Food Security in Knowledge-Based Economy: Role of Trans-national Seed Corporations

Abstract

Increasing preference is given for technologically mediated solutions to solve developmental issues, such as hunger and scarcity of food. A classic example of this kind is the introduction of ‘Green Revolution’ in the early 1960s. To increase global food supply in order to feed the growing population has been a dominant policy discourse ever since but the emerging controversies over agricultural biotechnology and genetically modified Foods show how this remains a key issue. Is intensified ‘production at all costs’, a sustainable and viable method/solution to attain global food security? The following chapter is an attempt to present debates around food security in general, and linkages between agricultural biotechnology, intellectual property rights and trans-national seed corporations and implications to food security. Two concurrent trajectories mould this chapter. First, it conceptualizes food security with an elementary approach: from the perspective of SEED. Seeds are knowledge intensive goods with direct linkages to food entitlements at all levels of the socio-economic sphere. Second, the chapter seeks to contextualize food security in an expanding ‘knowledge-based economy’. A knowledge-based economy is understood as production and services based on knowledge and technology-intensive activities that contribute to an accelerated pace of production and economic growth. Biotechnology for example is seen as an arena where knowledge is effectively turned into capital. Commodification of genetic modified seeds on a global scale reveals that seeds are regarded as private property, which can be bought and sold especially by trans-national seed corporations, contrasting traditional ways of seed saving and farming methods. Simultaneously, internationalization of the Patency regime has set rules on the ownership, control and usage of seeds. Biotechnology research is resource intensive; hence most of the breakthroughs lie in the private sector. The Intellectual property Rights over transgenic seeds transfer full control of seeds over to the corporations. Farmers having to pay royalty or ‘monopoly rents’ in exchange of replanting seeds, to corporations signifies that these rules not only protect innovation and determine the ‘who’ but also the ‘terms’ of usage and control. This phenomenon has alterations on the entire chain of food: from mode of farming, production, nutrition, distribution to sale of food, which are all significant elements contributing to a general wellbeing and food secure situation. At this point a very fundamental question arises: Is Knowledge capital embedded in the current international proprietary framework a driver for ‘sustainable’ development in agriculture and food security? As a way of conclusion, the chapter with aid of statistics and graphics presents a potential and possible future scenario of a monopolized global food market, where due to extensive consolidation processes in the private sector, monopoly power can come into play with total control over the food chain and food prices.

The process of turning into a commodity: commercialization.