Symposium: Genetic Frontiers

GENETIC MODIFICATION AND THE DOUBLY

GREEN REVOLUTION

Richard Hindmarsh In his keynote address to Bio-Malaysia 2002 participants, [Malaysia's Prime Minister] Dr Mahathir said: "We need to establish biotechnology as another pillar in the development of our knowledge- based economy." ... In 1999, Biotek struck a partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to develop and train scientists in areas like genomics, bioinformatics and bioprocessing ... to nurture a group of professionals capable of spearheading the development of [the] biotechnology industry in Malaysia... (R. Sharif, "Building a Biotech Future." The Star, Malaysia, 10 Oct. 2002).

, ~ ] ' i t h much focus on modern biotechnology in Y u industrialized countries for the last three de-

cades, Asian biodevelopment, now gaining momen- tum, has largely gone unnoticed, yet it began in the early 1980s. Despite many failures of science and technology for development, Third World countries of late are increasingly turning to the alluring prom- ise of biotechnology for development. It is seen as a new avenue for economic opportunity, and both to attain "food security" and to decrease food de- pendency on the North. That promise rests on the vision of a "doubly green revolution" first cast by the Rockefeller Foundation, a central devel- oper of the earlier "green revolution"--the trans- fer of industrial agriculture from the North to the South with its grand promise to "feed the hun- gry," which it however failed to achieve although it had notable successes initially in raising agri- cultural productivity.

The new promise of the "doubly green revolu- tion" is to repeat that promise but this time using genetic engineering, popularly known as genetic modification (GM). The promise is "doubled" as it will also address the food problems of population growth now rising at an estimated 85 million people a year mainly in the South. In addition, it will do all this in a "cleaner and greener" manner than be- fore. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) offered a conservative version of that prom- ise: "The 'green revolution' was responsible for accelerating food and agricultural, in particular,

cereal production. However, the impact of the 'green revolution' is now on the wane. Biotechnology, if properly integrated with other technologies for food production, may offer a means of triggering the next 'green revolution.' It offers great opportuni- ties for enhancing food and agricultural production, quality and nutritional improvement, prevention of pre- and post-harvest losses and bioremediation and environmental improvement."

Other reasons are more political-economic as The Business Times pronounced in 2001: "Asia's bur- geoning biotechnology sector is an oasis of rich pick- ings for investors as governments in the region lead the drive to develop the industry." With GM food markets plummeting in Europe, Asia offers an ex- tremely lucrative AUD$685 billion food market, with 12 per cent of the market met with imports. Of further attraction to the bioindustry is that Asia was the world's largest seed consumer in the 1990s, and in 2000, accounting for 25 per cent of world- wide agrochemical sales.

Biodevelopment in Asia also has appeal for legiti- mization strategies. For example, if the GM agri- food industry can become established in Asia, then that would undoubtedly pressure Northern govern- ments to absorb more earnestly the intense and in- fluential GM protest occurring in their own back- yards. Moreover, Asia offers a useful site for GM experimentation to overcome its increasingly diffi- cult technical problems. This resonates with the experience of the South as a dumping ground for

GENETIC MODIFICATION AND THE DOUBLY GREEN REVOLUTION 9

some of the North's most toxic and harmful prod- ucts banned in Northern countries, especially pesti- cides and pharmaceuticals. With non-existent or minimalist regulatory regimes, with complicit gov- ernments seeking modern development but under the burden of debt and underdevelopment, with poorly informed populations, and with civil society nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) thin on the ground and poorly resourced, Asia thus offers much potential for establishing GM. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, the South offers an avenue for enhanced consolidation of industrial agriculture at the expense of thriving peasant economies. Even if GM cannot overcome its technical problems, it cur- rently has the momentum and infrastructure to pro- vide a persuasive avenue for the expansion of mo- noculture systems, especially through corporate seed takeovers, public-private sector plant breeding convergences, and through the adoption of West- ern intellectual property (IP) regimes.

Yet, as in the North, a growing resistance move- ment to GM has also emerged in Asia. It engages peasant farmers, women's groups, farm workers, fisherfolk, indigenous peoples, dissenting scientists, religious leaders, and consumer and environmental civil society organizations. All have indicated how they, or their constituencies, will be disadvantaged by GM applications. While the Asian movement shares the same environmental and social concerns about genetic engineering as the broader global movement, it also presents unique cultural differ- ences concerning food and agricultural perceptions and practices. Yet, like GM concerns held elsewhere, those concerns are glossed over or ignored by pow- erful bioindustrial interests.

A major critique of the resistance movements is that such GM developments in the South amount to a new form of colonization--a "biocolonization"-- that builds on neocolonialism and the induced tech- nological dependency of the green revolution, which have had such dire environmental and social im- pacts (discussed further below). A key concern is where biotech research in Third World countries is primarily focused on herbicide resistant crops, while globally this area accounts for a majority of geneti- cally engineered crop research and development. Not only are the adverse environmental impacts of chemical agriculture well documented, as are its high input costs, but the World Health Organization esti- mates that 25 million cases of acute occupational chemical pesticide poisonings occur each year in developing countries due to a lack of protection while spraying, product labels not being translated into

local languages, and poor education about pesticide use and misuse.

