When every crop has to be licensed from patent owners like Monsanto, only those practiced in the art of pirate agriculture will have reasonably-priced food. This gorgeous series of photographs from Mendocino's pot harvest might be a glimpse of that future.

Photographer Mathieu Young took these intimate pictures of a small pot farm at harvest time. We see the whole process, from the harvest in hidden greenhouses to the trimming, sorting, drying, and packaging for shipment. I keep imagining that they are growing lettuce and fruit to share with a small, underground collective of organic farmers who don't want to pay a licensing fee to farm. Or maybe I've just been reading too much Margaret Atwood.

See the whole amazing sequence of photos in this gallery by Mathieu Young [via Dose Nation]

Send an email to Annalee Newitz, the author of this post, at annalee@io9.com.