All California quickens with produce, and the fruit grows heavy, and the limbs bend gradually under the fruit so that little crutches must be placed under them to support the weight. Behind the fruitfulness are men of understanding and knowledge, and skill, men who experiment with seed, endlessly developing the techniques for greater crops of plants whose roots will resist the million enemies of the earth: the molds, the insects, the rusts, the blights. These men work carefully and endlessly to perfect the seed, the roots…These are great men.
– John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 25. Here Steinbeck refers to the great scientific minds who succeed in engineering California’s bumper harvest. They help to defeat nature itself by their creation of disease and pest-resistant crops.