The meaning of food is another key area of con- cern. As well as sustaining bodies, food strongly sustains national, ethnic, and social identities. What Asians eat, and how they do it, is significantly me- diated through notions of time and space, order and transgression, nature and culture. Food plays a cen- tral part in religious and cultural festivals, and some foods are almost sacred. For example, the "sacred cow" has been a part of India's cultural ethos since time immemorial. This stems from the many ben- efits rendered from the cow to provide sustenance: food (milk), labor (plowing), and fuel and manure (dung). Hindus regard all living creatures as sacred- mammals, fishes, birds, and more. The cow, seen as a "complete ecology"--as a symbol of abun- dance- in providing so much, symbolically repre- sents all those other creatures. And to Muslims, scav- engers (like pigs) are forbidden as food because they might carry disease or something harmful, and in the religious sense something impure. To be "good" behaviorally and healthy physically, and attain pure spirituality, Muslims must eat food free of harmful substances. GM foods with genes inserted from foods considered "unclean," afforded religious attributes, from non-food sources not readily identifiable, or of human-origin DNA, thus represent profound implications for Asian cultures where religion is central to value and identity.

Growing concerns are thus held in Asia about many issues concerning biodevelopment, including, inadequate regulatory procedures, lack of GM food labeling, the continued appropriation of genetic re- sources from centers of biodiversity by the North, increasing control of agrifood production by multi- national conglomerates, cultural breakdown, or in- appropriate technology transfer and technological de- pendency. Moreover, feeding the hungry and growing populations, it is argued, cannot be accomplished just by technical approaches aimed at increasing yields. This is because food shortage and distribution prob- lems are intricately interconnected to a variety of com- plex social and geopolitical aspects where the techni- cal is but one, albeit an important one. Instead, grassroots movements have demonstrated their pref- erence for sustainable, community or peasant agricul- ture, organic farming, food redistribution, land reform, and "food sovereignty" in such events as the "People's Caravan," which saw a mobilization of people's move- ments in 2000 that marched from India to the Philip- pines protesting against genetic engineering, pesticides, and globalizafion.

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The anti-GM movement in the South has espe- cially voiced its opposition to multinational "life science" conglomerates like Monsanto and Aventis (now, Bayer). Yet while these companies represent the increasingly "visible" face of the bioindustrial complex in the South, they are only part of that complex. Another important but less visible part is GM interests (or agents) who operate at the infra- structure level and target public sector organizations, especially National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS). Key GM infrastructure agents operating in this terrain include the Rockefeller Foundation, the Association for South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Asia-Pacific International Molecular Biology Network (A-IMBN), the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Asia- Pacific Association of Agricultural Research Insti- tutions (APAARI). Other bilateral and multilateral biotechnology networks also exist, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization/United Nations Devel- opment Program (FAOFUNDP) Biotechnology De- velopment Network for Animal Production and Health Project, and the Cassava Biotechnology Net- work, but they are minor compared to those just mentioned, which are central to laying firm founda- tions for biodevelopment especially influenced by Western values of economic growth and progress.

Focus on the nature and activities of these infra- structure agents can yield insights by which to bet- ter understand the full scope of biodevelopment in Asia, and, in turn, the marginalization of concerns from civil society and the social and environmental implications of that marginalization. To investigate them as political economy phenomena, they are first conceptually situated as interorganizational networks that configure a GM policy field of biodevelopment.

GM Policy Field of Biodevelopment The contention that GM infrastructure agents are

laying the groundwork for corporate biotechnol- ogy in the South, and elsewhere, is not new. In- deed, these developments are simply an extension of the green revolution technology platform. In the North they reflect what has been occurring with biotechnology since the early 1970s, and with on- going intensive agriculture developments.

As such, the emergence of modern agro-biotech- nology is already embedded within pre-established dominant political-economic and technocratic sys- tems of governance, and of research and develop- ment sites. Governance here refers to the state as "one important site of government among others," including: "Markets, research institutes, biotechnol-

ogy companies, and financial institutions ... [which] contribute to making things governable, and are parts of a larger structure" (See Herbert Gottweis, (1998) Governing Molecules: The Discursive Politics of Genetic Engineering in Europe and the United States. London: MIT Press, 1998:29). GM infra- structure agents are added to the cast here.

Underpinning structure or governability is rela- tional power. As Gottweis elaborated, relational power goes beyond the repressive side of power to the productive side of power. Here, neither "A nor B nor institutions with their biases and political ide- ologies ... simply exist" as power phenomena. They come into existence through discursive ,processes that transcend the traditional boundaries of the po- litical .... In this way regimes of governability can be understood as sites where individuals are shaped and constructed" (p. 20). With regard to regimes of governability concerning contemporary technologi- cal change, Stephen Hill's notion of the technologi- cal frame as a shaping medium is instructive: "be- hind the artifact stands the whole background frame of factory, transport, energy, communications, mar- ket and knowledge systems--a contextual gram- mar .... Sedimented into this background text are the developed cultural assumptions of order that the system implies---concerning capital, power, ideol- ogy, knowledge and morality--all smoothly inte- grated into an aesthetic that puts active human con- stitution of meaning (and therefore control) at service of the technological frame itself. And the trajectory of the technological frame ... is controlled by capital interests with a rich international power base..." (Stephen Hill, The Tragedy of Technology: Human Liberation Versus Domination in the Late Twentieth Century. UK: Pluto Press, 1988:24).

Through technology transfer and globalization, the technological frame thus represents the creation of a particular spatio-temporal and geopolitical shape of demand, that is, it creates a "technological con- text for daily life ... [that] limits and focuses the future social developments that are likely to fol- low..." (Hill, 1988:26). In the globalization con- text, technological innovation is then expressed spa- tially as a "[m]utual reciprocity between regional innovation systems and global networks," featuring collaborative R&D networks, technological conver- gence, strategic alliances in advanced technology sectors, and inter-firm processes of permanent in- novation and cooperation.

