Why aren’t US farmers allowed to save seeds for replanting their crops?

[Kelly6]

[Lliam]

They can save seeds if they are heirloom varieties.
But most farmers either buy hybrid or GMO seeds.

Seeds from hybrid plants do not "work well" because they do not "breed true". When you plant seeds saved from a first-generation (F1) hybrid, the next generation (F2) splits apart genetically. Instead of a uniform crop, you get a wild mix of traits from the original grandparent plants, losing the specific size, vigor, and disease resistance you started with.

Four multinational biotechnology corporations control more than 50% of the global seed market, dominating the production of genetically modified (GMO) seeds.

When buying GMO seeds, farmers must sign a Technology Agreement or licensing contract. These legal contracts protect the biotech company's utility patents and control how the seed technology is used.

Key Terms in GMO Seed Contracts
- No Seed Saving: Farmers agree not to save, clean, or store seeds harvested from their crops to replant the following season. They must purchase new seeds from the company every year.
-Technology/Licensing Fees: Contracts outline the specific fees paid for the patented genetic traits, usually bundled per bag of seed.
- Right to Inspect Farms: Agreements often grant the seed company the legal right to enter, inspect, and test a farmer's fields or storage facilities—sometimes for years after the contract ends—to check for unauthorized replanting.
- Pesticide Bundling: Many agreements require or restrict the use of specific chemical herbicides (such as matching glyphosate formulations) designed to work alongside the specific GMO trait.

Those multinational buy up seed banks that store heritage seeds in an effort to prevent their use. They also spread their GMO seeds so that they cross pollinate indigenous and heirloom varieties. Doing so turns the non-GMO plants into GMOs, which means that the corporations can sue farmers for patent infringement. That's what they did to Percy Schmeiser. But they also contaminate maize in Mexico and other crops around the world. Those corporations want total monopoly over crop production.

(Suzanna) Arundhati Roy has written about the sacredness of seeds.
She speaks out against patenting seeds, a practice that forces farmers into modern-day debt bondage.
By creating seeds that cannot naturally reproduce, corporations dismantle thousands of years of communal farming knowledge.
To Roy, preserving indigenous seed varieties is both a literal and metaphorical act of rebellion. Nurturing local seeds allows communities to physically reclaim their food systems, bypass state control, and preserve ecological diversity.

[exitseven]

@Lliam I was pretty impressed by yourt knowledge of the subject. Now I think you just googlrd it. Still, it was very informatve.

[Lliam]

@exitseven. I already knew that stuff. I was the Board President of a great local environmental nonprofit that mostly did educational work, had guest speakers from around the country, showed Bioneers films, etc. from 2005 to 2011. I knew about Arundhati Roy. I have also talked to my cousin, who is a very successful farmer in Wisconsin, about seeds.

In responding to the question, I did go on line to find the information I wanted so that I could get the details right. And yes, I did cut and paste much of it.

[exitseven]

@Lliam I was still impresed.

[Lliam]

Thanks, X7.

[Lliam]

Thank you for the MHO, Kelly.

[ArrowheadSW]

I'm not a professional farmer, but I do some backyard farming. I was wondering why you can't just plant seeds from most of the vegetables that we grow, and have them produce the same tasty variety. As you say, it has to do with the breakdown of the F1 to F2 generation, I found out last year. Interesting stuff. And I thought I knew a lot about genetics already! LOL

[OneViewpoint]

Because of the Dumb-fuck-ery of Capitalism once again. Well that plus the industry developed to fuck around with the food supply that has generated Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO's). And these genetically engineered crops are allowed to be patented. And the courts have enforced those patents. So if a farmer holds back some of the harvest for seed, he is (by our fucked up laws) violating a patent protection of a mega corporation. We have effectively handed over ownership of the food supply to corporations and made farmers economic slaves to those corporations. Now the farmer becomes a captive of the patent owner every year without fail.

And maybe 1 in 1,000 people in the US understand that. Maybe we should have developed GMO crops with public funds like we fund NASA for space exploration. And the farmers should be free to produce their own seed. Instead we introduced inefficiencies into food production that impoverished farmers and the general population to protect the profits of mega corporations. Because those corporations funded the campaigns of the politicians who make the laws.

