Food for the Few : Neoliberal Globalism and Biotechnology in Latin America / Edited by Gerardo Otero
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Food for the Few T4504.indb i 5/20/08 6:47:39 AM THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK Food for the Few Neoliberal Globalism and Biotechnology in Latin America edited by gerardo otero University of Texas Press Austin T4504.indb iii 5/20/08 6:47:40 AM Copyright © 2008 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2008 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to: Permissions University of Texas Press P.O. Box 7819 Austin, TX 78713-7819 www.utexas.edu/utpress/about/bpermission.html The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Food for the few : neoliberal globalism and biotechnology in Latin America / edited by Gerardo Otero. — 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-292-71770-1 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Agriculture—Economic aspects—Latin America. 2. Agricultural biotechnology—Latin America. 3. Farmers—Latin America. 4. Produce trade—Latin America. 5. Agriculture—Social aspects—Latin America. I. Otero, Gerardo. hd1790.5.f66 2008 338.1098—dc22 2007043301 T4504.indb iv 5/20/08 6:47:40 AM In memory of Fred Buttel T4504.indb v 5/20/08 6:47:40 AM THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction xi 1. Neoliberal Globalism and the Biotechnology Revolution: Economic and Historical Context 1 gerardo otero 2. Latin American Agriculture, Food, and Biotechnology: Temperate Dietary Pattern Adoption and Unsustainability 31 gerardo otero and gabriela pechlaner 3. Exporting Crop Biotechnology: The Myth of Molecular Miracles 61 kathy mcafee 4. Biosafety Regulation and Global Governance: The Problem of Absentee Expertise in Latin America 91 kees jansen and esther roquas 5. Unnatural Growth: The Political Economy of Biotechnology in Mexico 115 manuel poitras 6. Importing Corn, Exporting Labor: The Neoliberal Corn Regime, GMOs, and the Erosion of Mexican Biodiversity 135 elizabeth fitting T4504.indb vii 5/20/08 6:47:40 AM viii Food for the Few 7. Political Economy of Agricultural Biotechnology in North America: The Case of rBST in La Laguna, Mexico 159 gerardo otero, manuel poitras, and gabriela pechlaner 8. Genetically Modifi ed Soybeans and the Crisis of Argentina’s Agriculture Model 189 miguel teubal 9. Brazilian Biotechnology Governance: Consensus and Confl ict over Genetically Modifi ed Crops 217 wendy e. jepson, christian brannstrom, and renato stancato de souza 10. Brazilian Farmers at a Crossroads: Biotech Industrialization of Agriculture or New Alternatives for Family Farmers? 243 shuji hisano and simone altoé 11. Social Movements and Techno-Democracy: Reclaiming the Genetic Commons 267 manuel poitras 12. Conclusion: Food for the Few? 289 gerardo otero and gabriela pechlaner About the Contributors 301 Index 305 T4504.indb viii 5/20/08 6:47:40 AM Acknowledgments Throughout this project, I benefi ted from a Standard Grant from the So- cial Sciences and the Humanities Research Council of Canada, which I thankfully acknowledge. Thanks to Yolanda Massieu for suggesting the fi rst part of the book’s title. She also contributed by assessing some of the initial chapter proposals for this volume. Manuel Poitras offered in- valuable help in the initial stages of the editorial process, including the review of several proposed chapters. Special thanks are due to Gabriela Pechlaner, my doctoral student since 2002. During this time, not only did she make impressive progress through her program of study, completing a wonderful dissertation in May of 2007, but she was also my research as- sistant and main interlocutor on this project. As a research assistant, she provided such talented help that she became a coauthor of three of the chapters that follow. My greatest debt is of course to my contributors, for patiently revising their chapters more than once, fi rst at my request, and then sometimes at the request of external reviewers for the University of Texas Press. These anonymous reviewers, particularly the fi rst one, offered excellent sugges- tions that helped us to strengthen the book. I deeply appreciate their con- structive critiques and positive readings. This book is dedicated to the memory of Fred Buttel, pioneer in the social study of biotechnology’s impacts. He and I engaged in a friendly debate over the character of biotechnology in the early 1990s,1 but the fact remains that his work was greatly infl uential and inspirational for my own. Furthermore, Fred was one of my most supportive and generous mentors through the middle stages of my professional career. His pro- lifi c and crucial contributions to the sociology of agriculture and food, to the sociology of science