With the development and rapid expansion of a certain technological frame, supported by such pow- erful interest networks, other technological choices

GENETIC MODIFICATION AND THE DOUBLY GREEN REVOLUTION 11

become constrained. Arguably, this was the intent behind the green revolution and is now the intent behind the GM "doubly green revolution," where GM has become the artifact that Hill refers to above. Adopting a chronological method I investigate the policy landscape that has emerged. First, I look at the Rockefeller Foundation, and do so in substan- tially more detail than others. This is because the Foundation was a core broker and policy field co- ordinator of the molecular biology endeavor--the underpinning "science" of genetic engineering and modern biotechnology, at the same time as it was a core developer of agricultural genetics and monoc- ulture high yielding plant varieties and their trans- fer to the South as the green revolution. It should be noted also that the green revolution record ush- ered in USAID as an early ally of the Foundation in these endeavors. Following on from that account, I then look at other key infrastructure GM agents that have emerged in Asia. Finally, I finish with some reflections about the social and environmental mean- ings for the South.

Rockefeller Foundation The Rockefeller Foundation emerged in the early

20th century amidst social upheaval in the US that marked America's transition from a primarily rural and agricultural society of the 19th century to an urban and industrial nation. One manifestation of the unrest was the Progressive era (c. 1895-1920), which saw the American political system grow less democratic. To overcome widespread disaffection with the new order's gross inequalities and labor relations, and to strengthen the institutions of capi- talism, elite managerial ideals combined with cor- porate philanthropy.

In that climate, the Rockefeller Foundation emerged in 1913, the research policy of which sup- ported scientific progress to both advance science, and to maximize the total "social returns" from sci- ence. Foundation trustees were leading administra- tors, capitalists and scientists, interested in preserv- ing the contemporary social order. In retrospective analysis of the cultural meaning and social practice of science, scholars concur that the Rockefeller Foundation program had a profound impact on sci- ence as well as on the life sciences. Paul Weindling posited that Rockefeller patronage marked a shift "from the wealthy individual patron to bureaucratic and corporate management of science policy by sci- entifically trained experts"

A central part of the Foundation's biology policy was to embrace "engineering biology"--which had

emerged by 1900 with a view to transform nature as "raw material"--to "reconstruct" the natural or- der to make it "rational & efficient," to create a "technology of living substance" (See Philip Pauly, Controlling Life: Jacques Loeb and the Engineer- ing Ideal in Biology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987:51). In 1901, the term Biontotechnik had surfaced in Europe to define the modification of living organisms through technology. Concur- rently, (mechanistic) genetics had emerged to pro- vide the technical avenue for engineering biology, with control of heredity, and ultimate power over nature, in the offering.

The origins of the science of "molecular biol- ogy" are traced to the Rockefeller Foundation's Annual Report for 1938 authored by physicist War- ren Weaver, director of its Division of Natural Sci- ences. Weaver's approach--along with mathemati- cian and then president of the Foundation Max Mason--was to "modernize" biology by recasting research in biology to the disciplined methodologi- cal and technological rigor of the physical sciences, including classical physics, mathematics and chem- istry to interrelated biological sciences of genetics, embryology, physiology, immunology and micro- biology. Like physics, molecular biology became devoted to finding the "ultimate littleness of things" and became defined interchangeably as the "biol- ogy of molecules" and "sub-cellular biology."

Molecular biology subsequently became signifi- cantly supported by the Foundation, along with oth- ers including the UK's Medical Research Council, which the Foundation also used as a conduit to dis- burse molecular biology funding in Britain. The Foundation's program dwarfed others with a dis- bursement of US$90 million to support molecular biology between 1932 and 1957 through an exten- sive system of grants and fellowships, and institu- tion building. Though by no means wholly respon- sible for building the new approach to studying (and controlling) life, Gottweis (1998: 43-44) argued that "by privileging the molecular biology approach over the evolutionary, ecological, and organismic tradi- tions, the Rockefeller Foundation emerged as a criti- cal coordinating agency."

With a strong research network and policy field configured around molecular biology discourse, scientific discoveries followed. Two became turn- ing points for the success of molecular biology. First, in 1944, Avery, McCarty and MacLeod of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research discov- ered that DNA transmitted hereditary "information." It was this finding, later acclaimed the Rockefeller

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University that "set the course for biological research for the rest of the century." Subsequently, after 1945, an international research community formed and primarily consisted of a network of laboratory di- rectors channeling funds into universities and medi- cal schools to conceptually redefine biology along molecular lines. The second major turning point occurred with the discovery of the double helical structure of DNA in 1953 by Crick and Watson. Following that success, in 1958, Crick formulated the initial key principle of molecular biology, the Cen- tral Dogma: DNA makes RNA makes protein. The dominant notion of genetic determinism thus flowed, and became characterized in neo-Darwin- ian terms through natural selection.

Other discoveries followed: by 1966, the genetic code had been fully deciphered; in 1967 an enzyme (DNA ligase) that causes DNA chains to join to- gether was isolated; and, in 1970, restriction endo- nucleases, which cleave DNA at specific sites, were isolated. These formed the central techniques for recombining DNA, discovered in 1973. Accompa- nying these discoveries were rewarding devices in the form of many Nobel prizes for molecular bi- ologists in physiology or medicine, where the Rockefeller Foundation had sponsored many of the scientists. The prizes served to confer additional sta- tus upon, and to legitimate, the molecular biology approach. It acquired a reputation in biology for where the real excitement lay, and funding increased dramatically for the field.

