A Moment in Time
This cover features botanical gardens and the California Tower in Balboa Park, a San Diego landmark. The pages of this issue included a discussion of new plant genetics, and how they were considered the driving force behind the restructuring of the global seed industry. “Changes in the structure of the global seed industry, now to the year 2000, will be dramatic,” wrote James Kent of L. William Teweles & Co. “Revamping of the trade and companies involved will be more pronounced than foreseen a few years ago. Restructuring, which started in the 1970s, has reached full force in the past 18 months. Stimulating these moves is the powerful emergence of plant biotechnology and its interface with traditional plant genetics. … The driving force for entry into the seed industry by chemical, pharmaceutical, food and other large corporations have been the new plant genetic technologies of recombinant DNA and plant tissue culture.”
Facts & Figures From this 1986 Issue:
5.1 million tons of Mexican corn, sorghum and wheat is imported by the United States.
100 varieties are distributed by Canadian seed brand SeCan.
$14,000 is given to the American Soybean Association by India’s Velsicol Chemical Corporation to develop a soybean-based food product.
126 agricultural products are exported from the United States to the Pacific Rim.
