Stealth seeds: Bioproperty, biosafety, biopolitics

Abstract

Transgenic seeds in both India (Bt cotton) and Brazil (glyphosate-resistant soybeans) spread widely and rapidly through farming communities outside the reach of biosafety or bioproperty institutions. Stealth transgenics are saved, cross-bred, repackaged, sold, exchanged and planted in an anarchic agrarian capitalism that defies surveillance and control of firms and states. The outcome is more pro-poor than alternative modes of diffusion, but undermines a growing consensus in the international development community on appropriate bio-safety and intellectual property institutions for biotechnology. Second, stealth procurement of biotechnology divides nominally pro-poor political coalitions, driven by a great ideational divide on uncertainties and risks of transgenics. The ability of seeds to move underground through stealth strategies of farmers undermines widely-assumed bio-safety-regime capability. Likewise, property in biotechnology appears less monopolistic and powerful, more relational and contingent. Stealth practices of farmers in pursuit of transgenics contrary to wishes of firms, states and many NGOs suggest a different model of the farmer than that often encountered in both developmentalist and anti-‘GMO’ discourse: more active, creative and autonomous, less hapless and supine. Resultant incapacity of social institutions to secure interests of firms and states in biotechnology renders more likely eventual development of controls from genetic engineering – the ‘terminator technology’ of political dramaturgy.