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How about a culture war outside the traditional red/blue conflicts for a change?
The Guardian ("I read it for the math problems") reports on the decision by a court in the Philippines to ban golden rice, a GMO plant designed to combat vitamin A deficiency. The NGO arguing for a ban (aside local farmers) was Greenpeace.
[https://www.supportprecisionagriculture.org/nobel-laureate-gmo-letter_rjr.html](168 Nobel laureates) have called on Greenpeace to stop campaigning against golden rice in 2016. Here is a discussion on EA forums.
Now historically, I have not been vehemently opposed to Greenpeace. When I was a kid in the 1990s, they were protesting French above-ground nuclear weapon testing, which seems fair enough. While pro-NPP myself, I think there are solid arguments to be made for opposing nuclear power (like proliferation risk and long-term disposal of used-up fuel elements), but I can't understand why you would target NPP before you would target fossil fuel power generation.
The steelman of the Greenpeace argument would be that allowing patent-encumbered GMOs will be a foot in the door for pushing more GMOs on rural farmers which will eventually result with Monsanto owning the small farmers. The situation for GMOs is not unlike the situation for software: expensive to develop, but cheap to copy. As a free-software advocate, I very much would prefer outcomes where the companies who develop the software/GMOs do not end up with a stranglehold on the end users due to copyright or (even worse) patent laws.
At least for software there exist alternatives like FLOSS. From reading the FAQ of golden rice, it looks like they could not develop their product without using technologies patented by biotech companies, so they got to them to agree to waive licences for farmers who make less than 10k$ per year, which is their target audience. This is still far from ideal (better would be a blanket free licence for golden rice, or constraining biopatents so much that you do not have to ask Japanese Tobacco to licence your rice plant, or perhaps abolishing them altogether), but does not seem like a terrible deal -- especially if you have a local court system which is rather pro small farmers.
So my conclusion is that Greenpeace's opposition is unreasonable and they have been become one of these organizations who advocates for policies which are deeply unpopular (like PETA, or "always believe the woman" groups) in the wider population as members race to signal how committed they are to their cause.
I’m with the ban for the same reason that GreenPeace is. Not only are we burdening these small farmers with patent law (and I’m not sure if Golden Rice has terminator genes that prevent replanting saved seed) but because of the potential for cross pollination, you can’t really make it optional. If my rice is pollinated by Golden rice, I now have the patented genes in my rice, and unless there are strong laws to the contrary (which I doubt) Monsanto can easily collect royalties from people who never chose to grow Golden Rice in the first place, and worse are not allowed to save seed (as the permits to grow that rice requires you to buy the seed every year). In a lawful democracy like America or various European countries, it’s difficult but at least possible to build in protection for small farmers. I doubt it would be so in a developing country with a much higher corruption index.
Is anyone actually trying to enforce bio patents against Indian farmers? Is this a real thing that's really happening, or is it just fantastical speculation?
And isn't golden rice exempted from patent enforcement anyways? The relevant patent holders have agreed to not try to enforce their patents against asset-free 3rd world farmers.
what is stopping them from changing their minds in the future when their situations change (revenue streams diminish, are acquired by a more aggresive patent holder, etc.)?
Enforcing patent laws against Indian subsistence farmers is taking a loss because it costs money to try and they don't have anything to give you.
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Patent laws are national, not international.
My understanding is that once a variant has been donated to say, Bangladesh, it cannot be 'undonated' unless Bangladesh's government decides to issue a patent there.
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Google tells me that Indian farmers make around $225 per month. You can't squeeze blood from a stone. And my vague understanding of Indian norms is that they casually disregard American-style patent laws in order to shamelessly steal the drugs we make at enormous cost. So I really doubt there's any ability or will to target Indian farmers.
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