Parallel to such developments though were other important ones---ones central to this story--in an- other arena of genetics with which the Rockefeller Foundation engaged. Between 1920 and 1940, the Foundation began its support for agricultural ge- netics with hybridization developments in the US producing an "improved" corn crop for industrial agriculture. This of course aligned the Rockefeller Foundation's eugenic notions of improving humans to the more general one of improving Nature, in the tradition of the Baconian project. Dramatic com- mercial returns subsequently resulted in the mid- 1930s from hybrid seed-corn sales, with farmers embracing the new hybrids and buying them each season. A stagnant commercial seed trade became revitalized, and from that time, congressional agri- culture funding committees also became supportive of genetics R&D. Concomitantly, linking to other (economic, political and legal) sites of govemability, the US and the UK began to institutionalize private ownership of biological R&D with patent acts. That further defined the discourse of biotechnics as com- mercial and entrepreneurial.

Green Revolution Such developments led also to the idea of the

green revolution being explored in a meeting be- tween Rockefeller Foundation president Raymond Fosdick and US Vice President Henry A. Wallace, the underlying private vision being political and economic.

The political benefits were to achieve social sta- bility through increased food production and a strengthened middle-class peasantry to counter com- munism. By association, the alignment of agricul- tural production globally to modem industrial capital- ism would accrue commercial benefits for Wallace as the founder of the forerunner of Pioneer Hi-Bred (hy- brid seed), and for the Rockefellers through the sale of Standard Oil petrochemical energy and products.

Alongside the private vision, the public vision, and subsequent policy rationale was to "feed the hungry through intensive agricul ture." The Rockefeller Foundation initiated its Mexican Agri- cultural Program in 1943. Its implicit goal--to dif- fuse hybrid high yielding varieties (HYVs) with high response to agrichemicals--was confirmed when the Rockefeller's International Basic Economy Cor- poration heavily invested in 1946 in the only Brazil- ian hybrid-seed-producing firm. Other Western in- terests followed suit, for example, grain merchant Cargill initiated hybrid seed-corn production in Argentina in 1947. Diffusing this program into Kenya in 1956, USAID and the Rockefeller Foun- dation funded a hybrid corn-breeding program un- der which purchasers of seed were required to buy fertilizers.

By the 1960s, a whole series of green revolution programs had been implemented in other Third World countries including India, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Subsequently, in India, the consump- tion of fertilizers rose from 5.5 million tons in 1980- 1981 to 13.5 million tons in 1992. In the Philip- pines, the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations founded the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in 1960. Approximately 90 per cent of rice is grown in Asia. To date, IRRI has produced more than 300 monoculture HYVs.

HYV adoption also created lucrative profits for agrochemicals and biocides because of the high vul- nerability of genetically uniform monocultures to insect and pest attacks, as well as to weed prolifera- tion due to intensive fertilizer use. In the Philippines, Rockefeller's Standard Oil set up 400 agro-service centers for Esso fertilizer, seeds, pesticides, imple- ments, and extension advice. IRRI's annual reports from 1963-1982 show the institution receiving grants

GENETIC MODIFICATION AND THE DOUBLY GREEN REVOLUTION 13

from many US and European chemical corporations including Monsanto, Shell Chemical, Union Car- bide Asia, Bayer Philippines, Eli Lily, Occidental Chemical, Ciba Geigy, Chevron Chemical, Upjohn, Hoechst, and Cyanamid Far East.

To institutionalize the green revolution's inten- sive, industrialized methods of production, the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, along with other Western agencies, created the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) in 1971. It coordinates the interorganizational network of international agricultural research centers (IARCs, now renamed "Future Harvest Centers"), established with the diffusion of the green revolution. The CGIAR now employs more than 8500 scientists and support staff in more than 100 countries, and in 1998, represented about four per cent of total glo- bal expenditure on agricultural research. Sponsors, and policy actors, of the CGIAR consist of about 28 countries in the North and key agricultural ones in the South (although in 1993, only one per cent of funding derived from Southern governments), as well as the Ford, Rockefeller and Kellogg Foun- dations, and international and regional aid and de- velopment organizations, including the World Bank.

Yet the promise of the green revolution to feed the hungry was challenged by the fact that only farmers with the necessary resources to adopt the technology, such as well-irrigated and fertile land or the financial capability to invest, were able suc- cessfully to adopt its technology. Consequently, the adoption of the technology, created new avenues of profit for large farmers, that, in turn, led to land consolidation and a trend towards the use of labor saving inputs such as tractors and agrochemicals. In that process, small or tenant farmers and land- less laborers were severely disadvantaged. Al- though a significant increase in agricultural pro- ductivity occurred there were many adverse social impacts as well, including a widening income gap between rich and poor, increasing tenure displace- ment, landlessness, unemployment, indebtedness, poverty, cultural breakdown, social conflict, in- creased hunger and malnutrition, and deepening technological dependency.

Ecological imbalance also resulted from increas- ing dosages of pesticides, and noticeable genetic erosion also emerged to play havoc with traditional polyculture farming systems. Prior to the diffusion of HYVs, over 100,000 rice varieties thrived in farmer's fields. By the mid-1980s, just two HYVs occupied 98 per cent of the entire rice growing area of the Philippines. One of those was rice variety

IR8. It launched the green revolution because of its high yield potential, despite its poor quality and lack of resistance to common rice diseases and pests. By the early 1990s, only five HYVs accounted for 90 per cent of the rice growing area of both penin- sular Malaysia and Pakistan--nearly half the rice lands of Thailand and Myanmar, and around 25 per cent of the rice area of China and Indonesia. Other severe environmental impacts included salinity prob- lems, soil erosion, and depletion of micro-nutri- ents, such as zinc, due to constant application of chemical fertilizers. This reduced yields and on many green revolution lands, yields are now in wide de- cline or are stagnating. In addition, land consolida- tion led to marginal lands being cultivated, which further increased environmental degradation.

