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Of Agriculture's First Disobedience And Its Fruit, Jim Chen

Vanderbilt Law Review

What God has created, agrarian debate has torn asunder. As successors to the neolithic agrarian pioneers' who chose to secure the blessings of agriculture to themselves and their posterity, we long to understand our common roots. But the deeper we dig, the more bitterly we dispute the exegesis of our shared stories of origins. Nothing has more explosive potential than a return to first principles, a quest for beginnings.

As the most palpable link between humanity and nature, agriculture often acts as a stark mirror of human values. American agricultural prescriptions frequently invoke the Book of Genesis, the grandest and …