all of agriculture.

Chickens, tomatoes, swine, indeed, nearly every

commercial plant or animal where it is possible to introduce the method has
seen the growth of hybrids at the expense of older varietal forms. Major
seed companies, like the Pioneer Hybrid Seed Company, have invested
millions of dollars in attempting to produce hybrid wheat that would then
capture an immense untapped market. So far, they have not succeeded,
because the cost of production of the hybrid seed is excessive.
The Pioneer Hybrid Seed Company itself is the consequence of the activities
of a single important political and scientific figure, Henry A. Wallace.
Wallace's father was appointed secretary of agriculture of the United States
by President Warren Harding in 1920. The elder Wallace sent Henry on a
tour of agricultural experiment stations. On his return, Henry advised his
father to appoint as head of plant breeding a man who was devoted to
hybrids. In the meanwhile, Henry was himself experimenting with hybrids,
and in 1924 he sold his first hybrid seed corn at a profit of about $740 an
acre. In 1926, he founded the Pioneer Hybrid Seed Company, and when, in
1932, he was appointed secretary of agriculture by President Franklin
Roosevelt, pressure for the introduction of hybrid corn in the United States,
and subsequently in Canada, became irresistible.
If hybrids really are a superior method for agricultural production, then their
commercial usefulness to the seed company is a side issue. The question is
whether other methods of plant breeding might have worked as well or
better without providing property-rights protection for the seed companies.
The answer to that question depends on some issues in basic genetics that
were undecided in the early history of hybrid com, and until 30 years ago,
one might have argued that the basic biology of corn production is such that
only hybrids would provide the added yield. However, we have known the
truth of the matter for the last 30 years. The fundamental experiments have
been done and no plant breeder disagrees with them. The nature of the genes
responsible for influencing corn yield is such that the alternative method of
simple direct selection of high-yielding plants in each generation and the
propagation of seed from those selected plants would work. By the method
of selection, plant breeders could, in fact, produce varieties of corn that yield
quite as much as modern hybrids. The problem is that no commercial plant