The Heirloom Murders - Kathleen Ernst [95]
She had no idea how he thought she could help.
“I overheard Dellyn talking once about small-time farmers in poor countries being pressured to replace their traditional crops with seeds from America,” Roelke said. “Something about legumes and protein and something called cassava. And plants going extinct.”
Chloe blinked. “When did you hear that conversation?”
“I’m kinda pressed for time right now. Do you know what she was talking about?”
“Cassava?” Chloe leaned back in her chair. “I’m out of my league. You really need to ask Dellyn.”
“I tried. She’s not by a phone, and I need to understand this.”
“Oh.” Chloe tried to marshal what she knew about old seeds and new corporations. “For centuries, people saved their own seeds. Or they bought seeds from little companies. Companies in one area provided varieties that might be different than the next little seed company over.”
“OK, I get that.”
“But now big corporations involved with genetic engineering are trying to come up with single strains of certain crops that they can push onto the global market. Often those new varieties have a higher yield than the old ones.”
“Well, that would be good, right?”
“Not necessarily.” Chloe tapped her pencil against her clipboard. “You’ve heard of the Irish potato famine, right? Mass starvation, mostly because a blight hit the potato crop?”
“Yeah. Lots of Irish people came over here.”
“Right. All the potatoes in Europe succumbed to the disease. But in the Andes, people were growing hundreds or thousands of potato varieties, and some of them proved to be resistant to the blight. If that hadn’t been the case, we wouldn’t be eating mashed potatoes for dinner every Thanksgiving.”
“Hunh.”
“Well, the same type of thing can happen to any crop. Letting governments and agrochemical companies push a single variety of a particular crop has the potential for disaster.”
Roelke was silent, and she gave him time to think that through. Finally he said, “I heard Alan Sabatola say at Bonnie’s funeral that he wants AgriFutures to start breeding seeds. So … if his scientists are developing some fancy new wheat seed, for example, some people might think it’s great, and some might not.”
“That might be why the board is split. The whole topic raises enormous ethical questions. If subsistence farmers accept the so-called new and improved variety, there’s a good chance that the old varieties will eventually become extinct.”
“And perhaps one of those old varieties is the only one that could have resisted the next blight or pest that comes along.”
“Exactly. And AgriFutures does other things too, right? Equipment, chemicals, all that stuff ?
“Right.”
“Well, Alan Sabatola can talk about how the new seeds will create a bigger yield, and therefore help feed the hungry. All very humanitarian. But the real truth might be that those new crops will make the farmers in Ghana or Bolivia or wherever dependent on AgriFutures’ implements and fertilizers and pesticides.”
“Which makes even more money for the company.”
“And it traps farmers in a cycle they can’t get out of. It may even be that Alan’s scientists engineer the seeds in such a way that they can’t be saved to plant the next year, which means the farmers are forced to purchase what they need from AgriFutures every year. It’s a vicious trap.”
“Hunh.” Another pause. “OK, thanks.”
Chloe frowned. “Roelke, wait a minute! Do you think—”
“I gotta go.” He hung up.
She was still thinking that over when the site farmer called. “Chloe? It’s Larry. Do you know where Dellyn is? She was supposed to meet a couple of garden volunteers in the village an hour ago.”
Chloe didn’t like the sound of that. “Did you try her home number?”
“Yeah. No answer.”
Chloe hung up the phone slowly. Dellyn had probably just spaced the obligation. Still … it wasn’t like her.
All right, enough of Petty’s