We need to be drawing attention to the brick wall of capitalism every time we hit it, acknowledging that we don’t just need to find a way over it but how to knock it down. But what about while we are blocked by the brick wall? Well, it is worthwhile when we are making a pollination or designing our experiments that we design it for some future farmer, rather than for something that can be readily adopted today by a corporate bookkeeper. In our breeding work here we could try to come up with perennial monocultures, and that would make the seed companies happy. Our work on perennial polycultures doesn’t knock the wall of capitalism down, but at least while you are behind the wall you can imagine life on the other side of the wall. That may sound like a poor and hollow substitute for something that will get at knocking down the wall. But at least we can plan for the other side.

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