But then the GMO company patents the result, and it's not legal for a farmer to do what farmers have been doing for ten thousand years: save some of the seeds from the crop and plant them the next year, or give some to a neighboring farmer. Getting out of that trap is a prime motivation for "open source seeds" projects.
Aside from, you know, the vast uptake of hybrid seeds, which couldn't be saved for reuse either.
Anyway, why exactly is this tradition so important that it would swamp the social benefits from improved plants obtained from GMOs (and such benefits must exist, or else farmers would not use these seeds)? This sounds like reflexive conservatism, wanting an old thing just because it is old, and damning changes just because they are changes.
> save some of the seeds from the crop and plant them the next year, or give some to a neighboring farmer
That hasn't been the predominant practice for the majority of farms for coming up on a century. Cross pollinated hybrid seeds are just way too productive to justify growing your own open pollinated varieties.
