under capitalism, the line is when it can be successfully prosecuted.
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I mean the truth is this. if you are growing IDC if home grow or commerical. You probabally are usuing one of their products. They are smart. Very smart. One way or another you will eithet buy their products or the cannabis. They cant lose. As for patenting. i think 10% difference from parent strain is required. Must be visable difference i think. Some of us are working very hard on projects that could yield retirement money…
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Yes. Alfalfa farmers in the Christmas Valley, Silver Lake area of south central Oregon are using GMO’d seeds provided by Monsanto. My family has been growing alfalfa out there since 1968. There are also alfalfa farmers dedicated to organic GMO free alfalfa, which is less expensive to cultivate. The GMO seed farmers use fertilizers and herbicides, these have a drift which has settled on farms that are organic, or not using GMO seed. This has caused a rift in the community. Unfortunately as we see in our industry, the ratio of seed providers to growers is not equal, so to find non-GMO’d alfalfa seed is much harder these days. This too has caused a rift in the business structure of agriculture.
My first experience with GMO seeds for AG was in 1996 as a research assistant at The Ohio State University Horticulture research farm. Burpee used our plots to research GMO seeds. Now we see a division among garden seeds as those labeled ‘Heirloom’ or not labeled with information that they have been genetically modified to germinate and grow in anybody’s garden.
We genetically modify cannabis by selective breeding to bring out the cannabinoid profile or terpene profile. The real question to ask when emotions are concerned is, “What is the purposeful intent of genetic modification”.
The exploitation of gluten came from Monsanto stealing wheat seeds from the high elevations of India. Gluten causes a lot of problems in pre-made box mixes or large food manufacturing facilities that use flour. So, for a company to increase profits they have to eliminate the problems, especially the formation of gluten when making mass amounts of bread. What a great way to exploit the wheat seeds stolen from India other than create a false epidemic of that which increases their profits and gives them reason to exist.
So, when we GMO our cannabis plants and people start getting emotional, go back to the original question, ‘What is the purposeful intent of genetic modification’. Explaining is giving education which can eliminate fear.
Monsanto is not a good company, there is at least one CO2 extraction company in Seattle whose owner is financed by a Monsanto employee. To date that company has shown multiple reasons why people who work for Monsanto don’t have the same golden rule life ethics as those who know better.
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Nick,
Great reply… very interesting…
Time will tell what the Monsanto type companies will do in the cannabis industry… from what I have learned over the years is that big companies will eventually swallow up the smaller companies… if they let them… if the smaller companies supply high quality products, they can compete against the big boys… Monsanto, Dow-DuPont, Syngenta and the like are the main players in seed production for the AG industry… BUT there are still many small family owned and operated companies that are flourishing. These small companies are NOT really doing anything different that a Monsanto. They are creating GMO/BT seeds, hybrids and the like… just on a smaller scale… actually many of these smaller companies have the advantage of having flexibility to react faster and in many cases have better yielding products…
GMO and BT seeds:
In my previous life, I worked in the AG industry, specifically in the seed corn production arena. BT-corn, (genetically modified corn seed) was originally developed to help corn plants tolerate disease, droughts and insects and of course to increase yields… contrary to a lot of stories you can find online, to make a GMO plant, companies DON"T cross a corn plant with genes, say from an bird to help the plant fight off insects… Seed companies will basically take a donor organism maybe a bacterium, fungus or even another plant for a particular protein and pull a single gene and insert it into the structure of the corn’s DNA… In the case of certain Bt corn plants, the donor organism could a naturally occurring soil bacterium, and the gene of interest produces a protein that kills a particular larvae, say the European corn borer. The final seed is made up of say 99.99% of its original DNA and .01% a protein from a natural occurring organism.
Farmers will plant the BT-corn as an alternative to spraying insecticides for control of European corn borer.
GMO products have been around for many years and if you consider the fact that most countries have run out of enough tillable land to grow enough crops on to feed their people… i.e, CHINA and most of Asia… if it weren’t for these advancements millions of people would literally be starving to death.
In the cannabis industry plants are cross breed all the time… it is the same exact process that the big boys use in the AG industry… over the last 30 or so years the big seed companies have realized that at the plants DNA level, they can make these changes and be more precise and more timely compared to the older more conventional methods.
I would assume that if and when it becomes available or necessary, the same practices will start start to show up in the cannabis industry… but who knows.
enough for now…
thanks much,
Tom
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I see no inherent problem with GMO, and I"m unclear why Monsanto is synonymous with GMO. I mean, I get it, they do it, but I don’t see GMO as the fundamental problem with Monsanto. I see it as a distraction from the real problems with them, e.g poisoning the environment and acting as another cog in an unsustainable system.
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If you are interested, we have none other than the Hydroponic Chef from Hawthorne Hydroponics over at today’s AMA. Click here to check it out!
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Wow, where do you get those beliefs??? Please understand, I mean no personal rebuke,
however I do believe the public education system has done you a grave injustice. You have no idea of the capital costs associated with purchasing land! Bare ground suitable for orchard planting is currently going for about $14,000/ ac. in the California valleys! What kind of idiot would pay that and systematically turn his ground into ‘cement’? Devastating insect populations?? In almonds we pay bee keepers $280/ac to rent their bees for about 3 weeks…where is it in our self interest to ‘decimate insect populations’?
Finally, do you realize we rely on the ‘aquifer’ not only for our irrigation water but also the water our families use on a daily basis??
