Biotechnology and the politics of truth: from the green revolution to an ‘evergreen revolution’
2004
S. Brooks
This paper investigates issues around the diffusion of genetially modified (GM) technologies and products to developing countries. This has become central to a debate that has shifted away from technical issues of cost-benefit optimisation of mass production and consumption in the North, to the moral case for GM crops to feed the hungry in the South.<br /><br />The report exposes a number of issues relating to how biotechnology has been promoted in society:<br /><ol> biotechnology is natural – a frame that is important for reassuring the public about risks and uncertainties around GM products. It does this by emphasising continuity with older technologies (such as the hybrid crops of the green revolution) biotechnology is evidence of the inevitable advance of science and technology, which is politically neutral and always beneficial. It presents a technological answer to the problem of global hunger by promising higher agricultural productivity biotechnology is in the national interest of knowledge-based economies engaged in a global technological race biotechnology solves the complex political, social and economic dimensions of the question of access to food in favour of the simplified notion of 'feeding the world'. </ol>The author concludes that the claim that GM crops are a necessity to 'feed the world' remains pervasive and persuasive. This is despite the availability of a wealth of literature on the mistakes of the green revolution era, many of which are likely to be repeated in the era of agro-biotechnology. <br /><br />
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