It's ironic how GMO has been sold as the solution to poverty and starvation and then in reality it's just been used to prevent poor farmers from reusing seeds by slightly changing and copyrighting them. Yay for humanity!
Many GMO seeds are off patent now (in the last couple years the most important/useful patents have expired). Also several GMO seeds like Golden rice were carefully never patented to make it easier for poor to use them - and the poor still cannot get/use those seeds even though they are better.
No sane farmer saves seeds. Hybrids seeds yield much better than saved seeds, so it is worth the cost to buy new seeds every year. Obviously this depends on the crop - not everything can be hybrid successfully.
And you'll get downvoted pretty hard on HN and Reddit for being opposed to GMOs based on the extortion potential... well, it's "refreshing" to see that the fears are not baseless but reality.
https://qz.com/africa/1900035/the-lie-of-monsantos-genetical...
It's ironic how GMO has been sold as the solution to poverty and starvation and then in reality it's just been used to prevent poor farmers from reusing seeds by slightly changing and copyrighting them. Yay for humanity!