Summer Of The 17th Doll

The Long History of Agricultural Genetics

I may sound long-winded, but let me start at the beginning. It was probably

20.000 years ago the Homo Sapiens began to domesticate plantsвЂ"at least 10,000, but

I suspect much earlier than that. Some human discovered that finding seeds and grain

to eat was a difficult business, and he or she noticed that particular plants had big

heads on them. He also realized that if you plant a seed a plant will growвЂ"at some

point somebody figured that out, which took some doing.

Then starting 9-10,000 years ago people begin to domesticate wheat, in the

Bekaa [a region in Lebanon] and in the Euphrates and Tigris valleys, and then ultimately

rice and other crops were domesticated.

They were genetically modifying organisms. That is what they were doingвЂ"they

were genetically interfering with the normal biological process. If you think about it, a

plant really has no incentives to generate high yields, as long as it produces seeds. As

long as it produces enough seeds to reproduce itself, there is no biological reason, no

Darwinian reason, to be producing more seeds. The only person who wants the plant to

produce more seeds is the human who eats them.

Entrepreneurship and Public Policy Project Agricultural Biotechnology: Its History and Future

www.dieboldinstitute.com 4

So we were dramatically interfering in the normal biological process. And we

were beginning to make plants that are dependent on humans to sustain themselves.

Corn, if left to itself, would probably die out today, because it could not reproduceвЂ"

grains would fall, and maybe one percent would reproduce, and ultimately it would

disappear. The modern corn plant has no system other than humans to disperse its

seeds

If you saw the progenitor of soybeans, it is a vine, it grows along the ground. You

would not think it was a soybean. The Homo Sapiens has done two things: one, they

have dramatically interfered in the natural process, and two, they have created plants

that will not reproduce themselves without human intervention. Wheat probably would

competeвЂ"it is unclearвЂ"but rice wouldn’t. So we have created artificial species.

Those three crops todayвЂ"maize, wheat and riceвЂ"account for most of the

human’s energy sources. The only other big sources are the root crops of Africa, and

the tree crops of the Pacific. Naturalization of maize has had the most significant

impact. It has been most dramatically impacted in terms of yields. Much of the yield

increase occurred perhaps six thousand years ago, when you took something that had

six seeds and made it into something with four hundred seeds. That is a huge change,

but we do not recognize it because it was done by native peoples, who just selected

and selected.

In the 16th-19th centuries, new genetic lines were developed, particularly in the

United States. These were fairly high yielding. They were varietal lines.

During this period, the farmer saved seeds for replanting. Let me tell you an

anecdotal story: my father, the first employee of Pioneer, helped develop the sales

activities. He remembers going to visit an old farmer, and his wife said, “Well John’s up

in the barn.” So John’s up there, and he’s taking the grain off of the cobs, and mixing

different varieties, some in this pile, and some in that pile. And my father asks him,

“What are you doing?” And he says, “I’m preparing seed for next yearвЂ"the long thin

ones are the males, and the short fat