Abstract
Research in GM crops is of pressing importance to biotechnologists, development economists, government officials, and concerned citizens. Each of these stakeholders carries preconceived notions of success and failure that not only influence how data regarding GM crops is shared but also reify the objective reality of GM seeds as a technology that might exist outside the idiosyncracies of a farmer’s field. In this essay, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork conducted among GM cotton planting farmers in Telangana, India to deconstruct the process by which scientific facts are created, leveraged, and then divorced from their subjective contexts in agricultural research. In paying closer attention to the ways that the science of agricultural development has limited possibilities of farmer experience and transformed GM seeds into autonomous beings, this paper attempts to take up Latour’s call for a compositionist investigation of a common world slowly assembled by its constituent actors.
Highlights
“Don’t you understand,” my research assistant asked after a long and difficult interview
The promise factish common in agricultural development, that technology leads inevitably to a better state of higher production, compels pro-genetically modified (GM) researchers to ask “why might it be that low income countries would apply regulatory systems for agricultural biotechnology modeled after European standards, even though it means their poor farmers and consumers lose any potential gains in agricultural productivity and social welfare?” (Graff et al, 2009: 1, my emphasis)
In reworking agricultural development to fit the proscribed future of higher yields and better outcomes, the promise factish suggests critical and optimistic ways that GM crops affect farmers in developing countries: GM advocates and detractors alike appeal to a sense of justice based on equal access to technology (Graff et al, 2009; Paarlberg, 2002; Shiva et al, 2002); they argue that GMOs are necessary to or incapable of feeding and clothing the world sustainably (Altieri, 2005; Dreifus, 2008; Fedoroff, 2011; Qaim, 2010); and they bemoan the lack of scientific argumentation while suggesting that GM crops will assuage or exacerbate global issues of suicide, climate change, and population (Gutierrez et al, 2015; Harmon, 2014; Plewis, 2014)
Summary
“Don’t you understand,” my research assistant asked after a long and difficult interview. This leads me to discuss the politics of measurement, but I stay with the factish as a conceptual framework because it draws attention to the ways that scientific facts, here seeds and yields, come to have independent lives in agricultural scholarship and policy.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
