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

CHAPTER 3. Exporting Crop Biotechnology: The Myth of Molecular Miracles

CHAPTER 3 Exporting Crop Biotechnology: The Myth of Molecular Miracles Kathy McAfee It is often asserted that genetically engineered crops can prevent a looming crisis of global agricultural productivity. Enthusiasts assert that these new, transgenic crops—varieties containing genes introduced in the laboratory—are essential to produce sufficient food for a burgeoning world population, and that they can avert ecological damage from the expansion of agriculture (Pardey 2001; Borlaug and Carter 2005; BIO 2005). The U.S. government, in cooperation with agribusiness interests, actively promotes this idea. Such arguments for a biotechnology-based solution to food insecurity can be dangerously misleading. The actual performance of transgenic crops has been mediocre, at best (see Chaps. 7 and 8, this volume). In the United States, their productivity has not generally been higher than that of conventional varieties, nor have they allowed reduced use of pesticides, as explained below. Nevertheless, advocates of crop genetic engineering commonly assume that European and U.S. farm technologies, regulatory practices, and food-producing systems are not only superior but also universally applicable. As I have argued elsewhere, many proponents of a geneticengineering solution to hunger make use of idealized conceptions of molecular biology and exceptional examples of genetic engineering successes (McAfee 2003a). Most contributions to international biotechnology policy literature do recognize that transgenic crops cannot be adopted easily and without risk in all parts of the world. Many authors, however, focus on what they see as deficits in the institutions and personnel of “less developed ” countries. If these lacks can be remedied by means of scientific and legal training and other so-called capacity building, they reason, then Latin America and other regions will be able to share in the expected benefits of transgenic crops. Proponents of a molecular-technology answer to hunger often fail to appreciate crucial differences between the ecological, cultural, institutional , and economic contexts of food systems in most developing countries and those of the United States, where most transgenic crops have been developed. Many forget to compare the hoped-for benefits of transgenics to the tremendous costs to developing countries of managing their risks and obtaining and enforcing the intellectual property rights that are required for their use. Most discussions of crop biotechnology for the global South fail to weigh the possible benefits of transgenics against the potential gains that could be obtained by more proven and promising uses of Southern-country expertise, institutions, and food-producing resources . And advocates of genetic-engineering responses to hunger rarely address the economic policies that discourage domestic food production in food-deficit countries. The first section of this chapter places the controversy over transgenic crops in the context of larger questions of U.S. relations with Mexico and Latin America. The following section outlines the rationales for genetic engineering put forward by the U.S. government. It illustrates how these arguments are being used to promote the globalization of intellectual property regimes and changes in multilateral trade and environmental rules that favor transnational corporations (TNCs) that have invested heavily in biotechnology. The third section explains why, even if transgenic crops were performing well in the United States, one could not extrapolate from this experience to predict net benefits from crop genetic engineering for Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The chapter concludes by pointing toward more promising approaches to improving Latin American agriculture. Transgenic Crops: A New Technological Paradigm? Recent conflicts over transgenic crops in Mexico illustrate why it is misleading to rely on the U.S. experience to assess the likely effects of transgenic crops in countries where self-provisioning agriculture and crop genetic diversity remain important today. These conflicts have embroiled peasant farmers, scientists, government agencies, lawmakers, nongovernmental organizations, the media, and foreign experts in conflicts over how genetic engineering should be regulated and whether transgenic crops should be allowed in Mexico at all (McAfee 2003b; Jansen and Roquas, this volume; Fitting, this volume). 62 Food for the Few The wider significance of this controversy becomes clearer if one remembers that the export of U.S. agricultural models did not begin with transgenic crops. While working in Mexico during the 1940s, the renowned geographer Carl O. Sauer questioned the fundamentals of the U.S. project that was soon to become the Green Revolution. In his capacity as consultant to the Rockefeller Foundation, Sauer warned against using “agricultural science to recreate the history of U.S. commercial agriculture in Mexico” (Sauer 1941, quoted in...