Paradoxically, the stated mission of the CGIAR-- now the most influential Third World agricultural research and development (R&D) body--was to promote "policies to reduce poverty, improve food security and nutrition, and alleviate pressures on fragile natural resources." It was to undertake this through R&D, capacity building and policy support. Following on from the green revolution the CGIAR is now situated as a primary translation conduit for the "bio-revolution" in the public-sector, or as the incumbent Rockefeller Foundation's president Gor- don Conway penned "the doubly green revolution."

"Doubly Green Revolution" Over the past decade, private sector collabora-

tion has strengthened with the CGIAR. The ratio- nale for this was revealed at a World Bank forum-- Agricultural Biotechnology: Opportunities for International Development, held in Canberra, Aus- tralia, in 1989. Participants included many Western development and aid agencies, the Rockefeller Foun- dation, biotech and seed TNCs, and representatives of Southern countries mainly housing centers of biodiversity (or genetic resources), that is, CGIAR locations.

The primary points of the World Bank's policy approach were that developing countries should only concentrate on "orphan" crop research, the North, with its cutting-edge resources, would concentrate on the commercially important ones; that transfer of biotechnology was conditional on Western patent systems and voluntary regulatory systems; that ca- pacity building for biotechnology was important; and that the CGIAR needed to collaborate with the private sector. The overall thrust was that Western patent protections had to be in place for any large- scale diffusion of biotechnology products aimed at

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raising food productivity. The latter claim again re- flected the "feeding the hungry" discourse and amended it such that biotechnology would help over- come both past and existing problems of green revo- lution food production, especially declining yields. Yet, the focus on intellectual property rights con- tradicted the traditional role of the CGIAR to pro- cess information, inventions, processes, biological material and other research products, funded or de- veloped by the CGIAR, as public goods. This fur- ther demonstrated that the application of genetic engineering was defined by commercial and entre- preneurial interests.

Nearly a decade before, the Rockefeller Founda- tion had significantly helped to lay the groundwork for such policy directives to emerge, especially con- cerning rice. In the early 1980s, chemical , agribusiness and pharmaceutical corporations had begun developing GM in the North, building on a platform of many small biotechnology companies established earlier by a wave of entrepreneurial aca- demic scientists, especially in the US. Concurrently, the Rockefeller Foundation investigated biotechnol- ogy prospects for the world's major food crops. In 1984, it began a 15-year funding program for rice biotechnology in the South called the "International Program on Rice Biotechnology (IPRB)." Similar to the earlier European and US molecular biology network it had established, the Foundation brokered a policy and R&D network to translate the new molecular rice technological frame. The IPRB dis- pensed almost US$105 mill ion--an average of US$6.2 million annually, for its technology gen- eration and application phases.

The first phase lasted seven years and funded research in 46 advanced research institutions, pri- marily in the US, Europe, Japan and Australia--all centers of commercial biotechnology. A scientists' network was also created with approximately 700 scientists from over 30 countries, and with more than 400 Asian scientists participating. In addition, all relevant CGIAR centers' biotechnology capac- ity was upgraded, those being IRRI, the Interna- tional Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and the West Africa Rice Development Association (WARDA). Promising Asian scientists were sent to laboratories in the North that the Foundation sup- ported, and funding was provided to Asian facili- ties that supported those scientists' work on their return. The network focussed on incorporating spe- cialized traits into rice varieties, including yield- enhancement, disease-resistance, insect-resistance, grain-quality, abiotic stress tolerance, including

drought and salinity, and improved micro-nutrient content. This, the Foundation heralded was the "in- vention of rice biotechnology."

Scientific breakthroughs again resulted: rice was the first cereal to be regenerated from a protoplast in 1986-88; a DNA molecular marker map was achieved by 1988, and the first experimental trans- formation was accomplished in 1988-90. Rapid progress occurred with host-plant resistance. The discoveries also revealed the importance of rice to understanding the biological functions of cereals. Here--it was acclaimed--lay the key to decoding six of the world's major cereal food crops. In 1991, a detailed genetic map of rice~developed at Cornell University with Rockefeller funding--was dissemi- nated to rice breeders worldwide to facilitate the creation of improved rice varieties.

Meanwhile, in Mexico, the Foundation was re- vealing its more entrepreneurial side in funding a collaborative partnership between biotech conglom- erate Monsanto and the Center for Advanced Stud- ies (CINVESTAV)--a government research labo- r a to ry - to develop, through biotechnology, virus resistance potato varieties for resource-poor Mexi- can farmers. The partnership involved two CINVESTAV scientists working with Monsanto sci- entists to learn how to conduct potato transforma- tion. In return, Monsanto was granted the rights to use its virus-protection technology in certain vari- eties of potatoes, following approval and commer- cialization.

In 1993, the Asian Rice Biotechnology Network (ARBN)---coordinated by IRRI--was established to enhance the biotechnology capacity of NARS part- ners. The final group of Biotechnology Career Fel- lows was also selected. Launched in 1984, along- side the IPRB, the program established an R&D network of 183 fellows--many of whom had risen to prominent research positions in their home coun- t r ies - to update their biotechnology skills and the development of collaborative research projects. In 1995, a Foundation funded team of US and Asian scientists cloned a gene for resistance against bacte- rial blight in rice. In 1997, IPRB scientists con- firmed that all cereals had essentially the same ba- sic genes as rice, and by 1998, comparative mapping across grass species became possible.

