Monsanto sues farmers for “seed piracy” on the premise that their product that drifts into other farmers’ fields is something beneficial. Of course, I am appalled like you Leah that Monsanto actually wins most of its cases, because I neither think the Roundup ready seeds are necessarily beneficial to the unsuspecting farmers into whose fields they drift, nor do I think it is fair to “blame the victims” of this drift (and to punish them with debilitating fines), for something which occurs naturally, or at least without the farmers’ intent.

Indeed, if there is any intentional cross fertilization involved, it’s on the part of Monsanto, whose genetic modification of seeds for “favorable traits” serve to monopolize the seed market. As Michael Pollan and others have pointed out, perhaps the most favorable trait (for Monsanto) seeds that grow into plants that cannot produce fertile seeds, so you have to keep buying your seeds from the companies that produce them. Monsanto’s very program to sue farmers into whose fields their seeds drifted for “stealing” their patented genetic traits is proof of their intent to corner the market and squeeze out any independent rivals who do not buy their products.

We need legislation that clearly makes these unethical business practices of Monsanto illegal, and we need courts to reject Monsanto’s argument that farmers into whose fields Monsanto’s GM seeds have drifted have “pirated” something good from Monsanto that benefited them. Like the organic farmers whose produce was made non-organic, and thus ruined from their point of view, by the pesticides that drifted onto their fields, we need to make the case that the integrity of the non-industrial crops and sustainable agricultural practices of farmers who don’t buy Monsanto’s Roundup Ready seeds (and similar products) is damaged when they are “contaminated” by these industrial products.

In other words, we have to re-name “seed piracy” into “crop infection” in order to make it clear who’s goring whose ox, as it were.