Sowing the seeds of corporate agriculture: The rise of Canada's third seed regime

Studies in Political Economy

Volumn , Issue 80, 2007, Pages 31-54

  Kuyek, Devlin ^a  

^a UNIVERSITÉ DU QUÉBEC À MONTRÉAL   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 38349057505     PISSN: 07078552     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/19187033.2007.11675082     Document Type: Article

References (86)

1. Harriet Friedmann and Philip McMichael, "Agriculture and the State System: The Rise and Decline of National Agricultures, 1870 to the Present," Sociologia Ruralis 29 (1989), pp. 93-117;
2. Harriet Friedmann, "The Political Economy of Food: A Global Crisis," New Left Review 197 (1993), pp. 29-57.
3. Dwijen Rangnekar, "R&D Appropriability and Planned Obsolescence: Empirical Evidence from Wheat Breeding in the UK (1960-1995)," Industrialand Corporate Change 11/5 (2002), pp. 1011-1029;
4. Jack Ralph Kloppenburg Jr., First the Seed: The Political Economy of Plant Biotechnology, 1492-2000 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
5. R.S. Anderson, E. Levy, and B.M. Morrison, Rice Science and Development Politics: Research Strategies and IRRI's Technologies Confiont Asian Diversity, 1950-1980 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991).
6. Previous studies into the political economy of the seed include Brewster Kneen, The Rape of Canola (Toronto: NC Press, 1992);
7. Kloppenburg, First the Seed;
8. Robin Pistorius and Jeroen van Wijk, The Exploitation of Plant Genetic Information: Political Strategies in Crop Development (New York: CABI Publishing, 1999);
9. Henk Hobbelink, Biotechnology and the Future of World Agriculture: The Fourth Resource (New Jersey: Zed Books, 1991);
10. and Carey Fowler and Pat Roy Mooney, Shattering: Food Politics and the Loss of Genetic Diversity (Tuscon, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1990).
11. Kloppenburg, First the Seed.
12. Indigenous people in Canada continue to care for traditional varieties passed down through generations in the face of enormous obstacles with little or no outside support. See, for example, Sean Robertson, "Legal and Political Strategies for 'Protecting' Traditional Environmental Knowledge in Penticton, Okanagan Nation" (British Columbia, 2006), (accessed 1 June 2007).
13. Claude Aubé, Chronologie du développement alimentaire au Québec (Sainte-Jean-sur-Richelieu, QC: Les Éditions du Monde Alimentaire, 1996);
14. Gordon M. Ward, "A History of the Research Station Harrow, Ontario 1901-1974" (Government of Canada: AAFC Historical Titles Series, 1978), (accessed 10 April 2004).
15. V.C. Fowke, The National Policy and the Wheat Economy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1957);
16. Catharine Parr Traill, The Canadian Settler's Guide (Toronto: Times, 1857).
17. Agriculture and Agri-food Canada, Canada Agriculture: The First Hundred Years (Ottawa, 1967), (accessed 10 April 2004).
18. T.H. Anstey, Cent moissons: Direction generate de la recherche Agriculture Canada, 1886-1986 (Ottawa: Centre d'édition du gouvernement do Canada, 1986).
19. Stephan Symko, "From a Single Seed: Tracing the Marquis Wheat Success Story in Canada to Its Roots in the Ukraine" (Ottawa: A Web Publication of Research Branch, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, 1999).
20. Anstey, Cent moissons;
21. Symko, "From a Single Seed."
22. Fowke, The National Policy.
23. C.F. Wilson, A Century of Canadian Grain: Government Policy to 1951 (Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1978). Marquis was not the only option at the time. One historical study of wheat in Canada describes Red Bobs, a farmer-selected variety with a better milling quality than Marquis and Kubanka, a variety brought by Ukrainian immigrant farmers that not only produced an excellent flour quality but, with its resistance to rust and its very strong awns and root systems, was well adapted to prairie conditions (see Symko, "From a Single Seed").
