers do not think resistance is a problem until they actually have it," Johnson said. "And they think the chemical companies can turn on the spigots and produce a new herbicide whenever they want. The problem is, since Roundup is so effective, there's not been any money for new herbicide discovery."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0414153529.htm

edward

Back to the topic. Two Points the Supreme Court will have to consider.

The Supreme Court recently requested the views of the Solicitor General on whether to grant review in Bowman v. Monsanto, a case relating to transgenic corn. Such requests are considered to be an indicator that the Supreme Court is likely to hear the case, and will do so if the Solicitor General agrees that there is an important issue for the Court to decide. The debate has been framed with a narrow first question limited to seed technology: whether a sale of patented seeds exhausts the patent rights in those seeds.

A second question before the Supreme Court, however, cuts more broadly: whether patent rights are subject to normal rules for exhaustion when the technology is self-replicating. In other words, the question is whether patent rights end once a plant, organism, or other biotechnology invention is sold, even though the technology may be expressed in subsequent generations of the patented article. If the Court answers “yes,” it would have a huge impact on the ability to protect certain types of biotechnology inventions.

As far as I can tell neither question has come before the Supreme Court of there would have been a precedent.

Mr Bowman is a 74 year old farmer and the total amount of the law suit is just under $85,000

Mr Bowman did candidly notify Monsanto that he was planting a second crop of commodity seeds.

In 1999, Bowman bought commodity seeds from a grain elevator and planted them for a second crop that season, discovering many had the Roundup resistance. So he followed the same practice in following years and told Monsanto representatives what he was doing.

http://www.journalgazette.net/articl...9998/1021/EDIT

Why did Monsanto wait so long to file the law suit?? If Monsanto wins, all future GMO patent infringement cases are a slam dunk

Now I have a gut feeling that this is a test case to insure that Monsanto and the GMO industry will have no future cases even go to court.

Averagesupernova

Quote by edward

Mr Bowman did candidly notify Monsanto that he was planting a second crop of commodity seeds.

Did he notify them whether or not he will be spraying with Roundup thus fully utilizing the GMO traits in the crop or will he take care of weed control using pre-Roundup methods?

edward

Quote by Averagesupernova

Did he notify them whether or not he will be spraying with Roundup thus fully utilizing the GMO traits in the crop or will he take care of weed control using pre-Roundup methods?

Yes he did use roundup and he did tell Mosanto reps. Not only that he planted subsequent second crops using seed he saved from the original crop grown with commodity seed.

http://www.journalgazette.net/articl...9998/1021/EDIT

Averagesupernova

I'd say he is going down.

edward

Quote by Averagesupernova

I'd say he is going down.

It looks like it. The weird thing is that he has probably spent more to defend himself than he would have had to pay Monsanto.

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