Food for the Few: Neoliberal Globalism and Biotechnology in Latin America

CHAPTER 2. Latin American Agriculture, Food, and Biotechnology: Temperate Dietary Pattern Adoption and Unsustainability

CHAPTER 2 Latin American Agriculture, Food, and Biotechnology: Temperate Dietary Pattern Adoption and Unsustainability Gerardo Otero and Gabriela Pechlaner The main proposition addressed in this chapter is that, with the globalization of capitalism, national agricultures in Latin America have increasingly conformed to temperate-climate food consumption and production patterns. Because the Green Revolution has been effectively transferred, at least to the regions with irrigated agriculture, Latin America has become technologically dependent. Adopting dietary patterns of temperate countries and technological dependency entails undesirable social and environmental implications. Socially, farm structures tend to become quite polarized, with fewer and larger farmers surviving, and the rest rendered bankrupt or productively redundant. Environmentally, modern technologies have taken agriculture to an unsustainable point: soil erosion, land and water contamination, and decreased genetic diversity are just a few of the problems that bring into question the sustainability of this production model. Furthermore, the diet based on meat and dairy products has become dangerous to people’s health, for it is clearly associated with increased incidence of heart disease and various cancers. On the positive side, it should be said that these problems, which first emerged in the United States (see Chap. 1, this volume), have prompted the attempt to explore alternative agricultural practices. A number of studies have found that alternative agricultural practices, which enhance the biological interactions of the environment and keep chemical inputs at a minimum, are not only friendly to the environment but can also be economically profitable (Altieri 2001; National Research Council 1989). This “movement” toward an alternative agriculture is still a minority trend in the United States, but there is some indication that it is growing. Certified organic agriculture, for example, more than doubled between 1992 and 1997, and shows continued strong market signals (Greene 2001, 19). Nonetheless, by 2001, still only 0.3 percent of total farmland was certified organic, although there are important variations. For example, while top American field crops continue to have low rates of organic certification (e.g., corn, 0.1 percent, soy, 0.2 percent, and wheat, 0.3 percent), fruits, vegetables, and herbs show strong organic trends (e.g., apples, 3 percent, and lettuce, 5 percent) (USDA, ERS, “Data,” 2002). The question is whether alternative agriculture may become established to any significant degree in the current socioeconomic and institutional context. This context includes, on one hand, that agricultural biotechnology and genetic engineering have been added to the mix of “modern agriculture.” On the other hand, the biotechnology revolution has converged with neoliberal globalism and its attendant policies of market orientation, deregulation, privatization, withdrawal of state subsidies, and so on. This institutional, ideological, and policy context represents a big contrast to that in which the Green Revolution was introduced: the milieu of a nationally oriented development model, focused on internal markets, protectionism, public agricultural research, state subsidies for farm production, and so forth. The technological paradigm of modern agriculture involves a specific package of inputs made up of hybrid and other high-yielding plant varieties ; mechanization; agrochemical fertilizers and pesticides; and irrigation . The “Green Revolution” is the name adopted by this technological package when it was exported to developing countries. While the Green Revolution technically began in Mexico in 1943, with a program promoting high-yielding wheat varieties (Hewitt de Alcántara 1978), its origin and initial development were located in the agriculture of the United States, dating from the 1930s (Kloppenburg 1988). This exported package then became the “technological paradigm” for modern agriculture throughout the twentieth century (see Chap. 1, this volume). After its initial success with wheat in Mexico, the technological package quickly spread to Asia and other parts of the developing world, spurring a “revolution” of increased agricultural productivity. Globally, the crops most affected by the modern agricultural paradigm, in terms of hybrid and improved plant varieties, were corn, rice, and wheat—the most important food crops in the world. The rest of the technological package was extended to a large number of crops through massive applications of chemicals based on hydrocarbons. This is particularly the case in the production of fruits and vegetables (Murray and Hoppin 1990; Thrupp 1991). 32 Food for the Few The technological package of the Green Revolution was not applied across the board in developing countries, however. As a complete package it was adopted mostly in irrigated agricultural areas in Latin America, the Near East, and North Africa; while in Asia, a selective adoption was...