[purplepoppy]

GMO seed companies legally prohibit it to make more money.
Hybrid seeds don't come true to form.

It boils down to who feeds you controls you. Remember it's not just the farmer under their control but they have a huge grip on Americas food suppy and with more and more countries taking it up they can switch off any countries food supply at anytime.

So the real question is why do politicians allow it?

[jamesgoldman]

Because they're all part of the same club

[FreyaRed]

Dependency.
It's about to get of cultivating plants which can be used as seed source for next season, what worked over thousands of years.
But now we have share markets and corporations which sell 'quality seeds' and they have to make profits with any means necessary.

[lightbulb27]

Americans developed and capitalism (money has value, nothing else does) took over to an extreme. We became stupid. Everything is outsourced, even our parents and children.

You could as well have asked... why do Americans outsource their babies to daycare centers, where people don't give a crap about them?

Because they have to go to work to pay the daycare bill!!!

If you get a dollar bill... stair at it and woship it ike it is a God. Then stair it at longer until you lust for it, dream of many of them piled up in a bank, you are playing golf at a resort sipping drinks, driving a shiny sports car with a young hot woman draped over it... yea, that's the image forced on us. Then, you die of some complicated disease slowly in a hospital all alone... because you've been outsourced, and it is stupid expensive and your kids don't visit... because they are out playing golf and working... to pay for the daycare of their kids.

That's the American dream. Seeds, nobody here thinks about seeds except a very few.

[Chazmatazz269]

In most cases, it wouldn’t matter if they did. The companies that control the seeds have made them unproductive. That way they can force farmers to buy their seeds every season, instead of just once. Heirloom seeds are extremely expensive and hard to come by. So they’re fine if you’re just growing your own food. But it’s unsustainable if you’re trying to sell produce and make a profit.
Buyers permitted this scam by finding it too demanding to remove seeds before using fruits and vegetables, or getting too exhausted from spitting them out. “Seedless” fruits and vegetables were the result of agricultural planned obsolescence.
If the seeds actually did produce and a farmer used them, the seed companies would sue them for unpermitted use. It has happened in the past. A local family farm was sued when bees cross-pollinated his crops with a nearby industrial farm’s pollens. No joke. That lawsuit actually led me to the conspiracy theory that it’s those same companies that have reduced the bee populations because those cross-pollinations cost them money.

[MrOracle]

Hybrid seeds have been engineered to grow bigger, more abundant crops and be more resistant to bugs and diseases, BUT they don't reproduce well and they are patented.

Most farmers could plant heirloom versions (and a few do), but they aren't as profitable and diseases or infestations could destroy entire crops. When you are growing at scale as a business, you have to do the math for every likely scenario, and make a decision. Most farmers choose hybrid seeds and their set of problems vs. heirloom and their set of problems - but in most cases, it's their own choice based on their own math.

[ohsheeT]

Because the government won't allow them to they don't want the farmers to grow healthy food anymore or grow food at all . the government and China are buying the farms .

Look at McDonald's the only thing on the menu that is real is there french fries but they are soaked in pesticides everything else is chemically made

Almost all the foods in the stores tomato paste Oreo cookies just about everything is made with chemicals now tomato sauce ketchup Ritz crackers everything your candies all have Petroleum in them

People need to start looking this up and we need to put a stop to it

Now you know why the government does not have health care for people they know what's going on they know what's causing people to get sick and they are allowing it

[msc545]

Because the people that supposedly own the rights to the seeds have copyrighted them or protected them legally in some way. They have absolutely no intention of allowing other people to create them and use them by growing plants that produce them even though this is a natural process. Welcome to capitalism.

[Surely]

Lots of the seeds that farmers sow. Probably won’t do well if you plant the seeds that you harvest. They have been genetically engineered to do one thing or the other better. But not to reproduce themselves.
The other thing. They are engineered to withstand chemical spraying. That would kill heirloom plants. I have heard the term Round up ready! Which means that the weed killer Round up. Won’t kill them.
We could be in serious trouble in the future. If GMO plants are the only thing out.

