Instead of doing things like securing their supply chains, the reaction of the seed companies is to... just make anyone else selling seeds illegal.

Not even just selling seeds. Saving seeds from the crop you planted from the previous year can also lead to infringement lawsuits.

And? How is this different than licensing software instances? You buy a license to use one instance of the seed, not infinity copies.

Not quite, the counterfeit seeds here are dramatically worse to the point where buyers will feel scammed and face significant hardship if they mistakenly use them.

Imagine if 90% counterfeit electronics caused house fires, the harm is way beyond the purchase price. At that point customers start caring a great deal, but corruption is difficult to avoid.

But there's nothing stopping the farmer from observing their saved or off brand seed is not as effective and buying from the original breeder again..?

Aside from destitution from a terrible crop yield and no safety net?

And how was this managed for the last millennia?

By avoiding competition from global markets including highly efficient producers.

Transportation infrastructure on this scale is a new thing, though famine essentially going away is a massive advantage for modern systems.

The idea of “counterfeit seeds” is absurd particularly against a backdrop of centuries of locally run seed stores.

That’s a comment born from ignorance. Farmers want hybrids for a wide range of crops because the are wildly more productive than heirloom varieties thus making them more money.

The first generation of Hybrid seeds are on average several times more productive than the second generation, yet they look the same. Further it’s much easier to gather a second generation of seeds than the first. Thus significantly worse product that’s cheaper to produce but looks identical barring genetic testing = counterfeit.

people haven't explained why this is the case, it's the simple genetics we learn in biology.

the first generation has a many sets of genes with "Highly Productive Dominant (HPD, my terms for this post) genes, Not so Productive Recessive Gene (NPR)". By inbreeding 2 lines for a while, one can end up with a strain that has both genes being one and thereby when you cross it with something else, you know the offspring will get its gene (as it really only has one). Therefore the first generation, will have many sets as what I described above and will 100% express the HPD of those pairs.

The 2nd generation though of seeds will have a randomized assortment of HPD/HPD, HPD/NPR, NPR/NPR genes. Therefore while 75% of the seeds expressed genes will be HPD on average, that's obviously less than 100% that one gets from first generation.

That’s a reasonable mental model for why this kind of thing can happen, but it’s worth remembering that other possibilities exists. Suppose strain R is adding RR, and strain K is adding KK, and you want RK because the combination is more useful than either RR or KK. There’s no way to get that into a population without some lucky mutations or genetic engineering.

Further you’re likely looking at many such combinations not just a single one.

It worked so well in the War On Drugs... Don't do the hard work of taking down illegal supply chains; simply put the end consumers into jail for several years!

/s

From Nixon’s standpoint it worked great because they put brown people in jail.

Linked article claimed it was undertaken to prevent seed counterfeiting.

Edit: (I personally know basically nothing about the law or how it’s been implemented.)

shouldnt you, as the ceo of a company selling seeds in kenya, know about the laws related to saving and selling seeds in kenya...?

> Also, what's the connection to the high yield ones?

The high yield seeds are created by cross pollinating certain varieties. When the high yield seeds are planted, the new seeds should be eaten -not re-planted- since they will give poor yield.

So a counterfeiter can just buy cheaper food-seeds and resell them as expensive high-yield seeds.

Why does that make it sound like we are truly effed if we ever end up in situation where these processes or markets fail...

A lot of plants work like that. Apples very rarely come out tasting great if the tree is planted from a seed. You need to clone a good known apple tree from cuttings instead.