open agriculture

In the summer of 2006, consumers across the country began falling sick from a particularly nasty strain of Escherichia coli bacteria, known as 0157:H7. Not all E. coli bacteria are dangerous, but 0157:H7 belongs to the Shiga toxin-producing group of pathogens (known as STEC), which can cause severe, and sometimes fatal, illness. By early October, 199 people in twenty-six states had fallen ill, resulting in 102 hospitalizations and thirty-one cases of kidney failure. Three people died, including a two-year-old boy in Utah...

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Not long ago, all seed was in the public domain. If you bought seeds, you owned them outright. No longer. While there have been steady improvements in yields and shipping qualities in many crops since those “good old days,” there have been losses, too. The biggest loss may be in the package of rights farmers purchase along with the seed. In recent decades the balance between the power of seed companies and the rights of those who grow out the seeds has shifted sharply against the grower...

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