The merger of Dow and DuPont, the acquisition of Syngenta by Chem- China, and the acquisition of Monsanto by Bayer have recently reshaped the global seed and biotech industry and caused concern about growing mar- ket concentration. This review documents market concentration in seed and agricultural biotech markets and discusses its causes and impacts. The avail- able evidence suggests that concentration in seed markets varies strongly by crop and by country, while markets for biotech traits are considerably more concentrated.
The process of adopting innovation, especially with regard to precision farming (PF), is inherently complex and social, and influenced by producers, change agents, social norms and organizational pressure. An empirical analysis was conducted among Italian farmers to measure the drivers and clarify “bottlenecks” in the adoption of agricultural innovation. The purpose of this study was to analyze the socio-structural and complexity factors that affect the probability to adopt innovations and the determinants that drive an individual’s decisions.
This paper analyses a biotechnology-focused project which aims to promote the development and adoption of tissue culture bananas by small-scale farmers in Kenya. The paper highlights the generation of several important narratives that are used to justify the development and dissemination of this technology. First, a disaster narrative, a series of claims regarding rural livelihoods and banana production in Kenya, is generated. This creates a political and technical space for the creation of a new science that can solve these problems.
Asian agriculture is faced with major new challenges as a result of globalisation, urbanisation and environmental problems such as climate change. To meet these challenges, Asian agriculture needs to become more knowledge intensive and innovation oriented. This article frames the new Asian challenge in terms of innovation theory, emphasising the importance of the co-evolution of technological and institutional change and linkages between actors in open, interactive innovation processes.
Communication is essential to making biotechnology and genomics relevant to developing countries and poor people. Few would disagree with that. But many are sceptical about public relations efforts to impose inappropriate technological ‘solutions’ on developing countries. This paper is a partial reflection on how PR and advocacy ‘mixes’ can be understood and whether they can be useful to innovation in developing country contexts.
Rising global demand for vegetable oil during the last few decades has led to a drastic increase in the land area under oil palm. Especially in South- east Asia, the oil palm boom has contributed to economic growth, but it has also spurred criticism about negative environmental and social effects. Here, we discuss palm oil production and consumption trends and review environmental, economic, and social consequences in different parts of the world. The oil palm expansion has contributed to tropical deforestation and associated losses in biodiversity and ecosystem functions.
By late in the twentieth century, scientists had succeeded in manip- ulating organisms at the genetic level, mainly by gene transfer. The major impact of this technology has been seen in the spread of geneti- cally modified (GM) crops, which has occurred with little controversy in some areas and with fierce controversy elsewhere. GM crops raise a very wide range of questions, and I address three areas of particular interest for anthropology and its allied fields.
Les capteurs, allant du simple thermomètre jusqu’aux drones, se sont démocratisés dans les exploitations agricoles. Ils permettent désormais de collecter une multitude d’informations sur l’ensemble de l’exploitation et de transmettre en temps réel des données sur l’état et les performances des machines, des cultures et des animaux.
In the Office du Niger large rice farming irrigation scheme in Mali, water management has been a permanent source of tension between the smallholder tenants and the administration. The transfer of tertiary canal maintenance to the tenant farmers was expected to improve water management but, in practice, that rather led to deterioration.