14. Restricted access to plant material
This is one of the Monsanto’s business practices that draws the most flack and it is easy to see why. By patenting all their seeding materials, they severely limit farmers’ access to it. In fact, they go so far as to sue the farmers who saved harvested seeds to plant them, instead of buying new seeding material from the company. Monsanto claims that it is an infringement of their patent rights. While some form of patent protection is necessary to ensure investment in future research, it is very hard to agree with such drastic measures, especially when studies reveal that three companies own some 53% of global commercial seed market – DuPont, Syngenta, and of course, Monsanto.
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