¶ The Soviet Union's famed Geneticist Trofim D. Lysenko, currently out of favor with his bosses, has tried hardperhaps too hardfor a comeback. At a conference on farm problems, he backed a "new Russian agricultural discovery": plowless farming. Despite Booster Lysenko's proprietary enthusiasm, the technique (loosening soil with a disk harrow instead of plow-turning it over) is old hat to Western experts, has been tried experimentally in various parts of the U.S. for more than a decade.
¶ To avert surprise invasions by crop pests, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has developed...