Some additional notes based on growing up in a wheat / corn farming family:

My family uses GMO herbicide/pesticide-resistant corn seed (Roundup Ready). It's a tradeoff, because:

1) Roundup Ready seed is somewhat expensive, especially compared to just holding on to a small amount of your own harvested crop as next year's seed.

2) Like the video mentioned, the GM seeds we used have been modified to be sterile, so the grain they produce can't be replanted. Part of the justification for that is not wanting the GM version to intermingle with unmodified strains. But, most is pure profit motivation -- they want you to be forced to buy that GM seed. I don't really see that as nefarious, just business -- but opinions differ.

3) My family discovered that for corn, we could us the GM Roundup Ready seed roughly once every 5 years while still benefiting from drastically reduced insect / plant pests. If corn is within pollination range of another less known crop plant called milo, the plants can hybridize and produce a plant called shattercane. Shattercane is essentially worthless as a food crop, but is very hardy, and can spread and in many cases outcompete the corn or milo that you really want.

Getting rid of it was a very difficult and intensive process -- until the GM seed came along. Now if we see shattercane starting to make incursions, we can plant the GM seeds the next year and then hit the field with a herbicide that kills the shattercane. It works so well that the field remains clear of the pest plants / insects for several years after that without having to use much if any herbicides / pesticides.

4) In our situation, we found that we used way less herbicide / pesticide per year on average once we started rotating in the GM seeds once every several years. That would be close to a wash, but still likely a net savings even if we used the GM seeds every year (seed companies will try to sell it to you every year). Factor in increased crop yields because of the reduced/eliminated pests, and it is a clear win.

5) I'm sort of worried about the potential for a "superbug" effect, similar to overusing / misusing antibiotics. If farmers buy into the GM seed thing 100% and use it every year, I think it will increase the chances / rate of the pests becoming resistant to the pesticides / herbicides used. That's a long-term concern, and in my opinion doesn't even come close to outweighing the "pro" side of the GM argument (at least from the perspective of my family's farm), but it is something to think about.

I think many people don't realize how GMOs have made farmers' lives so much easier.

I'm surprised to read what you said about your family's GM seeds being modified to be sterile though; the video states that terminator seeds were never commercialized. Since you're talking about corn, maybe it was just hybrid?

**EDIT**
I'm finding other sources that say that sterile "terminator seeds" are a patented technique, but that Monsanto has promised not to use it. Straight from the horse's mouth:
http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/pages/terminator-seeds.aspx

So it appears that my info below is wrong. I will try to talk with my family and get the full story. That being said, I'll leave my original comment and the followup below unaltered.
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My firsthand knowledge of this stuff was from more than 10 years ago, and also when I was pretty young (early 20's). So I did some web searching to try to get updated since your question is a very interesting one:

http://web.mit.edu/demoscience/Monsanto/about.html

According to that, Monsanto is the company behind "Roundup Ready", and their corn (and other crops in the line) do use sterile "terminator seeds". It also mentions that farmers "must purchase the most recent strain of seed from Monsanto" each year.

I was never in the decision-making structure of my family farm, but I did remember that we couldn't just buy the Roundup Ready seed *once* and then hold a small amount back as seed for the next year and continue to get the benefits.

I'm not 100% sure exactly how the modification for sterility works -- I don't know if the plant will sprout if you plant the sterile seeds and just fail to produce any ears / fruit, or if it just won't germinate at all. I do remember that we had to be quite careful to fully clean out the corn grown from the GM seeds from our storage bins, and better yet to store our non-GM corn to be used for future seed in entirely different bins. That was done to make sure that we didn't end up planting any of the sterile stuff.

I'm sure that the seed dealers that sell the GM stuff really push farmers to buy and plant it every year, as hinted to in that link. But you certainly don't *have* to. On the other hand, if you go back to non-GM seed for a year or two or more, you can't use a strong herbicide like Roundup if you have an unexpected outbreak of weeds or other pest plants -- the Roundup would kill the non-GM crop along with everything else.

