@pleaseclap @mayintoronto @nev @swelljoe Why would they buy what they can steal? The seed business is very cutthroat, and it takes significant legal backing to protect your rights as a small player.
@pleaseclap @mayintoronto @nev @swelljoe The way things would ideally go is that I'd produce enough seeds to grow some acreage on a real farm, then I would hire a farm to produce a larger crop, maybe repeat that a few years, then I would sell the crop to a processor (for canning or conversion into a final product). Each of these steps would be secured with heavy-duty contracts.
@pleaseclap @mayintoronto @nev @swelljoe If, after all that, I had managed to make enough money to cover the costs of filing for a plant variety patent, then waited the few years that process can take, then I could open up sales the the public at large without the first unscrupulous grower with some land stealing all the returns from the decade and a half of effort I had to put in.
@pleaseclap @mayintoronto @nev @swelljoe At that point, I could sell the beans to a distributor for packaging and sending to grocery stores.
Along the way, I'd need to build/acquire warehouse storage and the significant financial reserves needed to run a food supply business.
@pleaseclap @mayintoronto @nev @swelljoe To go the less capitalistic approach, without patent protection, would take a similar number of years of contracting crops grown by farmers. That would be repeated enough years until I could make a public offering and dominate the supply of the seeds for a few years until others scale up.
I'd need to make a return on the 1.5 decades of work in the short years it'd take for other growers to start selling them.
@pleaseclap @mayintoronto @nev @swelljoe Or I could just start selling packets of seeds now, and someone with more land and farm resources would start growing them and take over the market within a couple of years.
I'd have to make enough money in those few years to account for my decade of work.
People would quickly be selling them all over Etsy and other places, with a story sanitized of any references to me, just like has happened routinely to others.
@pleaseclap @mayintoronto @nev @swelljoe All of these complications are why new varieties for the public tend to be produced at universities or large companies. They have the legal resources to defend the effort and ensure they're paid fairly for their time.