ABSTRACT
My high school geography teacher kept a shelved row of labelled jars containing seeds. When asked about this curiosity, he spoke apocalyptically of an approaching dystopian future when seeds would no longer have the capacity to self-propagate due to human genetic intervention. Farmers, reduced to agri-serfs, he claimed, would become dependent on large corporations (agribusinesses) that, in pursuit of greater prot, would dole out single harvest seeds at monopolistic prices under strict licences. I dismissed these doomsday comments as typical of the political hyperbole characterizing the environmental movement of the late 1980s. But the comments were ever
1 Emphasis added. Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson (13 August 1813) in The Founders’ Constitution, Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson’, vol. 3, art. 1, s. 8, cl. 8, doc. 12, The Founders’ Constitution <https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/ founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html>.
