seed producers could never make much money because farmers, having

bought the seed or the animal variety, would produce future generations
themselves. Of course, seeds produced on the farm may contain a certain
amount of weed seed and not be produced under the best conditions for
germination so, in fact, farmers will occasionally go back to the seed
producer for a new stock. In France, for example, the average wheat farmer
goes back once every six years to replenish the supply of wheat seed.
Hybrid corn is different. Because it is the cross between two selfpropagating homogeneous lines, one cannot plant the seed of hybrid corn
and get new hybrid corn. Hybrids are not true-breeding. The seeds that are
borne on a hybrid plant are not themselves hybrids but form a population of
plants of varying degrees of hybridity, a mixture of homogeneous and
heterogeneous varieties. A farmer who saved seed from his hybrid corn and
planted it the next year would lose at least 30 bushels per acre in the next
crop. To maintain high yields, it is necessary for the farmer to go back every
year and buy the seed again. So, the hybrid seed corn producer has found a
method of copy protection. Moreover, the producer of the hybrid seed can
charge the farmer a price for the hybrid seed that is equivalent to the amount
the farmer would have lost-that is, the market value of 30 bushels per acrehad he not returned to the seed company for more hybrid seed. The
invention of hybrid corn was, in fact, a deliberate use of the principles of
genetics to create a copy-protected product. We have that on the best
authority possible, the inventors of hybrid corn themselves, Shull and East,
who wrote that hybrids are
something that might easily be taken up by the seedsmen; in fact, it is the
first time in agricultural history that a seedsman is enabled to gain the full
benefit from a desirable origination of his own or something that he has
purchased . . . The man who originates a new plant which may be of
incalculable benefit to the whole country gets nothing-not even fame-for his
pains and the plant can be propagated by anyone . . . The utilization of the
first generation hybrids enables the originator to keep the parental types and
give out only the crossed seeds, which are less valuable for continued
propagation.14
The realization that the hybrid method could guarantee to the inventor
immense profits has resulted in the introduction of the hybrid method into