Unnatural Selection: Technology, Politics, and Plant Evolution

A groundbreaking interdisciplinary history of the century-long battle over our planet's most vital intellectual property: the seed. Unnatural Selection demonstrates how America's intellectual property laws reshaped global agriculture with consequences we're still grappling with today.

Seeds and planting materials are central to the agricultural system that feeds us all. Yet there has been surprisingly little interest in seriously analyzing the legal and political processes through which intellectual property rights and policy are constructed for this all-important biological diversity. Concentrating on the American experience, Unnatural Selection offers a comprehensive history and insightful sociological analysis of the struggle to own, control, and benefit from agriculture’s plant diversity. 

Unnatural Selection elucidates the seldom-told story of how the United States acquired seeds of non-native crops from abroad in the 1800s and multiplied and distributed them to farmers to encourage experimentation and crop adaptation to local conditions, thus promoting the spread of agriculture on the continent. It was one of the largest and most consequential agricultural experiments in human history. 

In the United States it also gave rise to the modern seed and nursery industry which began to push for legal mechanisms to protect and advance their interests in the marketplace. Cary Fowler provides the most complete history to date of the origins of the Plant Patent Act of 1930 and the Plant Variety Protection Act of 1970. He examines how Congress and the Courts expanded these intellectual property rights, and then how and with what effect these issues of control and ownership became international controversies in the 1980s—controversies that continue, largely unresolved, to this day. 

Features a new preface by the author.

Cary Fowler currently serves as the President of the Food Security Leadership Council. During the Biden Administration he was U.S. Special Envoy for Global Food Security. In the 1990s, Fowler headed the first United Nations assessment of the state of the world’s plant genetic resources and oversaw negotiations for an associated 150-country Global Plan of Action. Considered the “Father” of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, he authored an award-winning book, Seeds on Ice, about this initiative. Dr. Fowler earned a doctoral degree from Uppsala University in Sweden and has received several honorary doctorates, including one from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences where he is Professor Emeritus of Environment and Development Studies. In 2024, he was awarded the World Food Prize.