There are plenty of villains to blame for our current financial crisis, but discouraged as mostly anyone who actually has access to a computer and the knowledge to use it may be, it is nothing compared to what is happening in Zimbabwe. I’m sitting in a warm house, freshly breakfasted and ready to wrap a few small Christmas gifts, but something like 70 percent of the people in Zimbabwe are scavenging crickets and literally bitter fruit to put something—anything—in their stomachs. In the New York Times story of this morning (“In Zimbabwe, Survival Lies in Scavenging”), this phrase stuck out: “… the economies of scale that kept prices low for hybrid seed and fertilizer are gone.”

Excuse me, hybrid seed? Robert Mugabe is a thug and the country’s policies are abominable. Land redistribution was a disaster (not entirely in concept, but certainly in execution) and keeping foreign aid out was horrendous. But if these farmers had good old-fashioned seeds, nature’s bounty that can be harvested from one year’s crop to start the next, they at least would be able to plant. Why are we not suing manufacturers of hybrid seed in international court? Hybrid seed is a crime against humanity and nature.