Barbara Kingsolver

About the author: Barbara Kingsolver is a well-known author. She has worked as a biological researcher, an environmental activist, and a science writer with articles published in the Nation, the New York Times, and Smithsonian.

Genetic diversity is nature's way of assuring that species will endure over time, weathering all types of environmental changes. This diversity has been compromised in modern agriculture because a few large corporations control agriculture and sell relatively few varieties of seeds, resulting in crops that are genetically uniform. When this shallow gene bank is threatened, as with widespread plant diseases, researchers must return to the more diverse original strains of the "land races" grown by farmers mostly in the poorer parts of the world. With the introduction of new genetically engineered crops, the old seeds of the land races die out, cancelling nature's...