The Effect On Corporate Agriculture Of Controversies About Biotechnology

8 Pages 1992 Words

griculture has not occurred simultaneously though out the globe. For example, the use of fertilizers and high-yielding seeds occurred much earlier in core agriculture than in the periphery, where many places still farm without them. Beginning in the 1960’s, core countries began exporting to the periphery a technological package of fertilizers and high-yielding seeds as well as machines and institutions in attempt to boost global agricultural production. This development is known as the green revolution” (Knox and Marston 343).
This green revolution lead to a rise in Transnational corporations and capitalist agriculture in the periphery. These new hybrid seeds introduced into the periphery required a huge amount of inputs such as fertilizers, herbicides, irrigation, and machinery. Many small holders of land did not have the capital (money) to buy the inputs that are needed to take advantage of the new seed technology. These small holders, with lacking production, lost their farms. Most subsistence farming was replaced with transnational agricultural corporations that had the capital for the costly pesticides, machinery and other inputs (Purcel, M).
Recently the benefits of the green revolution, increased global food production, have begun to diminish. A second green revolution has taken the place of a slowing first. The key to this new revolution is biotechnology. “Biotechnology is any technique that uses living organisms(or parts of organisms) to make or modify products, to improve plants and animals, or to develop microorganisms for specific uses” (Knox and Marston 353). What has come to be called “biotechnology” and the genetic enhancement of agricultural products may be one of the oldest human activities. From the time humans advanced from gathering to cultivation, humans have manipulated the genetic nature of the crops and animals...