Zooming over the roads this weekend on my rollerskis, I saw that many of the corn and soybean fields are now sporting bright signs advertising the seed companies whose products are growing therein: Pioneer Hi-Bred ("a Du Pont company") and Croplan Genetics (a division of Land o' Lakes, the big farm cooperative), as well as some others I didn't recognize. Checking those company websites, I see they both say, explicitly or implicitly, that they sell "plant genetics." Am I so old that I can remember when farmers bought seeds, not "genetics"? Anyhow, the signs weren't up two weeks ago, much less in the spring; I wonder if the seed genetics company reps wait to see if the plants come up well before sticking a sign in front of the field.