The sticky materiality of neo-liberal neonatures: GMOs and the agrarian question

ABSTRACT

This article uses Marxist theories of agrarian capitalism to explore the political economy of genetically modified organisms (GMO) agriculture. It argues that the successes and failures of GMO agriculture have been partly circumscribed by the structural requirements of the capitalist system, as well as by the materiality of GMO crops themselves. Successful innovations have been able to mitigate the material barriers to accumulation found in agricultural production, and thus appeal directly to farmers as comparatively profitable capital inputs. In this way, they cohere with David Goodman’s notion of appropriationism, where manufactured capital inputs (such as pesticides, machinery and fertilisers) replace ‘natural’ inputs (such as manure or draft animals), reducing labour time and biological contingency, and thus creating a competitive advantage for those farmers who adopt the new technology (at least temporarily). Conversely, innovations that are geared at consumers rather than farmers have largely failed due to their status as value-added products (whose value is subjective and market-driven) rather than capital goods. The article uses contrasting case studies of herbicide-tolerant soybeans, beta-keratin-enhanced rice and slow-ripening tomatoes to demonstrate how and why the structural imperatives of global capitalism have enabled the success of some, and the failure of other innovations.

KEYWORDS:

• GMO agriculture
• political ecology
• political economy
• agrarian question
• appropriationism
• expropriationism

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank James Rowe, Jessica Dempsey and Bill Carroll for their thoughtful comments. Any remaining errors are my own oversight.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributors

Myles Carroll is a Doctoral Student in the Department of Political Science at York University. His research interests include political economy, political ecology and international relations.

Notes

1. Following Marx (1976), I understand capital as an abstract social relation that takes on concrete forms through actors who possess capital and seek profit through the exploitation of human labour. For our purposes here, capital generally refers to biotech corporations and other upstream producers of appropriationist technologies (such as machinery), although it can also manifest itself in the form of farmers, who take on the role of capital to varying degrees when they operate as profit-seeking owners of the means of production in the cultivation process.

2. According to Mann (1989), Marx argued that competitive pressures will inevitably transform all small-scale farmers into either capitalists or proletarians, a notion which Lenin (1900) documented empirically in Russia. For a discussion of value, the production of nature and agriculture, see Eaton (2011).

3. Marx (1976) differentiates between formal and real subsumption as stages in the historical development of capitalism characterised by changing relations between labour and capital. Under formal subsumption (the earlier stage), workers do not own the means of production but maintain control over the process of production, merely giving up control of the product of their labour at the final moment. Conversely, real subsumption involves a full-scale detachment of labour from the worker, as the worker loses control over the production process, and her labour becomes another cog in the wheel of production.

4. Margarine, a synthetic foodstuff developed in a wholly industrial context, is often cited as a key moment in substitutionism (Goodman et al. 1987).

5. Although the treadmill tendency is pervasive, it is important to note that not all farmers comply with the treadmill, with some instead seeking to avoid the risks associated with the early uptake of a new, unproven innovation.

6. Kloppenburg (2004) shows how although public breeders developed it, the creation of hybrid corn made seed breeding appear profitable to capital, and thus led to the creation of a private seed-breeding industry. Beginning in the 1930s and culminating in the 1960s in the USA, private seed breeders gradually gained market share and eventually full control over commercial hybrids, as public breeders ceased to devote research to an area that capital now found profitable enough to invest in.

7. I use the term value in a Marxist sense according to the labour theory of value.

8. One reason why Monsanto mandated separate TUAs with its customers was because its herbicide Roundup was already off-patent by the mid-1990s. TUA's enabled Monsanto to go further than it could under existing patent law in requiring its customers to use its brand of glyphosate herbicide only, rather than generic alternatives (Pechlaner 2012).

9. The 120-multiplier clause was ultimately struck down by the US Supreme Court, but the other provisions of the TUAs remain (Pechlaner 2012).

10. Indeed, the limits to the GMO food economy cannot be understood without an appreciation of the role played by activists in resisting GMOs (see, e.g., Kinchy 2010, 2012, McAfee 2003, 2008, Schurman and Munro 2009, 2010, Wainwright and Mercer 2009). 

11. For this reason, we have seen little research into nutritionally or taste-enhanced GMOs, and the one such GMO that has been brought to market – Calgene's FlavrSavr tomato – was an abject failure. A second such GMO, which became the poster child for GMOs’ potentially humanitarian ends – beta-keratin-enhanced Golden Rice – was of no interest to capital, and has yet to gain regulatory approval now 15 years after it was first tested in the field. However, we must also remember that this situation is not absolute and unchanging; nor is there a dichotomous distinction between producer-oriented innovations and consumer-oriented innovations: GMOs that incorporate both producer benefits such as herbicide tolerance and consumer benefits such as enhanced nutrition could be both immediately appealing to producers and facilitate an eventual shift in consumer attitudes and thus valuations of GMOs.

12. It is nonetheless important to remember that the materiality of the crop can be mobilised as a productive force in capital accumulation as much as it can be a barrier to accumulation. Pechlaner (2012) provides contrasting examples of this potentiality: on one hand, she shows how the spread of GM canola pollen into neighbouring organic fields created significant backlash and a legal challenge to Monsanto from a group of organic farmers in Saskatchewan. On the other hand, she documents how the drift of Roundup herbicide from Roundup Ready cotton fields to conventional cotton fields in Mississippi compelled conventional farmers to adopt Roundup Ready cotton so that their crops would not be destroyed by the drifting Roundup. It is the political response of those affected by the ‘messiness' of GMOs' biophysicality that determines whether that messiness can hinder or advance a project of capital accumulation.

13. Zeneca became Syngenta in 2000.

14. Indeed, regulatory requirements have often been a major setback to GMO development. See, for example, Drezner (2007), Murphy (2007) and Pellegrini (2013).

Additional information

Funding

This project received funding from the University of Victoria and from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.