Across the Prairies, the seeds that farmers plant are increasingly becoming the property of the companies that breed them, and the shift has unsettled the long relationship between growers and the crops they raise. When a firm develops a new variety, one that is tougher, higher-yielding, or better able to ride out a long drought, the government grants it a form of protection much like a patent, namely the sole right to sell that seed for a set number of years. This protection is only temporary, though. Once it lapses, rival suppliers may copy the variety and sell a far cheaper version, while in many places the growers themselves may save part of their own harvest and sow it again the next spring. A heated debate has consequently broken out in provincial legislatures over how long, and how tightly, that protection ought to hold.

Gerald Voss, who speaks for the Prairie Seed Developers Council, an organization funded by the major seed companies, defends the present setup firmly. "We lobby the legislatures to lengthen the protections on new varieties, and wherever we can, to make them harder to sidestep," says Voss. "Breeding a single dependable variety can eat up a decade of careful work and huge sums of money. Even a well-tested seed can draw a costly lawsuit when a harvest ultimately disappoints. To carry all of that risk, the developers must stay profitable. So lawmakers should shore up these rights rather than water them down." Voss likens the firms that trade in saved and off-patent seed to freeloaders. "They fund no research, they take none of the risks of bringing a variety to market, and they breed nothing of their own; they simply skim a profit from the labour of others, without ever giving anything back."