Exactly 90 years after Shull's revelation, one of the biggest and most powerful of those companies, Monsanto, is fighting for control of the most important seed monopoly technology since the hybrid. But unlike 1860, this piece of life control can be patented. Within days, the rest of the world knew TPS as Terminator Technology. Terminator Technology epitomizes what the genetic engineering of food crops is all about and gives an insight into the driving forces behind the corporate campaign to control and own life. The Terminator rides to the rescue of long-suffering multinationals who have been unable to hold farmers back from their 12,000 year tradition of saving and breeding seeds.
Farmers buy the seed once and do their own work thereafter.
Patents and Pinkerton detectives have been employed to stop farmers from doing so. Small farming communities of the Third World especially, rely upon their own plant breeding since neither corporate nor public breeders show much interest or aptitude in breeding for their often difficult environments. Old-fashioned hybrids and the Terminator Technology with its terminated seeds force farmers back to the market every season. Terminator also scuttles community conservation of agricultural biodiversity. There's nothing to conserve.