In perhaps the first case of its kind, a US farmer has been handed out a prison sentence for saving transgenic cotton seeds sold by Monsanto Company. The company prohibits growers using its products from employing the age-old practice of saving seeds from one crop to plant the next.

A federal court in St Louis, Missouri, sentenced Kem Ralph, a Tennessee farmer, to eight months in prison for flouting the rule. This is the first criminal prosecution in Monsanto's drive against farmers violating purchase agreements.

Monsanto began marketing its patented seeds like genetically modified (GM) cotton in the 1990s. Called Roundup Ready, they were genetically tinkered to provide immunity to Monsanto's own herbicide