Viewpoint: Is the European attitude to GM products suffocating African development?

2005 ◽  
Vol 32 (12) ◽  
pp. 1069 ◽  
Author(s):  
Greg Bodulovic
Keyword(s):  
Southern Africa ◽  
Food Production ◽  
Agricultural Biotechnology ◽  
Genetically Modified ◽  
Gm Crops ◽  
Food Aid ◽  
African Development ◽  
The Third ◽  
Food Shortages ◽  
Developed Nations

Currently, parts of Southern Africa are experiencing the third major drought in five years. The previous two droughts greatly affected food production, resulting in food shortages, which necessitated the provision of food aid to the region by developed nations. However, some of the food aid included genetically modified (GM) crops, the supply of which triggered hostile reactions by southern African governments, and in one case resulted in food aid being withheld from people on the verge of starvation. This article will examine the background and reasons behind the condemnation of GM crops by southern African nations, and will consider whether the lack of support of agricultural biotechnology by European nations has contributed to this situation. Furthermore, the necessity of agricultural biotechnology in future African development will be considered.

World setting: paradoxical constraints on engineering

1986 ◽  
Vol 316 (1537) ◽  
pp. 211-216 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Food Production ◽  
Third World ◽  
Developing Nations ◽  
Technical Training ◽  
Scientific Training ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Third World ◽  
Developed Nations

Hundreds of millions of people are suffering from m alnutrition and starvation in the Third World, the largest of our worlds. Tens of millions die each year from these causes. Population grow this exponential; growth of food production, at best, is in arithmetic progression, and the gap is rapidly widening. W e need more than scientific training if such immense problem s are to be solved. In fact, our scientific and technical training may have left us with some flawed tools. Droughts are implicit in m any of our volatile climates; persistent droughts are also a characteristic of nature and famine is their consequence. W e need to be able to show and to feel that food is worth growing. Aid by the developed nations to the developing nations will not work in the long term without considerable changes in the cultures and technical skills of the poor.

Bio-Hegemony: The Political Economy of Agricultural Biotechnology in Argentina

2009 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER NEWELL
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Agricultural Biotechnology ◽  
Genetically Modified ◽  
The State ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
Gm Crops ◽  
The Political ◽  
The World

AbstractThis paper examines relations between the state and capital in Argentina with respect to agricultural biotechnology. Argentina is one of the world's leading exporters of genetically modified (GM) crops and is a key player in the global politics of biotechnology. Whereas in other parts of the world, including other countries in Latin America, active civil societies and some governments have rejected the technology, Argentina has adopted it as a central accumulation strategy. The desirability of this strategy has been secured in material, institutional and discursive arenas of power, producing a particular expression of ‘bio-hegemony’. Looking at the role of business in the political economy of agricultural biotechnology is revealing both of the extent and forms of corporate power and contributes to an understanding of hegemony in practice.

scholarly journals GMO doublespeak: An analysis of power and discourse in Canadian debates over agricultural biotechnology

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wesley Tourangeau
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Public Relations ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Agricultural Biotechnology ◽  
Genetically Modified ◽  
Gm Crops ◽  
Norms And Values ◽  
Culturally Embedded

It has been 20 years since Canada’s first commercially grown genetically modified (GM) crops were approved and debates over these contentious products continue to gain momentum. Literature exploring Canada’s GMO debates has yet to focus specifically on the discourse of pro-biotech public relations campaigns and anti-biotech movements. This paper helps fill this gap with an analysis of power relations regarding efforts to inform public opinion on the topic of agricultural biotechnology. This paper explores these power relations in two arguments. First, I argue that the Canadian state’s overall positive position toward agricultural biotechnology provides leverage to pro-biotech public relations, while delimiting the direction of anti-biotech campaigns. Second, I argue that the potency of pro-biotech frames are constituted and sustained by historically and culturally embedded norms and values, which adds additional challenges for anti-biotech campaigns. These findings uncover a clearer picture of the complexity of power relations within agri-biotech discourse, and the extent to which anti-biotech groups are disadvantaged in these debates.

scholarly journals Global Regulation of Genetically Modified Crops Amid the Gene Edited Crop Boom – A Review

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Crystal Turnbull ◽  
Morten Lillemo ◽  
Trine A. K. Hvoslef-Eide
Keyword(s):  
Genome Editing ◽  
Agricultural Biotechnology ◽  
Genetically Modified ◽  
Genetically Modified Crops ◽  
Agricultural Trade ◽  
Gm Crops ◽  
Gm Crop ◽  
Crop Varieties ◽  
A Genome ◽  
The Law

