If you are referring to a case where litigation was executed under the terms of patent contract, the farmer – being a member of the public who grants such patents – has still entered into a contract by virtue of choosing to be a member of the public who has agreed that patent contracts are desirable to issue. The public had no obligation to issue the patent, but chose to. The farmer need not be a member of that public, but chose to be.

How would one choose not to be a member of that public?

The farmer is under no moral obligation to care that the uniformed public wants. It only matters to pretend to live in a democracy.

Then, without a license, he had no right to exploit the patented technology. The farmer acted in a way that showed a knowing and deliberate exploitation of the patented technology. There seems to be a disconnect here, but I'm not seeing it. Can you help me with what I've missed?

You need a license to produce and sell patented technology.

You don’t need a license to use patented technology which you either bought from a third party, was given or has blown onto your land by the wind.

This thread is going in circles. As mentioned a few comments ago, it's clearly not the case that the technology "blown onto your land by the wind". The farmer was intentionally engaging in artificial selection to get plants with roundup ready traits. I can be sympathetic to the claim that a patented program magically appeared on your computer because of random bit-flips, but I can't be sympathetic if you deliberately set up a system to generate bit-flips on your computer in a specific way so as to produce the desired program.

And note that this farmer would not have successfully obtained glyphosate resistant plants just by spraying his field, in the absence of the contamination. If it were that easy, GMOs wouldn't have been necessary in the first place.