Mara HvistendahlRiverhead Books2020288 pp.Purchase this item now
For many of us, the idea of industrial espionage conjures up secreted factory blueprints, copied chemical formulas, and hacked computer systems. It calls to mind the high tech and highly trained, the stuff of spy novels and James Bond films. It does not evoke Iowa cornfields—at least, no more than a few scattered ears of corn missed by a mechanical harvester might suggest vulnerable trade secrets.
Yet some seeds are a source of intense competition and controversy, and they feature prominently among the many purported and confirmed objects of economic theft. In the United States, seed companies have complained about having their products “stolen” by competitors since the very earliest days of commercial breeding and industrial seed production. Before governments began allowing patents on plants, it was easy—and legal—to reproduce and profit from others’ plant varieties simply by harvesting and selling their seeds. Breeders developed various strategies for preventing this, from special pricing to contracts to trademarks to producing F1 (first-generation) hybrids, but it was not until the advent of state-enforced protections on a wide range of agricultural crops in the 1970s that selling someone else’s seeds became a crime.
In 2016, the conviction of a Florida physicist on charges of conspiring to steal trade secrets confirmed that seed theft had also become, at least to those who influence U.S. federal policies and procedures, a national security threat. The scientist, Mo Hailong (also known as Robert Mo), pled guilty to having assisted a Chinese company acquire corn seed lines owned by the transnational seed behemoths Monsanto and DuPont Pioneer.
The journalist and former Science correspondent Mara Hvistendahl explores the history of Mo’s strange and, ultimately, sad career as an industrial op ..
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