POLS 196 Lecture Notes - Lecture 21: Agricultural Biotechnology, Multinational Corporation, Food Regimes

• School: University of Vermont
• Department: Political Science
• Course: POLS 196
• Professor: Bradley Bauerly

Document Summary

Otero calls biotech the principle technological form of the neoliberal food regime: biotech entrenched and exacerbated inequality"s between states, particularly between the global north and global south. Peasant social movements and neoregulatory decisions of states are central to the conflicts between multinational corporations and peasants: effects of neo regulation will be worst in the global south. Agricultural biotechnology is dominated by and pushed for by the united states: us has the role geopolitically structuring hegemony and supranational neoregulation institutions like the un and imf. Initially rich countries adopted gmos, but recently poor nations have overtaken them: use of gmo crops has increased 60x since 1996, 26 countries use gmos globally out of 200ish. Dominant gmo crops: (1) soy (2) corn (3) cotton (4) canola. Us is the leader in gmo development and its use: followed by brazil, argentina, india and canada in that order.