Corporate Crops: Biotechnology, Agriculture, and the Struggle for Control

8. Conclusion

CHAPTER 8 Conclusion We must not allow our options to be foreclosed by ceding to capital the exclusive power to determine how biotechnology is developed and deployed. KloPPenburG, First the seed Introduction Patents were created for the mutual benefit of inventors and society more broadly: through the incentive of monopoly control, they stimulate innovation , research, and development. It is a quid pro quo relationship: at the end of the patent’s term, the benefits of the invention are available for the common good. This relationship was conceptualized long before patents on life forms became an issue. Now that they have, the quid pro quo seems to have been questionably translated. If GM life forms can be patented inventions, they fundamentally differ from earlier inventions by being self-reproducible. Turning seeds into patented inventions has consequently facilitated a social reorganization of agricultural production, one of the most essential of human industries. While the adoption of GM seeds results from the choices of individual farmers, the social reorganization of agricultural production is a result of the proprietary context of these seeds. The paradigm of proprietary agriculture that found its footing in hybrid seeds and the PVP Act in the United States has reached its climax in patented GM seeds. The institutional support for this paradigm has developed more slowly in Canada, but its trajectory clearly follows U.S. trends: through patents, TAs, and the growing body of court decisions, the proprietary emphasis on GM seeds has been increasing in both nations. Conclusion 239 The consequences of this emphasis are increasingly evident in, among other things, declining producer control over production decisions and increasing industry-driven crop development. There is strong evidence that the transition to GM technologies is indeed reorganizing the agricultural sector in such a way that farmers will likely only face further reductions in production choices and an increasingly impeded ability to affect the terms and conditions under which they produce. That the technologies can be applied in ways that bolster the already strong linkages between input suppliers and processors only exacerbates the situation. While government regulation and investment into public breeding could offset the negative impacts of this proprietary shift, there has been little evidence of such counterbalancing in either Canada or the United States. Further, this proprietary-oriented reorganization of agricultural production has not resulted from a national inability to regulate in the face of international trade agreements; it is clearly state supported. What Price Adoption? Expropriationism in a New Era of Agriculture In both Saskatchewan and Mississippi, the adoption of patented GM technologies has been the result of rational production decisions by individual farmers who assess such factors as whether the technology decreases dockage, increases yields, reduces risk, or provides efficiency benefits. Given the economics of agricultural production, few can afford to make production decisions on any other basis. At the current prices, though to differing degrees depending on crop, a vast majority of farmers are finding that using GM technology provides greater benefits than not using it. Stated somewhat less positively, farmers cannot afford to not adopt any technology that can provide an efficiency gain, regardless of how temporary any associated profit increase may be. In this strictly immediate economic sense, and leaving aside any social, health, or environmental issues, the technology simply offers another tool for the farmer’s survival kit. In Mississippi, many farmers consider the technology their salvation, although this may not last, as insect and weed resistance develop. In Saskatchewan , farmers are slightly less enthusiastic, but still quite keen. Agricultural biotechnologies have provided them with enough of a glimpse of its potential that many hold it out to be their future: whether by drought or frost resistance, or by the creation of new niche markets where they can compete better internationally, biotechnologies suggest a way of stay- 240 Conclusion ing ahead of the game—or at least in the game. In both Mississippi and Saskatchewan, this game is unequivocally a global one. Biotechnology adoption is coming with a substantial cost, however—one that is over and above the technologies’ ticket price. In the United States, from the first patent on an oil-eating microbe, the legal chronology toward patenting seeds and ending the farmers’ exemption with respect to seed saving has been unwavering, and the “anything under the sun” dictum has held sway despite efforts to qualify it. Canadian patent offices and courts have historically been much more reticent about...