The second phase of the program focused on research for bioproduct development through tech- nology transfer to research institutions and rice breeders. Again, research grantees and fellows were enrolled from both North and South. By 1994, the program had supported 130 projects in 26 countries

GENETIC MODIFICATION AND THE DOUBLY GREEN REVOLUTION 15

with 69 located in developing countries. Approxi- mately 62 per cent of grant funds and about the same proportion of total research funds went to China and India with 56 per cent of world rice production cultivated on 50 per cent of the world's rice area. Scientific breakthroughs again resulted.

The rhetoric about feeding the hungry also con- tinued, but the Foundation emphasized its technical approach, not addressing the real causes of under- development such as structural adjustment policies, debt, and inappropriate technology transfer. Also ignored were genuine participatory approaches, for example, as called for by the World Commission for Environment and Development in 1987, and low input systems were dismissed as unsustainable and incapable of feeding increasing populations despite evidence that contested such views. Moreover, even though the Foundation admitted that farmers had a deep personal knowledge of farming conditions, a comprehensive assessment of their opinions was dismissed, paradoxically, as too expensive and thus unwarranted. Contesting alternatives were thus or- ganized off the policy agenda. In 1999, with the biotech rice program well under way, with rice genomics programs fostering, with GM rice biotech capacity building occurring across Asia, and with a strong GM policy field developed, the Foundation concluded that its infrastructure-building role was over and that it was time to turn to Africa.

Fruitful legacies for biodevelopment included China, India, and Korea firmly integrating biotech into national rice research programs, and the Philip- pines, Thailand, and Vietnam all moving in that di- rection; and, IRRI setting up the Asian Rice Bio- technology Network to engage with much infrastructure building with its National Agricultural Research Systems partners. Additionally, IRRI's 2002-04 Plan was strongly committed to bioproduct development, including herbicide-tolerant rice, in a partnership network with development NGOs, ex- tension agencies, and private companies including the Asia Pacific Seeds Association (APSA), where members include major seed and biotech compa- nies Monsanto, Novartis, Syngenta, DuPont, Aventis, and RiceTec.

Key GM Infrastructure Agents in Asia A central ASEAN agency for biotechnology is

the ASEAN Committee on Science and Technology (COST) (established in 1978). In 1989, its Sub- Committee on Biotechnology was formed to imple- ment regional biotechnology projects. Its priority areas include disease treatment and prevention, crop

productivity and product quality, and better envi- ronmental resource management. Its main objec- tives are to establish the ASEAN biotechnology in- formation network, and collaborative joint ventures with the private sector. Its dialogue partners and main funders are Australia, Canada, the European Union, Japan, India, New Zealand, and the Repub- lic of Korea. About eight research projects are in the pipeline.

Other ASEAN bodies are also implementing biotech-related activities, for example, the Senior Officials Meeting of the ASEAN Ministers for Agri- culture and Fisheries (SOM-AMAF). Since 1998, this body has been exploring the possibility of har- monization of national guidelines and regulations for biotechnology. There has also been the publication of two books: Biotechnology for Development and The ASEAN-Australia Biotechnology Directorate, and an Asian "Biotechnology Atlas" is under devel- opment. Areas pursued include plant biotechnology, animal biotechnology, an ASEAN-Canada Biotech- nology Information Network; utilization of tropical rainforest plants from Indonesia, Malaysia, Philip- pines, Thailand, and Vietnam for chemical and bio- logical prospecting of the plants; development of biological agents for pest and insect control, and the development of transgenic or genetically engi- neered plants.

In designing an agricultural biotechnology pro- gram in 1990, The US Agency for International Development (USAID) drew on its experience of supporting the Monsanto-Kenyan Agricultural Re- search Institute (KARl) program on disease-resis- tant sweet potato. With the help of the US National Research Council, priorities included institutional management issues, especially capacity to address IPR and biosafety, and other technology transfer issues through private-public sector partnerships. During the 1990s, collaborations were supported largely through the Agricultural Biotechnology Sup- port Program (ABSP) of the Michigan State Uni- versity. The program involved a number of US uni- versities, US and Southern companies, CGIAR centers, and NARS. Some examples included: ICI Seeds (Zeneca) and the Central Research Institute for Food Crops Indonesia to develop Bt tropical corn; and, Pioneer Hi-Bred and the Egyptian Agri- cultural Genetic Engineering Research Institute to develop Bt corn. The ABSP's efforts in IPR have covered both plant variety protection and patent forms of IPR. Michigan State University has so far served as the contractual intermediate on most re- search agreements between companies and public

16 SOCIETY * SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2003

research institutions in the South. In other words, it became a central site in this network for brokering the GM policy approach.

The Asia-Pacific International Molecular Biol- ogy Network (A-IMBN) was established in 1997 to implement biotechnology across Asia. It is also an interorganizational network of scientists, scientific institutions, national and international agencies, and industry, many overlapping other GM policy net- works. The brainchild of researchers at the Institute for Molecular Biology and Genetics at Seoul Na- tional University, and the Institute of Medical Sci- ence of Tokyo University, A-IMBN succeeds the failed Asian Molecular Biology Organization (AMBO) established in 1980 by US scientists and Kenichi Arai, the current A-IMBN president (and also director of the Institute of Medical Science of Tokyo University). The European Molecular Biol- ogy Organization (EMBO)--a private scientific organization for the support of research in molecu- lar biology, including minimalist regulation--was the model for AMBO, and is now for the A-IMBN. Participants in the A-IMBN include 243 scientists from the 15 nations of Australia, China, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong SAR, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philip- pines, and Singapore. Nominations to join have been received from Thailand, Canada, the US, Pakistan, and Vietnam. International linkages include many genetic engineering and biotechnology research or- ganizations, development agencies, including the FAO and biotech companies.

