Reprinted from the January 2010 issue of the Ester Republic.

One of the most potent of the seven* myths of industrial agriculture is the claim that biotechnology will eventually solve all of the problems that people like me point out about industrial agriculture. This is an especially potent myth, because it taps into our society’s collective reverence for, and general ignorance regarding, science and technology. Invoking genetic engineering invokes an optimism instilled in us by the Jetsons, the moon landing, and Star Trek, that all of society’s great problems can and will eventually be solved by the ongoing march of technology. To question technology is tantamount to heresy; as Michael Specter argues in his book Denialism, to do so is to stand in the way of our human potential. We should be rallying behind the geneticists who are trying to make progress towards a more food secure world, Specter asserts, not fear-mongering and beating the drums of backwards, inefficient agricultural technologies of the past.

But all technologies are not created equal, and no technology should be outside the realm of scrutiny. We have mostly failed, however, to bring the technologies of industrial agriculture under scrutiny. The problem is that many of our arguments focus on particular techniques of industrial agriculture, not on the technologies themselves. A technique is a practice or method; a technology is the family of these practices, unified by a philosophy that guides how they work and how they are used. Genetic engineering is a technology; gene splicing is a technique. Low-input farming is a technology; fallowing is a technique. Industrial agriculture is probably best described as a family of technologies, including genetic engineering and global logistics, all of which share the philosophies of industrialization, globalization, and neoliberal market economics.

The problem with critiquing techniques (and there are many within industrial agricultural technology worth critiquing) is that techniques can always be improved and adapted, so any argument made against them is in danger of become out-dated. Yes industrial agricultural practices destroy soil; yes they are fossil-fuel intensive; yes they tend to produce less-healthful foods; but these are all problems that we all can imagine being remedied. In order to make a compelling and durable case against agricultural industrialization, we need to focus instead on the technologies, and particularly the fundamental differences between the philosophies that underlie the technologies of industrial and natural-systems agriculture.

Biotechnology is a perfect example. One of the most common critiques of biotechnology is the ‘Frankenfood’ argument?the worry about the negative health impacts of eating foods modified in this manner. There remains little consensus on this issue, and scant scientific evidence to suggest that there are in fact any negative health outcomes associated with the long-term consumption of GMOs. Even if we are to discover some consequences, however, whether for our health or for the vulnerability of our food supply, these would most likely be problems in technique, problems that people like Specter will argue we can and will eventually fix.

But what of the technology? Specter would have us believe that genetic modification is a technology of the same order as the cultivation and domestication that have been practiced by humans for millennia. People have long gone to great lengths to cultivate desirable traits in their vegetables and livestock, and over the years, the techniques for doing so have become increasingly refined. ‘Working under the genetic hood,’ he says, is just another refinement of technique, progress from indirect to direct genetic manipulation. I argue, however, that genetic engineering and traditional plant domestication are as philosophically different as one can imagine. Cultivation and domestication are open access technologies?anyone can cross-pollenate two plants, or save the seeds of the most prolific tomato plants?given a piece of land and some basic know-how. Genetic engineering, however, is a limited-access technology?gene splicing is prohibitively expensive and requires an advanced knowledge of genetics, and in our society’s system for protecting intellectual property, gradually converts more and more of the food supply into private property. These are tremendous differences, the latter with the potential to dramatically change the locus and distribution of power in our society. We owe it to ourselves to evaluate these changes, and set the terms for the use of new technologies, rather than accepting them blindly because they are the product of science.

Specter, and many others, believe that those of us who support local food systems and small-scale, natural-systems farming practices, are guilty of the worst kind of ignorant self-righteousness, savoring our artisan foods and resisting technological innovation while one billion others in the world live in chronic malnutrition. I would remind them that technology is not only created in a laboratory. Small-scale farmers across the world are experimenting and innovating every day, simply from a different technological paradigm, with the goal of making some small contribution to the very same problems of equity and justice that industrial agriculturalists purport to solve. Which can claim that they truly have the benefit of mankind in mind, the one who wishes to own and control his inventions, or the one who shares them freely?

* Note: See Fatal Harvest edited by Andrew Kimbrell.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 8th, 2010 at 6:21 am by Philip Loring and is filed under Feature Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.