[NathanDavis]

they're barely allowed to own their lands... can't own the seeds, can't repair their machinery... can't sell produce at their own terms

and can't get out of none of that, or they don't subsidies/welfare, which they could not survive without

USA farmers are tools to the system now... and been that for a long while as well

[AviatorTom]

It's a stupid law, but the seeds actually are patented and belong to Monsanto, or whatever company created the genetically modified GMO seeds. If Farmers reuse the seeds their plants grow, they are legally violating the company's patent and are faced with huge fines.

Sure, they could plant crops from natural, non GMO, seeds but that can't compete. Farmers would never survive economically if they did that.

[loveslongnails]

A series of laws in the USA beginning in 1970, starting with the Plant Variety Protection Act, began restricting farmer control of free, shared distribution of seeds by the Department of Agriculture. Seeds became intellectual property because of the genetic crossbreeding and subsequent patenting of various varieties. Much litigation has taken place over this, and some of it is still ongoing.

[RavVid]

I'd expect most corn seed would be hybrid and hybrids don't breed true. So I'd imagine seed companies don't want their variety to get a bad rep from farmers doing this.

Plus it is always good to lock a customer in of course.

[convo_king89]

Depends on what seeds. If its non gmo then its allowed but if its gmo its not allowed because you bought the seed one time. You have to buy it every time like a pay to use cuz their technology is licensed and patented.

[melnc]

Seed patents keep farmers dependent, not free. Hybrid seeds don't breed true. Control the seeds, control the food and they can cut any nation off at will.

[Anonymous]

The crop industry in US is a battle of patents.

Each company has there own seeds which are weed and infection resistant ( genetically enhanced) and the company who made them don't want to give a farmer the profits.
They want it to keep for themselves.
Which is way, they aren't allowed to save seeds.
I hate that greedy nature of them.
It should be stopped. It should be farmers should have the right of growing whatever they want.

[Sevenpointfive]

i've never heard of this. that sounds nuts. but it's seeds. what's the reason? genetic modification? i mean where are they getting the seeds to grow? that's kind of scary

[slatyb]

It´s the agreement they made when they planted GMO seeds. It´s controversial, as their plants can cross-polinate with non-GMO plants outside their land.

[Lynx122]

Getting fucked by companies is the number one hobby in the U. S., they love nothing more.

[jahaims]

Google is free. Big companies patent their seeds so it is illegal to use without buying them from them. John deere fucks farmers like seed companies as well

[jshm2]

Because the labs have a monopoly on who can grow what.

[Twalli]

Most of the time, they don't have full ownership over the land they farm. The owners of the land decide how it's managed. If the owners say not to save seeds to replant, they don't save them.

[Snakeyes7]

Because the commies need control of the food production in order to "fairly" redistribute it to the masses, but 99% of it will go to the powers that be.

[abc3643]

You misspelled "capitalists".

[Snakeyes7]

@abc3643 If the state is involved in any capacity other than to enforce competition, that's not a free market.

[abc3643]

Your definition of free market is called the barter system - what cave people did before the invention of agriculture about 12000 years ago. (Google Neolithic Revolution.)

[Snakeyes7]

@abc3643 My aim is Austrian economics, which would never support this crap.

[SeekerOfTruth007]

Because Dow and Monsanto own the patents on all the engineered food.

[andreamelissa]

Really? How could this be happening?

[Kelly6]

@andreamelissa seeds are owned by corporations.

[canamlusciouslad73]

I'd LOVE to give some seed to a buxom blonde farmer's daughter !!!

[kaucky1]

Because they got something else already in store for you to produce 🫢🫣

[goaded]

Capitalism. Unchecked capitalism.

[_Jenny_]

@Kelly6 They should

[TonyMetal___1986]

I don't know, that's weird 🤔

[Paige2006]

Good question!

[fishbone77]

You libs love to be dumb

[dougeats]

I did not know that!

[wkhan_87]

Aren't they? I didn't know

[dislikesmath]

I'm not sure

[robocop666]

capitalism. to make them buy more

[Anonymous]

Mosanto.

[mar301]

I don't know