The Professor of Swords grew up watching stories of the Ethiopian famines in the 1980s and decided to make it his life's work to feed people. His grandparents came from life as sharecroppers during Jim Crow and find it odd that the first member of the family to go to college would get a PhD to go back and become a farmer, but the Professor has tenure plus 17 published papers on wheat and rye genetics (and counting) to refute the comments.
Given the general public's distrust of genetic modification in particular and university agriculture in general, in his more cynical moments the Professor likes to joke that his machete handles monkeywrenchers as well as weeds. Deep down, though, he's afraid for all the good he's trying to do the world that he might actually have to use it that way someday.
