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Post by walt on Dec 28, 2016 12:01:56 GMT -5
I hit hit the wrong thing when going for the edit button and now can't figure out how to take off the approve thingy, didn't mean to up vote my own post!! IPads are not a friend to stubby fingers... That's OK. It'll save me the time of approving your post. Not that it takes a long time to hit the approve button. I read about the golden rice many years ago in a generally respected news magazine. But that doesn't mean it's gospel. I wonder, it has been a long time since GMOs were first made. Patents generally last 20 years. The guitar patent Keith Kirstenbrock and I had is long expired. And GMOs were out before my guitar-making days. So some should be expiring soon, if not already expired. Who will keep track of what has GMOs when they are no longer owned by anyone? Will that be a whole new problem? |
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Post by walt on Dec 28, 2016 12:47:50 GMT -5
I'm not an expert on the subject, but it sure looks like they require an agreement in place... Golden Rice licensing: www.goldenrice.org/Content1-Who/who4_IP.phpIs there a company out there that will sell me a packet of Golden Rice seed, no strings attached? I just read the website you posted. Yes there is an agreement required. You would have to agree to not sell seeds with the golden gene for more than the price of the same amount of the same variety without the golden gene. There are other limitations listed on the website, limitations that to me sound reasonable to people who aren't out to get rice off this. But that is a personal point of view. Other people might find one or more of the limitations unacceptable. They own it for a while longer, and they decide what limitations they will impose. This is a new case of the golden rule, whoever owns the gold makes the rules. |
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Post by walt on Dec 28, 2016 13:04:59 GMT -5
In order for someone to get the rda of vitamin A I have read that a child would have to eat something like several pounds of it per day, hardly a reasonable expectation in normal circumstances, much less where food of any kind is difficult to access. The website billw posted speaks to this. Golden rice alone won't provide enough vitamin A. But many people are living with lower vitamin A than would be best. Golden rice would raise the vit. A level in their diet and that might be a good thing. If you go back to my first post on this topic, you will see that I pointed out that growing a few hot peppers might be more useful in providing vitamin A than golden rice would. But it doesn't have to be only one or the other. I see no difference between golden rice vs. non-golden rice and yellow corn vs. white corn, orange carrots vs. white carrots, etc. The website posted by billw also says that after a breeder has backcrossed the gene Vitamin A gene into a locally popular rice variety, seed is to be sold without a contract. So as I read it, a breeder who uses the golden rice will have to sign a contract, the farmer who uses the resulting seeds won't have to sign any contracts. In fact, as I read it, the contract the breeder signs says the breeder is not allowed to require buyers to sign any stinking contract. I paraphrased that, the website doesn't mention any odor or lack of odor in contracts. |
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Post by steev on Dec 29, 2016 23:34:06 GMT -5
I claim no expertise in the patenting rights of golden rice, but I would raise the question of prosecutions of people sued for enabling/saving seed of even crossed GMO crops. The threat of large-resource companies suing limited-resource farmers is not minor. Patents, even for conventionally-bred crops, are potentially valuable and, therefore, potentially of value to enforce against the economically disenfranchised, who are less capable of resisting bullshit litigation. In the larger sense, this tendency is in direct opposition to landrace horticulture and favoring the interests of the "over-class" against the mass of humanity.
I will note, for example, the threats of litigation employed by Trump; blunt-force litigation, as it were, where a billionaire (?) bully can run over any ordinary person by force/threat of legal action, regardless of rights or legal correctness. Somehow, this strikes me as bullshit, and it needs to be resisted; which is to say: it needs to be rammed right back where his head is: up his poop-chute.
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Post by prairiegardens on Jan 4, 2017 2:50:06 GMT -5
Recently read and have not verified, that Tanzania has been told that unless their farmers switch to big ag (American) seed and practices that their foreign aid will be cut off. This means the usual, no seed from harvest to be saved to be planted the next year. If anyone is found to have done so the fines are so severe they are likely to lose their land. Otoh if they have to buy seed and chemical every year they likely will fail and lose their land. Very cute.
This is reminiscent of Obama telling Salvador they would lose aid unless they reversed the law outlawing glyphosate even though scientists had pretty definitively linked it to a virtual epidemic of farmers deaths from a previously unknown kidney disease. Glyphosate is a chelator and the area the farmers were dying had extremely hard water. Anyway, public pushback got Obama to back off there, what happened with two other counties in Asia with their own epidemics under the same conditions I don't know.
Sometimes it's difficult to admire the U.S.
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Post by billw on Jan 4, 2017 12:56:54 GMT -5
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Post by philagardener on Jan 4, 2017 17:10:42 GMT -5
Unfortunately, that policy will lead to the loss of all the locally adapted traditional varieties . . . .  |
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Post by prairiegardens on Jan 15, 2017 1:52:50 GMT -5
You can get land from bankrupt farmers though. On another note, Bill Gates is finally getting something right and supporting Heifers International, buying chickens for people in need so they can get a bit of a start towards providing for their families. It seems a very good organization , focussed on developing independence rather than the other way around. |
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Post by prairiegardens on Jan 17, 2017 16:57:44 GMT -5
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Post by steev on Jan 28, 2017 1:00:53 GMT -5
Excellent, if actually so; I admit to being loath to buy flowery predictions: golden rice, for instance.
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