[schola]

Originally Posted by Still Growing

Is the motivation of Monsanto to control the food supply or just to be able to sell their seeds every year to the farmers?

I don't know their motivation. Do you?

Monsantos seeds are typically superior and thats why farmers buy them. Its a free market and the farmers can buy their seeds from another company. The farmers are not forced to buy Monsantos seeds and its Monsantos right to make their seeds unreproducable.

No it is not a free market. Who told you we have a free market in the United States? Companies like Monsanto collude with big government to enforce their monopolies.

Monsanto is enforcing its patents on people who didn't even purchase their seeds.
Epoch Times | Food Fights: Saskatchewan Farmer Tells of the Dangers of Bio-Tech Manipulation

Schmeiser's regionally adapted canola, which he had researched for 50 years, became contaminated with airborne pollen from fields containing Roundup Ready, one of Monsanto's product lines.

He took Monsanto all the way to Canada's Supreme Court after the agro-chemical company sued him for using its product without purchasing it. Schmeiser claimed he had never used the product. The Supreme Court found in Monsanto's favor because their Roundup Ready canola was protected by a patent.

Additionally their are a lot of free market economists who wouldn't necessarily support intellectual property laws in their current form today. Intangible property rights are a very fuzzy area:

Rethinking Patent Law - Gene Callahan - Mises Institute


How can a farmer buy seeds from somewhere else when Monsanto and a few other very large corporations have the market cornered?


Monsanto’s Monopoly Challenged in Munich : TreeHugger

Over the course of a single decade, Monsanto devoured dozens of seed companies (and their patents) to become the largest seed corporation in the world and the only soybean seed superpower. Back in 1996, Monsanto’s name didn’t even appear on ETC Group’s list of the world’s top 10 seed companies. Today, Monsanto tops the list and accounts for one-fifth of the global proprietary seed market. (See top 10 seed company list below.)

I agree that farmers should look somewhere else for their seeds but please don't be so flippant and assume that would be an easy switch to make.