IN THE well-fed surroundings of a Swiss lakeside resort late last month,
Mammon reared its ugly head—and the result could be millions more starving
in the Third World.
With the world’s media fixated on the hot air coming from The Hague, events
passed unnoticed. But what happened in Switzerland may lead to one of the
world’s most precious public possessions being sold off piecemeal to the highest
bidder. Half a million crop varieties, the genetic foundation of world food
production, could be asset-stripped from their guardians—the publicly
owned international seed banks that brought the world the Green Revolution…
