Un-earthing synthetic biology 'natural' products : a global ethnography of stevia/ka'a he'ê

Through an ethnographic journey juxtaposing the multiple 'worlds' of one plant known as stevia - the hot commodity touted to replace sugar and tackle the global obesity epidemic - this research unearths the ecologies of life, knowledge, culture, economy and cutting-edge genetic technology entangled in five 'promises' of stevia and the futures they expand or expend. From the promise of a 'green' lab-grown commodity; to a sacred medicinal herb; to a peasant cash crop for rural development; to a lucrative corporate cash molecule; to the race to exploit the 21st century promise of 'cash DNA', this original research illuminates the transformations occurring 'on the ground' as a result of technological breakthroughs in gene-editing, digital sequencing, and biosynthesis developed in the field of Synthetic Biology (SynBio). The new-found ability to 'biosynthesise' or produce replicas of 'natural' commodities normally derived from plants or animals is shaping new industrial food futures under the banner of 'cellular agriculture' or 'lab-grown' food. One of the first to be commercialised, stevia is representative of these novel products promoted as 'equivalent', 'purer', more 'efficient' and 'sustainable' than their agricultural counterparts, labelled as 'natural ingredients', and entering products and food chains without clear regulations, despite being internationally disputed by stakeholders, policymakers, academics and NGOs alike. This multi-sited ethnographic research intervenes in controversies surrounding SynBio commodity substitution and digital DNA by bringing the first-ever multi-sited ethnographic study of the technologies deployment to unpack the contestation and impacts among different groups across the knowledge systems and supply chains of stevia and SynBio more broadly.