Can you elaborate on the "immense pain"? I don't disagree that monopolies in big AG are a huge problem, but last time I saw someone make this point, I looked into it, and there were relatively few cases of big AG suing small farmers over stuff like this. My understanding of one of the main cases that gets referenced in these discussions was where a farmer bought roundup ready seed, promised not to use it to breed, per standard EULA, then bred with it, and intentionally selected offspring to breed further which showed the roundup ready trait. Am I missing something?
While some farmers certainly did as you described (and while personally I disagree with the whole concept, leaving that aside for now), others just caught wind drifted seeds on their land.
The issue was that Monsanto et al would often put the onus on small farmers to prove they didn't deliberately breed the seed. Being civil, the issue became more "balance of probabilities" versus "beyond reasonable doubt". When you have Monsanto's army of lawyers, and a "generous" offer to "settle" for a licensing fee and agreement to purchase, then many of those small farmers rolled over. Often the ones that ended up in court were those who did actually have either sufficient resources, or were sufficiently pissed off to "stand their ground".
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Analytical chemist turned CMC project manager with 13 years in pharma/biotech and 5+ years co-leading cross-functional teams spanning Manufacturing, Outsourcing, Process Chemistry, Formulations, Global Supply Chain, Finance, and Product Strategy. Proven track record balancing regulatory compliance and business priorities to deliver critical activities on time and in full.
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