Sounds to me like the only exposure you have had to economic agriculture came from reading Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’. I hope and pray you never have to raise your own food so you don’t have to suffer the ‘myth’ of feeding yourself! I respectfully submit this for your consideration. Thank You
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Hi rflasch. Thanks for your reply.
The cement comment was a little sarcastic, I’ll admit, but what I"m pointing at is the use of dirt as simply a medium for delivering nutrients, as opposed to being nurtured to function like a living soil, you know, like it’s supposed to… you can reference ideas around Peak Phosphate, if you like, and there’s also nitrogen runoff creating toxic green algae plumes, to name a couple of effects of factory farming.
The insect thing is well noted in current news, plummeting bee populations, as well as insects dying off…which is most likely due to Glysophate:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/02/why-insect-populations-are-plummeting-and-why-it-matters/
and the aquifer thing, well, that’s mostly poisoned by 3M with PFAS, but here in AZ the aquifir is being grossly depleted by foreign farmers:
Which isn’t Monsanto, so you got me there 
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I read this book a couple years ago, which is really great, and lifts the blinders off of way tomatoes from the store suck so bad:
Which is just one reason why ppl have started buying organic in greater and greater doses. Another is:
… Indeed, why on earth would anyone be afraid of Monsanto?
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Basically all the is is CRISPR cas9 DNA gene rewriting. They can take the DNA strand and place another letter or number per say into the coded structure they can replace just one single genome digit there fore changing the molecular structure of the plant itself. You can literally take any characteristic and magnify its existence or minimize the out come or diminish it completely just a single trait or feature of the plant remember. Its crazy stuff.
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- Glyphosate
- Their bazillion lawyers
- My lack of a lawyer
- GMO food taking over
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Glyphosate is an herbicide not an insecticide. While it might be toxic to pests in large quantities, it is not labeled or intended for that use!
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Yep you’re right. Got mixed up there.
My fears remain the same. Monsanto is sterilizing the soil all over the planet and RoundUp is doing it. We all should imo be afraid of Monsanto. Look at Hawaii. It’s heaven but it’s also where Monsanto are growing a lot of their frankenfood crops. Hawaii won’t be heaven for long.
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A lot of valid concerns on this thread. It’s good to see some awareness 
If you haven’t already you may want to listen to this podcast on Shapingfire
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So cannabis has a THC cap it can naturally produce. Dont qoute me here but i think its aroumd 87% (if anyone knows the exact number please correct me.)
Now NO ONE has figured how to do this. YET. when a company can produce seeds that have flowers yielding that high content. aswell as extreme yeild. Who will the general public buy from? A 23% or say a 70% seems pretty simple maths to me. Most people dont care where it comes from. As long as it blasts them off. Ignorance is bliss.
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This is worth your time.
Especially pay attention from 11:00 all the way to 16:00.
Phylos CEO basically explains how they acquired the data they needed from their testing clients.
He goes on explaining how this aggregated data now creates a barrier to entry protecting them from competition.
Their board of advisors are specifically appointed to facilitate a future acquisition (upon federal legalization) by one of the Big 4 Ag companies, which are Syngenta, Dow Dupont, Bayer and BASF.
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I afraid of them but not for any business that I conduct, I suppose, lol. I think they could do something to impact me in the future but only time will tell. I can say that I see it being nearly impossible for them to actually compete, outside of some overly commercial farm investors that will likely be met with rejection - by most in the market. Big players also already exist in the space doing well and with their own protected genetics [so you can’t just ‘Monsanto’ pollen bomb them and get the same results we have seen]. This plant is already way, way more free, and in the public domain than people seem to realize that are new to the industry and also more protected [at least in a space I can see Monsanto enter] than people think. They could enter the market and have an impact but I just think they are a much smaller threat, in this one space, than people might think. If it is Big Ag to fear - the bankers already made that happen. In some cases, the biggest companies around, they are actually good people [it seems lots of the shady lives more in the mid-sized players at this point, some of the biggest yes, but mostly the collective crazy of tons of small people that think they are big people causing havoc]. This plant also has a habit of punishing those that disrespect its people and its people seem more than willing, at all times, to self police.
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Just to clear something up…
Brands such as Gavita, General Hydroponics, Botanicare, etc. are actually owned by a subsidiary of Scotts Miracle-Gro, not Bayer / Monsanto. While there has been a rumor about a large nutrient brand selling to Bayer, I can’t find any actual information to substantiate that rumor.
Basically, Bayer produces Round Up and Scotts Miracle-Gro is the exclusive distributor of Round Up, so they are interlinked. For these reasons among others (such as the field contamination and then suing of farmers etc.) I personally try not to support these companies when possible.
Scotts Miracle-Gro owns Hawthorne Gardening, and since their takeover of Sunlight Supply, not every company that is distributed through them is owned by them. I have talked to a lot of store owners who would like to not deal with them, but are forced to because customers insist on purchasing their products. Similarly, I’ve spoken to owners or higher ups at “competing” nutrient companies and many of them wish they had an alternative other than distributing their products through them, but it would have a severe impact on their market share if they pulled their products from them.
I think if we wanted to get away from supporting these companies, the biggest hurdle would be to address supporting Hawthorne as a distributor. Some of us would need to band together to create an opposing network of products.
That’s my opinion / two cents.
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We already genetically modify our plants by breeding them for traits we desire. The fear of Monsanto is their patenting and enforcement of the patent. Similar to the current Phylos conversation.
Some higher up employee’s and consultants to Monsanto are already in the cannabis sector. I lost my extraction business to the daughter of one of those executives because they have just too much money to keep to themselves.
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