Broader Concepts 9 



if day length were not a dominating consideration. If we could but 

 suppress the power of reproductive processes in plants, the useful life 

 of forage crops and leafy vegetables could be prolonged by delaying 

 senescence. The concentration of nutritious, palatable materials in 

 the foliage and stems could be increased, and the yield of harvestable 

 material could be multiplied by prolonged growth. 



The day men learn to regulate physiological activity of plants to 

 match the ecological situation of that season will mark the first prac- 

 tical great break-through in the age-old conquest of environment. 

 There is no reason why drought resistance and winter hardiness, for 

 example, should not be modified by chemical treatment so as to meet 

 unusual local conditions and to expand plant culture out toward the 

 desert, up the mountain, and over the tundra. Such regulation by 

 chemicals should be more serviceable than the genetic modification 

 that we now depend upon. No one has been able to predict all the 

 fluctuations of environment or safeguard against them by breeding or 

 selecting resistant sorts of crops. What is needed are treatments that 

 can be applied to meet each season's development and whose intensity 

 can be multiplied to match the fury or deficiency of the weather 

 elements. This will never be done adequately by genetics alone but 

 it could be done by combining the best in breeding and chemical 

 treatment. 



The fight against crop pests has been grievously handicapped by 

 modern genetics, standardized cultural practices, and repetitive inten- 

 sive cultivation of crops in selected areas where they will thrive. The 

 complete standardization of genetical composition and cultural con- 

 ditions has given the parasitic fungi, bacteria, nematodes, insects, and 

 viruses a field day at our expense. The pests have become perfectly 

 adjusted to destroying every plant in a field each year, provided the 

 weather does not hamper them. We cannot abandon the agronomic 

 practices that have encouraged this situation because they are neces- 

 sary for great efficiency in crop production. Neither can we tolerate 

 the loss of 21 per cent of all crop productivity such as occurs in the 

 United States now, in 1960. 



What is more important, we cannot afford, in a highly organized 

 civilized society where factors of production are so delicately balanced 

 with human need, to risk the possibility of a widespread outbreak of 

 any major pest. For example, in the battle against black stem rust 

 of wheat, there has been periodic development of new parasitic races 

 that attack the prevalent disease resistant varieties. After half a cen- 

 tury of breeding for disease resistance we are forced to conclude that 

 we merely go from one crisis to another. In the past 50 years the 



