Did The Windup Girl come true?

1. WINDUP-1

   A handful of firms sell most of the world's staple-crop seed, protected by patents or by biology so that farmers must buy new seed every season.

   ARRIVINGMajorEst. 2035 · range 2030–2050Confidence: medium

   2000202520502070

   Weight 4/5 · Major: the calorie companies' hold on seed drives the plot and the politics of the seedbank.

   In the United States, two firms held over half of corn, soybean and cotton seed sales in 2018 to 2020, and patent law stops farmers replanting saved seed from patented crops. The novel's sterile seed, which locks farmers in by biology, has not been commercialised, and UN biodiversity parties have urged caution on it. Staple crops such as rice and wheat are still largely sold or saved by public and local systems. The claim is met in part in the US and some crops, and fully only if that model spreads to the global staples. 123

2. WINDUP-2

   Fast-spreading plant diseases repeatedly threaten staple crops, and the response relies on quarantine and patented or engineered resistant varieties.

   ARRIVINGMajorEst. 2030 · range 2027–2040Confidence: medium

   2000202520502070

   Weight 4/5 · Major: crop plagues are why Thailand guards its seedbank and why the calorie companies hold leverage.

   Fusarium wilt Tropical Race 4 has reached Latin America and cannot be eradicated once in the soil. A 2024 review counts outbreaks in 23 countries and calls it a pandemic. Australia has approved a genetically modified resistant Cavendish, though no fully resistant replacement is yet in wide use. The novel's plagues are engineered and ours are natural, so the claim covers the pattern rather than the cause. 45

3. WINDUP-3

   A major low-lying capital survives only behind levees and pumps, and is eventually flooded or abandoned for higher ground.

   ARRIVINGSupportingEst. 2040 · range 2030–2060Confidence: medium

   2000202520502070

   Weight 3/5 · Supporting: the levees and the city's below-sea-level setting shape the politics and the climax.

   Bangkok averages about 1.5 metres above sea level and parts sink around 2 centimetres a year, mostly from groundwater extraction and soft clay. The 2011 floods cost Thailand an estimated US$46 billion. Indonesia decided to move its capital from sinking Jakarta to Nusantara, but its current government has revived a giant sea wall plan instead and neither is complete. No major capital has yet been abandoned for flooding, so the claim is partly met. 678

4. WINDUP-4

   Genetically engineered humans are made to order as obedient servants and sold as property.

   FARCore premiseEst. 2100 · range 2070–2200+Confidence: low

   2000202520502070

   Weight 5/5 · Core premise: the windup girl is the title character and the novel's central moral question.

   The only known births of gene-edited people are the 2018 twins and a third child, from He Jiankui's CCR5 experiment, which was widely condemned and for which he was jailed for three years. Nothing approaches designing a human for obedience, and the law and professional opinion are set against heritable human editing. The WHO has built a governance framework for genome editing. The claim may never come true, and the range assumes that it does. 91011

1. FOR Two companies accounted for more than half of corn, soybean, and cotton seed sales in 2018-20. USDA Economic Research Service, 2023-10-02. Corteva and Bayer held over half of US retail seed sales for these crops; four firms dominate seeds and agricultural chemicals.
2. FOR In the Courts: Monsanto v. Bowman, Supreme Court upholds patent holders' rights. WIPO Magazine, 2013-06. The US Supreme Court held unanimously that replanting saved patented soybeans infringed the patent.
3. AGAINST Decision V/5: Agricultural biological diversity (genetic use restriction technologies, paragraph 23). Convention on Biological Diversity, 2000. Recommends that parties not approve field testing of seed-sterilising technologies until science justifies it, which has kept the novel's biological lock off the market.
4. FOR FAO and partners intensify efforts to help countries combat banana disease threat. FAO, 2019-10-03. TR4 was detected in Latin America for the first time in Colombia; Cavendish is about 47% of global production; there is no way to eradicate it once established.
5. FOR Fusarium Tropical Race 4 in Latin America and the Caribbean: status and global research advances towards disease management. Frontiers in Plant Science, 2024-07-16. Countries with TR4 outbreaks rose from 16 to 23; Australia approved a GM TR4-resistant Cavendish; the authors say TR4 can be considered a pandemic.
6. FOR Bangkok Is Sinking Fast. The ASEAN Post, 2019-12-31. Average elevation about 1.5 metres; parts sinking about 2 cm a year; the 2011 floods cost US$46 billion and over 800 lives.
7. FOR To rescue or abandon Java?. The Jakarta Post, 2025-07-02. Jakarta subsides 1 to 11 cm a year; the Nusantara move has stalled and a sea wall costing up to US$80 billion has been revived.
8. AGAINST Bangkok on alert as deadly floods hit a third of Thailand. Al Jazeera, 2021-09-28. In 2021 Bangkok was put on alert and used pumping stations to limit damage; the 2011 floods were much worse, and the capital has not been given up.
9. FOR Chinese Scientist Claims First Gene-Edited Babies Born. Scientific American, 2018-11. A researcher said he edited the CCR5 gene in embryos that became twin girls, the first claimed gene-edited births.
10. AGAINST He Jiankui. Wikipedia, 2019-12-30. A Shenzhen court gave him three years in prison and a 3 million yuan fine for illegal medical practice; the edit targeted HIV resistance, not obedience.
11. CONTEXT Human genome editing: a framework for governance. World Health Organization, 2021-07-12. WHO framework for oversight of somatic, germline and heritable genome editing at institutional, national and international levels.

Ledger updated 6 Nov 2026. All works on the P(n) Board · Method