8 Forces Driving More
saved, and shared them, as well as carrying out their own experiments.
Meanwhile, USDA and university researchers were conducting their
own field trials, discovering, for example, how corn yields could jump
significantly by tightly controlling pollination. From their research was
born the “hybrid” seed, an offspring of two different varieties.
Small fledgling seed companies seized upon their research in order
to grow their own varieties, which they marketed to farmers by promis-
ing higher and more predictable yields than if farmers saved their own
seeds. The companies valued seeds by the profit they returned from
each sale. Yet as they looked around and watched other agribusinesses
growing larger, they saw only limited opportunities for themselves.
If, on the other hand, they could patent seeds, the companies could
control prices, limit supply, and increase profits. After decades of
lobbying Congress, they won a partial victory. The Plant Patent Act
of 9 0 granted patent protection for fruit and nut trees and plants
reproduced asexually via budding, cutting, and grafting. But sexually
propagated plants like wheat, soybeans, corn, and vegetables, and even
tuber-propagated plants like potatoes, were still excluded.
Seed companies were undeterred, and the lobbying persisted. It
took four additional decades, but in 970 , the Plant Variety Protec-
tion Act was passed. Up to twenty years of monopoly power was granted
for seeds used to produce food. To appease opponents who saw patents
as a threat to the food supply, the law allowed farmers to save, replant,
and sell seeds, and researchers were given access to patented seeds for
study.
When the bill was enacted, the seed industry was made up of some
one thousand different-sized independent companies competing with
one another to sell farmers seeds. A decade later, the smaller ones were
gone; the bigger ones had been taken over by large pharmaceutical and
petrochemical corporations. Three decades later, fewer than a hundred
remained.
Prior to patent protection, seeds had been stewarded by society. Costs
to develop new varieties had been underwritten through public research.
Benefits had been shared widely. Except for hybrids, once seeds were in
the hands of farmers they could be replicated cheaply without additional
research. Now companies and their investors controlled seeds, jealously
guarding their cash cows. When I joined Farmland Industries in 985