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The world has witnessed unprecedented power grabs and supply chain disruptions over the past two years. The near-perfect alignment between big government, big banks and corporations should be a serious cause for concern across the agricultural sector. These measures represent nothing less than the gravest threats to our freedom and survival as businesses, probably even as individuals. If you champion resilience and biodiversity, bitcoin should be a natural choice. Bitcoin ultimately protects biodiversity.
The concentration of power and money began long before COVID hysteria gripped the world. The corporatization of the agricultural sector has been my primary concern long before the legalization hype began. We all knew, deep down, that the cannabis space had the potential to become both the ugliest manifestation of big agro, big tobacco, and big pharma. This is happening before our eyes and many of us feel helpless in the face of this trend. While most in the industry have struggled to obtain the most basic financial services that any legitimate business is entitled to, a parallel financial system has emerged that now represents a very serious alternative to the broken old system. Let's take a look at what our options are and how they support our dream vision for the cannabis industry, medicinal plants, but also for the agricultural sector as a whole.
The old broken system
We know the central bank-run credit system that creates money out of thin air, unfairly distributed throughout the economy, primarily to the insiders, while the plebs are given crumbs to survive and pay interest to the crony bankers . Consumers and businesses alike are increasingly giving themselves credit to move forward and acquire the assets they need to thrive or sometimes, unfortunately, simply to satisfy advertising-induced desires. Support a capital intensive operating cultivation in these conditions constitutes a real challenge. Add to that the regulatory burden and you have the perfect recipe for the destruction of family businesses.
You may be wondering what the connection is between monetary policy, plant breeding and plant patents. Well, the fiduciary system promotes a system of rentiers, where concentration of power and resources becomes the norm and artificial moats prevent any new competitors from entering the market to offer better options to society. Cronyism goes hand in hand with predatory exclusive tactics. In order to repay their debt or offer the expected returns to investors, innovators must acquire exclusive rights to biology (e.g. plant varieties) to seize unjustified and unreasonable margins for long periods on a newly bred grape variety. On a large scale, this system incentivizes breeders to limit access to their cultivars, preventing any other breeders from improving the gene pool, ultimately destroying biodiversity by creating single points of failure in preservation efforts. It also encourages predatory practices against farmers and growers who face heavy fines and penalties for inadvertent patent violations when growing such proprietary varieties. Ask corn and cotton farmers who received an approval from Bayer, Syngenta or Dupont after their fields were cross-pollinated with proprietary pollen from neighboring fields during windy days…
Let me pause to clarify something. Technological patents can be quite legitimate in making capital-intensive R&D profitable. However, patents on biology are unethical for 2 main reasons:
- They leverage an existing gene pool that is in the public domain, sometimes called the “commons” (i.e. Big Ag initially used public domain grape varieties to create patented grape varieties).
- They encourage the development of GMOs and, ultimately, transhumanism
In the agricultural world, it seems that the more central banks print money, the more markets become concentrated and the less innovation comes to the market. In the context of plant breeding, biodiversity is inversely correlated with the money supply, where fiat encourages sterile monoculture. Despite these growing predatory proprietary practices, debt levels are at an unprecedented level in the cannabis industry. Most of these zombie companies will never repay their debt. The house of cards will hurt a lot of people when it falls, including the humble players who built the whole space, like family businesses.
The cannabis industry has consolidated at a worrying rate in recent years. Canada and California are far from the legalization dream that many of us had dreamed of. Old farms are being forced out of the market and low quality companies (low quality cannabis) sprayed with synthetic terpenes (i.e. artificial flavors) are flooding the market. We all know this race to the bottom model.
There should be room for high-quality handmade products. Such products are difficult to market in a fiduciary system that requires increasingly large economies of scale and initial capital. Instead of consolidating the capital expenditure-based industry into artificial moats such as plant patents, a bitcoin-centric industry would fairly reward artisanal producers for the quality they bring to market, not their moats .
If you are an actor on a human scale and want to make a living from your passion for plants, what are the best tools at your disposal? You should already know that Open source selection is the intellectual property strategy best suited to small breeders. You don't want to fight the patent war with your limited means; against the crony corporations sitting right next to the money printer. But how to win the open source game using improper fiat currency? Well, here is Bitcoin.
The new paradigm: sound money
Solid silver is salable across space, time, and scale; it adequately stores value for its hardworking holders, while respecting their privacy. It is the money of the creators of value, not that of the rentiers. This is the right money to reward breeders who improve and maintain the gene pool that ultimately benefits consumers. It is rare money that creates the conditions for abundance and biodiversity. But how?
Imagine being paid for your work in a currency that appreciates over time and preserves the value of your work, in other words, of the energy you spend growing plants, selecting phenotypes, producing new seeds, select them and package them. Imagine a currency that allows you to transact with people all over the world, without asking anyone's permission and without doxxing you. This is quite a revolution for producers and breeders who have been denied banking services and have had to rely on cash to settle their transactions, with all the associated risks.
Bitcoin is instant, trustless, and permissionless transaction settlement between parties. It allows breeders and farmers to make a living from their passion, from what they do best: agriculture and breeding. Breeders should not have to play the litigation game to assert their patents and defend their annuities in order to keep up with inflation and pay interest on printed money. Those who have resorted to this method usually regret it when they realize they cannot win the game of Big Ag; after all, the rules of the proprietary game are written by and for the cantillionaires. Small and medium-sized businesses cannot win this game in the long run because enforcing patents requires significant cash flow. Engaging in the plant patent game is a sure way to sell your plants in the future, or simply be squeezed out of the market by larger players.
Every entrepreneur seeking financial autonomy and, ultimately, freedom wants to convert their spent energy into hard money. With bitcoin, the incentive to compromise biodiversity to maximize rents to compensate for the melting of fiat money disappears. With Bitcoin, breeders and producers can focus on their business, while storing the fruits of their labor over the long term in the strongest money possible. Bitcoin therefore allows many small players to integrate the agricultural sector: it encourages the fight against fragility, competition and biodiversity.
This isn't the only problem bitcoins solve for the cannabis industry. The settlement of transactions was a central issue. Excluded from the traditional banking system, too many legally operating businesses have had to rely on cash to settle their transactions. In today's world, sitting on piles of money is impractical and even dangerous. Meanwhile, these same companies pay taxes like everyone else. Taxation without financial representation. Bitcoin solves this problem. Due to its trustless and intermediary nature, bitcoin allows cannabis businesses to settle their transactions securely, without relying on banks or payment processors. Who wants to pay expensive processing fees and beg for basic services from financial institutions that have looked down on this industry for years? Why not turn this obstacle into a competitive advantage? Instead of jumping through hoops to be accepted into a dying legacy system, the entire cannabis industry should migrate to bitcoin and get a head start, creating the blueprint for the agricultural sector as a whole .
This is a guest post from Remnantal. The opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
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