Why Farmers Can't Legally Replant Their Own Seeds
Why Hacker News recommends it
Pointed to as a relevant, recent deep dive whenever Monsanto, GMO seeds or glyphosate safety come up.
What it is
Veritasium's long documentary on the history of Monsanto's herbicides, including glyphosate, and how patented seeds prevent farmers from replanting. It covers agricultural chemistry, litigation and corporate practices.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2025 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Recommends mhitza · 2025-12 · on “Influential study on glyphosate safety retracted 25 years after publication”
Veritasium has a couple months old video that talks about this issue, and other various issues around agriculture area (Monsanto "seed mafia") in this video [this video]
Cites psolidgold · 2025-09 · on “Glow-in-the-dark houseplants shine in rainbow of colours”
Farmers spend millions on seeds partly because they are/were contractually obligated to NOT harvest and reuse seeds gathered from the patented GMO plants. While you're correct that resistance traits generally are less effective in F2/F3 generations, they would be committing a crime if they even attempted. Aside from this farmer-hostile position, there's plenty of other reasons to believe Monsanto and now Bayer were historically and continue to be evil. There's a relevant Veritasium video posted just 2 days ago about this very topic and I think "evil" is a very apt description. [this video] Secondly, your claims about organic farming are way more nuanced than you're making them out to be. For inst
Cites trenchpilgrim · 2025-10 · on “Why Nigeria accepted GMOs”
If your neighbor planted a GMO crop in their field, and then sprayed them with the compatible chemicals, two things might happen: 1. The chemicals are carried by the wind onto your crop field, killing your non-GMO crops 2. The seeds from the GMO crop spread into your field, and corporate hired goons show up at your door threatening you with a lawsuit. Or maybe if your neighbor doesn't like you, they spread some GMO seed in your field, then report you to the company. This led to neighbor versus neighbor conflicts in ag communities, in some cases turning violent. [this video]