Search

Even in sub-Saharan Africa's most progressive nations, agbiotech partnerships are still often poorly oriented to end users, fragmented in scope and of limited impact in achieving the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals.

Agricultural biotechnology is typically analyzed critically by means of a political ecological focus on the science and its ecological implications – agbio science as a radical, and ‘non-natural’, break with ‘normal’ trajectories for ‘new plant science’. Surprisingly, less attention has been paid to a range of key political economic issues, many of which were important in the last big food production technology ‘revolution’, the Green Revolution. This paper will focus on three areas of political economy. First, we discuss the corporate drivers of agricultural biotechnology, and examine whether these drivers have already set the technology so that it cannot be changed. Second, we investigate the present economics and technology of genetic modification in plants, and its possible future. Third, we examine empirical evidence for alternative visions of the technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the management of agriculture and food-related biotechnology. Issue of firm management; Importance of technology in the operation; Advantage of biotechnology firms.