Products derived from agricultural biotechnology is fast becoming one of the biggest agricultural trade commodities globally, clothing us, feeding our livestock, and fueling our eco-friendly cars. This exponential growth occurs despite asynchronous regulatory schemes around the world, ranging from moratoriums and prohibitions on genetically modified (GM) organisms, to regulations that treat both conventional and biotech novel plant products under the same regulatory framework. Given the enormous surface area being cultivated, there is no longer a question of acceptance or outright need for biotech crop varieties. Recent recognition of the researchers for the development of a genome editing technique using CRISPR/Cas9 by the Nobel Prize committee is another step closer to developing and cultivating new varieties of agricultural crops. By employing precise, efficient, yet affordable genome editing techniques, new genome edited crops are entering country regulatory schemes for commercialization. Countries which currently dominate in cultivating and exporting GM crops are quickly recognizing different types of gene-edited products by comparing the products to conventionally bred varieties. This nuanced legislative development, first implemented in Argentina, and soon followed by many, shows considerable shifts in the landscape of agricultural biotechnology products. The evolution of the law on gene edited crops demonstrates that the law is not static and must adjust to the mores of society, informed by the experiences of 25 years of cultivation and regulation of GM crops. The crux of this review is a consolidation of the global legislative landscape on GM crops, as it stands, building on earlier works by specifically addressing how gene edited crops will fit into the existing frameworks. This work is the first of its kind to synthesize the applicable regulatory documents across the globe, with a focus on GM crop cultivation, and provides links to original legislation on GM and gene edited crops.

Conclusions

2019 ◽  
pp. 225-242
Author(s):  
Maria Weimer
Keyword(s):  
Food Production ◽  
Genetically Modified Organisms ◽  
Agricultural Biotechnology ◽  
Genetically Modified ◽  
Wicked Problems ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Eu Regulation

The concluding chapter to this book provides a summary of the discussions in the text thus far, which were centred around trying to reveal the broader constitutional implications of EU regulation of agricultural biotechnology as a paradigmatic example of the challenges and wicked problems that public regulators encounter when regulating technological risks in globalized risk societies. The concluding chapter also looks at lessons learned from the controversy surrounding genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and GMO failures. It finishes with the view that there is a need for a societal debate about modern agri-food production.

scholarly journals Monarch butterfly and milkweed declines substantially predate the use of genetically modified crops

2019 ◽  
Vol 116 (8) ◽  
pp. 3006-3011 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. H. Boyle ◽  
H. J. Dalgleish ◽  
J. R. Puzey
Keyword(s):  
Genetically Modified ◽  
Danaus Plexippus ◽  
Genetically Modified Crops ◽  
Monarch Butterfly ◽  
The United States ◽  
Gm Crops ◽  
Herbicide Resistant ◽  
The Past ◽  
Scientific Attention ◽  
Herbicide Use

Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) decline over the past 25 years has received considerable public and scientific attention, in large part because its decline, and that of its milkweed (Asclepias spp.) host plant, have been linked to genetically modified (GM) crops and associated herbicide use. Here, we use museum and herbaria specimens to extend our knowledge of the dynamics of both monarchs and milkweeds in the United States to more than a century, from 1900 to 2016. We show that both monarchs and milkweeds increased during the early 20th century and that recent declines are actually part of a much longer-term decline in both monarchs and milkweed beginning around 1950. Herbicide-resistant crops, therefore, are clearly not the only culprit and, likely, not even the primary culprit: Not only did monarch and milkweed declines begin decades before GM crops were introduced, but other variables, particularly a decline in the number of farms, predict common milkweed trends more strongly over the period studied here.

Environment and its Forms of Knowledge: The Regulation of Genetically Modified Crops in India

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-183
Author(s):  
Aniket Aga
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Genetically Modified ◽  
Genetically Modified Crops ◽  
Gm Crops ◽  
Regulatory Regime ◽  
Democratic Participation ◽  
Environment Protection ◽  
Policy Decisions ◽  
Inherent Ambiguity ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

A fierce controversy over genetically modified (GM) crops has been raging in India for over two decades. Analyzing India’s regulatory regime for GM crops, this article focuses on the modes through which state bureaucracies know the environment. It argues that two epistemologies - scientific and legal-administrative – underpin environment protection. By unraveling the course of regulatory disputes, I demonstrate that bureaucracies are not just hierarchically divided but are also segmented by horizontal, functional specializations. There is thus an inherent ambiguity lodged between environment as a technical discourse and as statecraft. This ambiguity both fosters and constrains democratic participation in policy decisions and can even partially disrupt power relations in unanticipated ways.

Soviet Tanks, American Sedans: Traces of India’s Cold War-era Hedging Towards the United States, 1966–1971

2021 ◽  
pp. 097492842098309
Author(s):  
Bipin K. Tiwary ◽  
Anubhav Roy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Food Aid ◽  
Military Assistance ◽  
Evaluative Study ◽  
Complex Interdependence ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Us ◽  
Food Shortages

Having fought its third war and staring at food shortages, independent India needed to get its act together both militarily and economically by the mid-1960s. With the United States revoking its military assistance and delaying its food aid despite New Delhi’s devaluation of the rupee, India’s newly elected Indira Gandhi government turned to deepen its ties with the Soviet Union in 1966 with the aim of balancing the United States internally through a rearmament campaign and externally through a formal alliance with Moscow. The US formation of a triumvirate with Pakistan and China in India’s neighbourhood only bolstered its intent. Yet India consciously limited the extent of both its balancing strategies and allowed adequate space to simultaneously adopt the contradictory sustenance of its complex interdependence with the United States economically. Did this contrasting choice of strategies constitute India’s recourse to hedging after 1966 until 1971, when it liberated Bangladesh by militarily defeating a US-aligned Pakistan? Utilising a historical-evaluative study of archival data and the contents of a few Bollywood films from the period, this paper seeks to address the question by empirically establishing the extents of India’s balancing of, and complex interdependence with, the United States.

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