In 2000, the A-IMBN formulated a five-pronged vision: (1) infrastructure development across Asia; (2) a regulatory/cultural environment: to encourage biodevelopment, for example, IP regulations, atti- tudes, entrepreneurship; (3) legislation and policies: to promote biotechnology, encourage careers and entrepreneurship; (4) human resources develop- ment: to promote school and academic education; and, (5) finance and resources mobilization: national, international, and private funding, encouragement of investment, academia and industry links.

By 2001 A-IMBN had begun the following ini- tiatives: a media program involving training prom- ising young journalists to present pro-biotechnol- ogy perspectives (under development); a public education program aimed at public acceptance of GM (under development); the preparation of infor- mation resources and materials for elementary and high school students; encouragement of bioindustry- academia collaborations; and the setting up of A- IMBN laboratories. The first one, with a biomedi-

cal focus, was set up in 2001 at Singapore's Insti- tute of Molecular and Cell Biology.

The Asia-Pacific Association of Agricultural Re- search Institutions (APAARI) is yet another bio- technology interorganizational policy network in- volving the development of NARS in the Asia-Pacific region through inter-regional and inter-institutional cooperation. Its constitution was adopted in De- cember 1990 by the General Assembly in its second meeting held at the UN Food and Agriculture's Re- gional Office for Asia and the Pacific (FAO-RAP), Bangkok. Members include Australia, India, Japan, Republ ic of Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand, Bangladesh, Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia, Philippines, Fiji, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and Western Samoa.

During 2000-2001, APAARI signed a letter of agreement with FAO-RAP wherein the FAO would provide financial support of studies and a regional biotechnology consultation with selected Asian coun- tries in close collaboration with APAARI. The studies would assess the biotechnology needs and capacity of Asian countries. An expert consultation would be organized. In March 2002, the FAO-APAARI Ex- pert Consultation on the Status of Biotechnology in Agriculture in Asia and the Pacific March was held in Bangkok. The main objectives of the meeting were to assess biotechnology's positive effects and areas of concern; types of policy advocacy, information, training and capacity building to ensure biosafety standards; the identification of experts and institu- tions; and the reconfirmation of the needs, require- ments, and arrangements for the establishment of a biotechnology network.

About 50 participants attended and they repre- sented NARS, CGIAR centers, CG Institutions, NGOs, and the private sector, including Aventis, Monsanto and Syngenta. The meeting's main rec- ommendations were to evaluate the broader impact of biotechnology on society; and to establish biosafety and regulatory frameworks, private and public sector partnerships, and regional/international collaboration and capacity building.

Later, in September 2002, a conference was held in Kuala Lumpur called "Capitalize on Genetic Modification in the Food Industry: Profit from In- novations and Strategies to Comply with Upcom- ing Government Directives." Sponsored by the Malaysian Biotechnology Information Center, Ram Badam Singh, former assistant director-general & regional representative: Asia & the Pacific, FAO, delivered a talk entitled "Biotechnology and Biosecurity: Towards an Evergreen Revolution."

GENETIC MODIFICATION AND THE DOUBLY GREEN REVOLUTION 17

Singh emphasized the "need for establishing" a Re- gional Consortium on Biotechnology-Biosafety- Biodiversity-Biosecurity in the Asia-Pacific region (which is under development at FAO-RAP). He sup- ported commodity based networks, proprietary biotech applications, and participatory multi-stake- holder approaches. The latter would especially in- volve a "National Commission on Biotechnology- Biosafety-Biodiversity-Biosecurity" in each country chaired by an independent expert in the field of biotechnology and related policy issues. Regional databases would monitor crop productivity, produc- tion and ecological attributes (gene-pollution, eco- logical effect, use of pesticides and herbicides, emer- gence of pest resistance, and impacts on biodiversity).

Even with such serious impacts recognized, GM as a panacea for development was still being her- aided. This again demonstrated the strength of the GM policy field to configure the policy landscape of the South towards GM.

GM Policy Initiatives Clearly, GM infrastructure agents, building on

the Rockefeller Foundation's initiatives and policy approaches are incubators for GM agrifood devel- opment. Here, as brokers and coordinators, they enroll public sector organizations into the GM policy initiatives and private sector networks of the North, laying and consolidating the foundations for com- mercial biotechnology.

As I have discussed, central infrastructure agents include the Rockefeller Foundation, the CGIAR and its Future Harvest Centers, ASEAN, the A-IMBN, the FAO-RAP and APAARI, and USAID. Building upon the green revolution technological frame and platform, and having vital network resources these organizations have been able to position themselves at the center of the policy field of agriculture for development.

Attaining centrality in this network of inequality has empowered those organizations to define and legitimize the progress and development of GM. This is accomplished when central actors in tech- nology transfer network organizations, such as the CGIAR, are interlinked to other powerful GM policy brokers in global society, like the World Bank, and multinational biotech companies. The increasing linkage of the CGIAR to the private sector was fur- ther signaled at the Annual General Meeting of the CGIAR in late October 2002. There, the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture was ac- claimed as a new member of the CGIAR. Syngenta

was at that time the world's largest agrochemical and life sciences corporation. Grassroots critics in the South subsequently branded the CGIAR as CG(I)AR, the "Consultative Group of (Industrial) Agricultural Research."