and technology, and to environmental sociology T4504.indb ix 5/20/08 6:47:41 AM x Food for the Few speak for themselves. I can just hope that our volume is a modest tribute to the life and work of such an exemplary scholar, mentor, and friend. Gerardo Otero North Vancouver January 2007 Note 1. Frederick H. Buttel, “How Epoch Making Are High Technologies? The Case of Biotechnology,” Sociological Forum 4, 2 (1989): 247–260; “Beyond Defer- ence and Demystifi cation in the Sociology of Science and Technology: A Reply to Otero,” Sociological Forum 6, 3 (1991): 567–577; Gerardo Otero, “The Com- ing Revolution of Biotechnology: A Critique of Buttel,” Sociological Forum 6, 3 (1991): 551–565 (reprinted pp. 47–61 in The Biotechnology Revolution? ed. Fransman Martin, Junne Gerd, and Roobeek Annemieke, Oxford, UK, and Cambridge, USA: Blackwell). T4504.indb x 5/20/08 6:47:41 AM Introduction Gerardo Otero Latin America’s agriculture has been one of the economic sectors most negatively affected by the neoliberal reform set off in the 1980s. In most countries, a broad program of agricultural liberalization was launched un- der pressure from the United States and suprastate organizations, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Economic liber- alization generally included the unilateral lifting of protectionist policies, the opening of agricultural markets by lowering or eliminating tariffs and quotas, the privatization and/or dismantling of government corpo- rations for rural credit, infrastructure, commercialization, and technical assistance, the end or even reversal of land reform policies, and the radi- calization or reorientation of food policies focused on the internal market toward an export-based agricultural economy. These extensive reforms had profound, often negative, consequences for the agricultural sectors of Latin American countries and for a high proportion of agricultural pro- ducers. Impacts have been compounded by the fact that reforms in Latin America were not accompanied by a corresponding liberalization of ag- ricultural trade and production in advanced capitalist countries, which continue to heavily subsidize and protect their farm sectors with billions of dollars, thus placing Latin American producers at a competitive dis- advantage. “Neoliberal globalism” is what we call the ideology driving this set of reforms, both to describe their content and to highlight the fact that such policies can be changed with a different outlook. The biotechnology revolution of the 1990s, which has inundated the countryside of some countries and supermarkets around the world with transgenic crops and other new products, was superimposed on the reforms brought about under the impetus of neoliberal globalism. From their beginnings at the laboratory stage in the 1980s, agricultural T4504.indb xi 5/20/08 6:47:41 AM xii Food for the Few biotechnologies generally and genetic engineering in particular were described as potent tools for sustainable development and for ending fam- ine, food insecurity, and malnutrition. It is well known that such prob- lems are disproportionately concentrated in developing countries, which also happen to have large proportions of their population engaged in ag- riculture. Because of modern agriculture’s technological bias, however— focused mostly on enhancing the productivity of large, specialized, capital-intensive farms—most developing-country peasants and small- family farmers have been rendered “ineffi cient.” Millions have become excluded as producers by the new agricultural policies and technologies. All too often peasants and farmers have been transformed into wage workers for the capitalized farms, and countless have enlarged the ranks of the unemployed. Many of these people have participated in the grow- ing trends toward international migration, separating family members for extended periods of time or permanently from their communities. Yet, for millennia, peasant farmers have been directly responsible for preserving vast amounts of plant biological diversity. In fact, given the vagaries of nature, developing countries possess the largest plant biologi- cal diversity on earth, as well as the largest problems of soil depletion and environmental degradation. Input-intensive, capitalized farmers can- not preserve biological diversity, as modern agriculture has a clear bias toward monocropping based on modern plant varieties. Ironically, plant breeders producing these modern varieties depend on the availability of plant genetic diversity offered and preserved by small peasants. If the lat- ter become extinct, so will the raw materials for further plant breeding. Adding agricultural biotechnology to this scenario, combined with the policies associated with neoliberal