Domestication of agricultural biotechnology within Argentina’s science and technology regime: the case of GM cotton

Abstract

Technologies, rather than being fixed at the design stage, are in important respects reshaped and configured - or domesticated - as they are appropriated and used in different contexts and domains of use. In this paper we explore how the affiliate of a multinational seed firm has configured genetically modified cotton technologies, created elsewhere, for commercialisation within Argentina’s agricultural sector, and how public agricultural research and development institutions have contributed to, and attempted to contribute to, this process. The empirical analysis is based on 24 in-depth interviews with officials from the National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA) and representatives of the multinational seed industry undertaken by the authors between July and September 2010. We find that the commercial development of genetically modified cotton technologies has been achieved in ways that are shaped largely by the global strategies of the parent firm, but that these are far from optimal in terms of the agronomic constraints and social contexts within which Argentina’s cotton farmers operate, especially its smaller farmers. Public institutions have not been able to influence the domestication process largely because they have little capacity to do so under prevailing intellectual property rules.