Argentine farmers adopted Monsanto 's

Round-Up Ready (RR) soya beans on the

promise that it would make it cheaper to farm

because of increased yields .... Because o f the

evolution of vicious new weeds,

farmers have had to use two or three times

more pesticides than previously. Overall,

total costs have risen by 14 per cent.

Emphasizing the influence of the policy network that these organizations are engaged in is their con- current membership in many interorganizational groups spanning and forming the background con- text of the GM policy field, with similar strategies and discourses employed. This is well illustrated where IRRI networked with APAARI, the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR), the CGIAR, USAID, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of The Netherlands to organize a Council for Partnership on Rice Re- search in Asia (CORRA) workshop, aimed at rein- forcing the need for the South to adopt Western intellectual property approaches. CORRA is an in- formal organization of the world's main rice pro- ducing nations, and was set up by the leaders of the NARS in Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Ko- rea, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam. Such developments clearly work well with the emerging monopoly control over key bio- technology patents by corporations and institutions in the North, which have already secured more than 600 biotechnology patents for rice, with the top 17 patent holders controlling 56 per cent.

Another significant example of the operation of GM interorganizational networks is where senior members of the Australian biotech community are part of the A-IMBN, including "Biotechnology Aus- tralia"--a federal agency charged with developing biotechnology in Australia and the implementer of Australia's "National Biotechnology Strategy." The strategies of the A-IMBN now align with those of that national strategy, which itself draws on US policy initiatives, on TNC-state-bioscientist

18 SOCIETY �9 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2003

policy alliances in Australia, and on earlier OECD policy recommendations.

Such o u t c o m e s s u p p o r t the n o t i o n o f "b iocoloniza t ion" that GM critics in the South have characterized the transfer of biotechnology to be. Strengthening that notion is that while much of the language of policy texts of the infrastruc- ture agents pertains to notions of environmental and social responsibility, no reference is given to existing and local practices of producing food and envi ronmenta l wel l -being such as communi ty , organic or peasant sustainable agriculture, nor is reference given to decision-making processes, to peasant movements, small farmers, and commu- nity participation.

Yet, signaling the need for more sustained com- munity participation with regard to GM is the case of Argentina. Seven years ago, some 90 per cent of Argentine farmers adopted Monsanto's Round-Up Ready (RR) soya beans on the promise that it would make it cheaper to farm because of increased yields by requiring only one herbicide instead of many.

hoods and the Envi ronment in Argent ina," The Ecologist 32(8): 23).

In reflecting upon the experience of the green revolut ion-- the monopoly corporate biotechnology trends now clearly emerging, the technical difficul- ties of GM crops such as gene flow, and the expe- riences of GM crops in Argent ina-- i t is increas- ingly obvious that promotion of the GM "doubly green revolution" as a moral imperative is a rhetori- cal strategy to support GM agriculture in the South more for economic and political reasons than of satisfying any portrayal of benevolence. Under these circumstances, it is more likely that the "doubly green revolution" will increase the adverse impacts of the green revolution than demonstrate any broad benefits for the populous majority of poor farmers and rural society. These are severe consequences for developing countries already suffering adverse developmental impacts from inappropriate technol- ogy transfer and failed development. GM develop- ment and the likely consequences of further under- development are thus the dilemma with which these countries will now have to struggle.

In reflecting upon the experience of the green revolution it is increasingly obvious that

promotion of the GM "doubly green revolution" as a moral imperative is a rhetorical strategy to support GM agriculture in the South more for

economic and political reasons than of satisfying any portrayal of benevolence.

Although exports have increased rapidly: "The growth in output is exclusively the result of an in- crease in the area of land under soya bean cultiva- tion ..... Because of the evolution of vicious new weeds, farmers have had to use two or three times more pesticides than previously. Overall, total costs have risen by 14 per cent. Soya prices have dropped as a result of increased global production .... No longer able to compete, small-scale Argentine farm- ers are going bankrupt .... Even more alarming is the ecological damage .... Soya is not bringing wealth to Argentina. 'We are being occupied by the seed multinationals that have patented life and are forc- ing us to pay tribute to them,' says [Eduardo] Rulli [a leading Argentine agronomist]. 'The more we produce the poorer we become. ' ... Economic output is predicted to fall by at least 15 per cent this year" (See S. Branford, "Why Argentina Can' t Feed Itself - How GM Soya is Destroying Liveli-

SUGGESTED FURTHER READINGS

Bud, Robert. 1993. The Uses of Life: A History of Bio- technology. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Conway, Gordon. 1998. The Doubly Green Revolution: Food for All in the Twen~. -first Centur3,. New York: Comstock.

Kloppenburg, Jack R. Jr. 1988. First the Seed: The Po- htical Economy of Plant Biotechnology, 1492- 2000. Cambridge University Press.

Shiva, Vandana. 2000. Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply. London: Zed.

Welndling, P. 1988. "The Rockefeller Foundation and German Biomedical Sciences, 1920-40: From Educational Philanthropy to International Science Policy," in Science, Politics and Public Good. N. Rupke (ed). UK: Macmillan Press.

Yoxen, Edward. 1983. The Gene Business: Who Should Control Biotechnology? New York: Harper and Row.

Richard Hindmarsh lectures in environmental polic3; regulation and politics at the Australian School of Environmental Studies, Griffith University, Brisbane, His recent co-authored~co-edited books include Al- tered Genes (1998, revised edition 2001) and Recoding Nature: Critical Perspectives on Genetic Engineering (2003, in press).

GENETIC MODIFICATION AND THE DOUBLY GREEN REVOLUTION 19