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Talk of genetically engineered organisms (GEOs) has moved from the hushed corridors of life science corporations to the front pages of major newspapers. This book examines these issues from the diverse perspectives of sociology, geography, law environmental studies and political science.
Plant breeders have long sought technologies to extend human control over nature. Early in the twentieth century, this led some to experiment with startlingly strange tools like x-ray machines, chromosome-altering chemicals, and radioactive elements. Contemporary reports celebrated these mutation-inducing methods as ways of generating variation in plants on demand. Speeding up evolution, they imagined, would allow breeders to genetically engineer crops and flowers to order. Creating a new food crop or garden flower would soon be as straightforward as innovating any other modern industrial product. In Evolution Made to Order, Helen Anne Curry traces the history of America’s pursuit of tools that could intervene in evolution. An immersive journey through the scientific and social worlds of midcentury genetics and plant breeding and a compelling exploration of American cultures of innovation, Evolution Made to Order provides vital historical context for current worldwide ethical and policy debates over genetic engineering.
Although Argentina's use of genetically modified (GM) soybean seeds has spurred a major agricultural boom, it has also had a negative impact on many communities. In Soybeans and Power, Pablo Lapegna explores the ways in which these communities have coped with GM soybean expansion. Peasants initially resisted, yet ultimately adapted to the new agricultural technologies, playing an active role in their own demobilization in order to maneuver the situation to their advantage. A rare glimpse into the life cycle of a social movement, Soybeans and Power gives voice to the communities most adversely affected by GM technology and the strategies that they have enacted in order to survive.
Introduction: genes out of place -- Free markets, sound science -- The maize movement and expert advice -- The politics of biosafety monitoring -- Patents on out-of-place genes -- Protecting organic markets -- Conclusion: science and struggles for change.
In Seeding Empire, Aaron Eddens rewrites an enduring story about the past—and future—of global agriculture. Eddens connects today's efforts to cultivate a "Green Revolution in Africa" to a history of American projects that introduced capitalist agriculture across the Global South. Expansive in scope, this book draws on archival records of the earliest Green Revolution projects in Mexico in the 1940s and 1950s, as well as interviews at development institutions and agribusinesses working to deliver genetically modified crops to millions of small-scale farmers across Africa. From the offices of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to the halls of the world's largest agricultural biotechnology companies to field trials of hybrid maize in Kenya, Eddens shows how the Green Revolution fails to address global inequalities. Seeding Empire insists that eradicating hunger in a world of climate crisis demands thinking beyond the Green Revolution.
For decades, government, industry, and the mainstream media have extolled the virtues of biotechnology while downplaying its negative side effects. Focusing on agriculture, Resistance Is Fertile challenges this dominant rhetoric by analyzing the major issues around which opponents of biotechnology in Canada are mobilizing resistance – namely, the enclosure of the biological and the knowledge commons, which together form the BioCommons. What emerges is an empirically and theoretically informed analysis of Canada’s regulatory regime, the corporate control of seeds, and attempts to construct and control public discussions about agricultural biotechnology.
“One problem with the food system is that price is the bottom line rather than having the bottom line be land stewardship, an appreciation for the environmental and social value of small-scale family farms, or for organically grown produce.” —Interview with farmer in Skagit County, Washington For much of the later twentieth century, food has been abundant and convenient for most residents of advanced industrial societies. The luxury of taking the safety and dependability of food for granted pushed it to the back burner in the consciousness of many. Increasingly, however, this once taken-for-granted food system is coming under question on issues such as the humane treatment of animals, ...
For decades, NGOs targeting world hunger focused on ensuring that adequate quantities of food were being sent to those in need. In the 1990s, the international food policy community turned its focus to the "hidden hunger" of micronutrient deficiencies, a problem that resulted in two scientific solutions: fortification, the addition of nutrients to processed foods, and biofortification, the modification of crops to produce more nutritious yields. This hidden hunger was presented as a scientific problem to be solved by "experts" and scientifically engineered smart foods rather than through local knowledge, which was deemed unscientific and, hence, irrelevant. In Hidden Hunger, Aya Hirata Kimur...
Examines European food safety regulation at the national, European, and international levels as a case of "contested governance," illustrating issues of institutional trust and legitimacy.
Dr Rimmer s book is a marvellous introduction to a crucial topic of our time. He writes engagingly, provocatively and always with good humour. A highly technical and complex area of law has been reduced to clear descriptions and searching analysis. Truly, this is an important book on an essential topic that will help define the ethics of a future that includes nothing less than the future of our species. From the foreword by the Hon Justice Michael Kirby AC CMG, the High Court of Australia . . . the author has done an excellent job by explaining the subject in an open and accessible manner. This book is a timely and very thought-provoking analysis of patent law and biotechnology. . . The boo...