Gene Wunderlich

Agricultural technology, wealth, and responsibility

Responsibility as a dual to human rights is presented as a moral alternative to extended, complex systems of animal and ecological rights. This simple idea of responsibility is then applied to four levels of agricultural technology: animal (nature) rights, conservation, organization of agriculture, and people versus planet relationships. The stewardship argument is freed from at least some of the complications of animal rights and ecology, but leaves responsibility with humans to do the right thing.

Property and the Future of Agriculture

Consider the cowboy (this is an agricultural paper; apologies to the marine economists who are familiar with shipwrecked Crusoes). He rode alone into an open range with only his horse and saddle as property. He rounded up wild cattle of appropriate gender and confined them and their offspring until he had a herd. The herd grew by itself limited only by natural predation, cowboy consumption, and sales of beef to the folks back East.