Basically, I don't specifically begrudge companies like Monsanto for their practices concerning these GM crops. The "terminator seeds" are controversial, but don't seem like a big deal to me. If you could buy GM seeds once and then just hold back some of your harvest for next season's seed, they'd only get your money once AND we'd probably lose the original strains. So I see that as kinda win-win, especially if you don't 100% buy into their sales department urging you to use GM seed every single year.

I don't want to sound like a shill for Monsanto -- some of their other practices are pretty shady, particularly political lobbying. But from the perspective of my family farm, the GM corn that we use was/is a real beneficial thing. Significantly less pesticide/herbicide use over time, and it allows for expanded low/no till farming. Before herbicides, tilling was one of the only ways to kill off pest plants. But, it also makes the fields lose some moisture and nutrients. Expanded farming and ubiquitous tilling was largely the cause of the "dust bowl" dirty 30's. Anyway, I'd say that a lot of good has come out of modernized techniques and technology like GM crops.

OK, sorry to spam here, but I found another relevant link:
https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/12/14/gmo-patent-controversy-terminator-genes-seed-piracy-forcing-farmers-buy-seeds/

That confirms that "terminator seeds" are a technology that does exist -- in practice as well as theory -- but isn't commercially sold or otherwise available.

More importantly, it mentions that there is a legal sort of "license agreement" that farmers sign when they buy the GM seed stating that they won't replant harvested stuff in the future, and that they can inspect your storage areas etc. if they suspect you are doing so. That would explain why my family worked hard to clean out storage areas that had grain resulting from GM seed. I erroneously thought that was because that grain was sterile.

Those agreements are for a single crop / harvest, so it is definitely possible to use a GM seed one year and then go back to non-GM seed in other years, as my family does. I guess that we just have to keep good records to show that we're not holding any back for future planting / sale.

Sorry for the several LONG posts, and thanks to @Hastur for asking the question that got me to figure out the misconception I had!

Thank you for sharing your perspective, @MilkmanDan!

Here is a link from a farmer detailing what is in one of those license agreements, including a copy of one:

http://thefarmerslife.com/whats-in-a-monsanto-contract/

"That’s what we have to agree to in order to make use of Monsanto’s biotechnology on our farm. I don’t see anything in there that hurts my farm. Neither does Iowa farmer Dave Walton. I don’t have to buy their herbicides, and I don’t have to buy anything from them next year if I don’t want to. The biggest problem I have with seed companies is that it seems like they phase out a variety from time to time that is a really strong performer on our farm. "

Considering that literal dozens of roundup resistant versions of weeds have appeared in the last twenty years, I'm not sure it's appropriate to call the "superbug" concern a long-term one. It's already happened, and continuing to grow.

Monsanto is like Microsoft... they are these hulking titans of their respective industries, who work as hard as they can to stay ahead of the game, sometimes through questionable activities. However, their contributions on the whole are incredible, driving generations of progress in their respective fields through investment, research, and release of progressively more useful tools (on the whole).

There is a similar debate regarding pharmaceutical companies and their profiteering from the invention of life saving drugs... its easy to paint a company as a 'bad guy' for charging large amounts of money for medicine that a person needs to live. But is it the company's responsibility to forgo shareholder profits in order to maximally help more people with their drug, or is it the spectrum of regulations imposed by a representative government that should be entrusted with that responsibility?

GMO agriculture products that are drought tolerant, flood tolerant, self pollenating, etc etc, will likely save our buns in the next 100 years. If anything we should be doubling down on how much effort we put into GMO production and selection, to help drive a technological boom in that industry before we've mismanaged ourselves into a crisis.

While I'm in no position to buy from Monsanto, and don't know enough to advocate for or against them, the troubling impression I have of them is their business practices. This is why I had a quick look through that contract analysis.

It reminded me of something I am familiar with: software. You often have clauses that prohibit analysis or reverse engineering of software. Like the farmer doing the Monsanto contract analysis I [almost always] have no interest in doing that reverse engineering, but I definitely want others to be able to so they can look for things like security holes.

Having the attitude of 'this contract is fine because it doesn't restrict me from anything I want or would expect to do' is completely understandable, but can hide some of the real issues.

I love the Kurzgesagt videos, and again here they impress me by mentioning the issues with these companies, while completely separating it from the issue being analysed.

It's just like any technology. You can use it for good or for evil.