This article is continuing: “Normalizing Biotechnology”

In the 1940’s, when grain yields per acre started to increase dramatically in the United States and continued to rise for decades, observers labeled the phenomenon the “Green Revolution.” The increased productivity of the Green Revolution was based on the breeding efforts of scientists who scoured the world for plant traits that would benefit farmers – stiffer stalks, bulkier heads, resistance to disease, etc. These traits were discovered in
farmers’ fields but were not collectively present in any one single plant, so breeders took up the task of incorporating them into new seeds. These seeds promised higher yields, but something was lost along the way. Plants grown from these seeds were not as well adapted to their environment. They would fail to perform as expected unless supported by insecticides, herbicides, fertilizers, and irrigation – technologies which recreated the controlled environmental conditions of the laboratory.
The Green Revolution sent a message to farmers: “If you want to increase your yields you must recreate our laboratory in your fields; you must replace your seeds with our seeds and institute our methods in place of your own.” More than anything else the Green Revolution was a revolution in the power of laboratories over the independence of farmers. This power emanates from the laboratory’s ability to bind together actors situated beyond the laboratory into networks that employ and deploy the scientific facts and artifacts that they have generated. When farmers adopted the technologies of the Green Revolution, they became part of this laboratory network. However, as dictated by the structure of the network, they did not share equally in its reward. Rather, they
became dependent on technologies that they could not reproduce, that replaced their own resources, and that emanated from a remote center over which they had little control.
The so called “Gene Revolution,” a term used to encompass the impact of biotechnology on agriculture, simply represents the latest frontier in the laboratory’s struggle to subject farms and farming to the logic of capital. The space wherein the productivity of agriculture will be enhanced – the genome – is inaccessible to farmers even though it exists in their fields and sheds. This is a dangerous development, for biotechnology is subject to tunnel vision. “Modern biology attempts to reduce nature to small, definable pieces, subject to human manipulation, and separated from broader questions of value. From this perspective, scientists control, measure, reduce and divide nature in order to generate
knowledge.” But these methods alone are not conducive to a healthy and productive agriculture. Agricultural biotechnology is based on the premise that The inherent variability of farming from one place and time to another necessarily frustrates a one size fits all approach.60 Yet with each passing year, the institutions we rely on for innovative
agricultural solutions are more tightly yoked to a reductionist science whose frames of reference diminish the importance of holistic methods of inquiry. “As a consequence whole-plant- and whole-animal-level research (such as traditional breeding), systems-level research programs (such as agroecology, farming systems and social assessments), and indigenous knowledge . . . lack adequate support.”
To honestly address the problems facing agriculture today this trend must be reversed. We cannot stand inert while the agricultural research agenda is perverted by biotechnology’s promise, while resources earmarked for agriculture are diverted and deployed to shore up the finances of the pharmaceutical industry. Public universities and government institutions are financially and morally obligated to serve the public interest.
They are accountable to us and we must hold them to it. Collaborations between public institutions and private companies should be scrutinized to ensure that the public interest comes before private profits. Federal farm subsidies that encourage farmers to adopt capital-intensive production technologies that displace their own skills and local resources must be disassembled. Our current model of farm support that distorts the market for
farm commodities, bankrupts farmers, fouls the environment, and offers the consumer pesticidelaced produce must be abandoned. A brighter future for farming is possible.

Extracted from “How Food Became a Casualty of Biotechnology’s Promise“, by By Michael Heimbinder, Fellow, Oakland Institute.

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