Farmer Takes Monsanto to the Supreme Court

This is the case that will reveal just how pro-corporation are supposed liberals Kagan and Sotomayor.

 

Not to mention the establish whether human beings on this planet have the right to grow our own food without having to pay giant corporations for the privilege.

 

From The Guardian:

On the one side is Bowman, a single 75-year-old Indiana soybean farmer who is still tending the same acres of land as his father before him in rural south-western Indiana. On the other is a gigantic multibillion dollar agricultural business famed for its zealous protection of its commercial rights.

Not that Bowman sees it that way. "I really don't consider it as David and Goliath. I don't think of it in those terms. I think of it in terms of right and wrong," Bowman told The Guardian in an interview.

Either way, in the next few weeks Bowman and Monsanto's opposing legal teams will face off in front of America's most powerful legal body, weighing in on a case that deals with one of the most fundamental questions of modern industrial farming: who controls the rights to the seeds planted in the ground.

SNIP
 
On a website the firm set up to highlight its arguments in the case, Monsanto insists a Bowman victory at the supreme court could "jeopardize some of the most innovative biotechnology research in the country" in industries that range from farming to medicine. It says protecting patent rights fully is vital to preserve a commercial incentive to develop and refine new products.

But Bowman has numerous supporters who believe his case could help reform aspects of commercial farming – that is now dominated by huge corporations rather than small or family-run business – to vital reforms. Bowman's legal team intends to argue that the case could open the industry to greater anti-trust scrutiny, arguing that large corporation's vice-like grip on farming and control of seeds needs to be loosened. "It opens up these transactions (buying seeds) to greater anti-trust scrutiny by the Department of Justice. Right now they are sheltered by patent trust protection," said Bowman's lawyer Mark Walters.

Between GMO seeds that demand massive applications of toxic chemicals, "terminator" seeds that turn farmers into debt peons and outrageous patent claims, corporate giants like Monsanto are literally destroying humanity's ability to feed itself.