24. Anstey, Cent moissons, p. 241.
25. J.B. Campbell, "The Swift Current Research Station 1920-70" (Ottawa: Agriculture and Agri-food Canada, 1971).
26. Friedmann, "The Political Economy of Food"; G. Marchildon, "Canadian-American Agricultural Trade Relation; A Brief History," in G. Marchildon, (ed.), Agriculture at the Border: Canada-US Trade Relations in the Global Food Regime (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, 2000).
27. F.H. Buttel, "Ever Since Hightower: The New Politics of Agricultural Research Activism in the Molecular Age." Paper prepared for the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Atlanta, August 2003, (accessed 15 August 2006).
28. Robert L. Zimdahl, "Rethinking Agricultural Research Roles," Agriculture and Human Values 15/1 (1998), pp. 77-84.
29. Statistics Canada, Handbook of Agricultural Statistics: Field Crops, part I, Catalogue 21-516 (Ottawa);
30. Canada, Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Handbook of Agricultural Statistics: Field Crops, part I, Catalogue 21-507 (Ottawa).
31. R.M.A. Lyons and A.J. Begleiter, "An Examination of the Potential Economic Effects of Plant Breeders' Rights on Canada" (Ottawa: Working Paper for Consumer and Corporate Affairs Canada, 1984), p. 109.
32. R.K. Downey, "Presentation on Plant Breeders Rights," in Proceedings of the Conference on Plant Breedering and Breeders Rights in Canada, University of Guelph (June 1971).
33. Kneen, The Rape of Canola, p. 33.
34. Éric Montpetit and William D. Coleman, "Policy Communities and Policy Divergence: Agro-Environmental Policy Development in Quebec and Ontario," Canadian Journal of Political Science 32/4 (1999) pp. 692-714.
35. National Farmers' Union, "The Farm Crisis, Bigger Farms, and the Myths of 'Competition' and 'Efficiency" (Saskatoon, SK: National Farmers' Union, 2003);
36. Graham Riches, "Advancing the Human Right to Food in Canada: Social Policy and the Politics of Hunger, Welfare, and Food Security," Agriculture and Human Values 16/2 (1999), pp. 203-211.
37. Kenneth Dahlberg, "Democratizing Society and Food Systems: Or How Do We Transform Modern Structures of Power?" Agriculture and Human Values 18/2 (2001), pp. 135-151;
38. P. Thompson, "The Reshaping of Conventional Farming: A North American Perspective," Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 14/2 (2001), pp. 217-229;
39. M. Koc and K.A. Dahlberg, "The Restructuring of Food Systems: Trends, Research and Policy Issues," Agriculture and Human Values 16/2 (1999), pp. 109-116;
40. R.J. MacRae, "Not Just What, but How? Creating Agricultural Sustainability and Food Security by Changing Canada's Agricultural Policy-Making Process," Agriculture and Human Values 16/2 (1999), pp. 187-202.
41. Philip McMichael, Development and Social Change 2nd ed. (Boston, MA: Pine Forge Press, 2000);
42. Friedmann, "The Political Economy of Food."
43. Friedmann, "The Political Economy of Food"; G. Galizzi and L. Venturini, (eds.), Vertical Relationships and Coordination in the Food System (New York: Physica-Verlag, 1999).
44. A. Winson, The Intimate Commodity: Food and the Development of the Agro-Industrial Complex in Canada (Toronto: Garamond Press, 1993), pp. 159, 166.
45. Devlin Kuyek, "Lords of Poison: The Pesticide Cartel," Seedling 17/2 (Grain, 2000), pp. 18-27;
46. Richard Lewontin, "The Maturing of Capitalist Agriculture: Farmer as Proletarian," in Fred Magdoff, J. B. Foster, and F. H. Buttel, (eds.), Hungry for Profit: The Agribusiness Threat to Farmers, Food, and the Environment. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000);
47. M. Boehlje, "Industrialization of Agriculture: What Are the Implications?" Choices First Quarter (1996), pp. 30-33;
48. Caroline Daniel, "The Cargill Approach: 'We Don't Lobby. We Go and Share Information,'" Financial Times (26 February 2003);
49. R.E. Goodhue and G.C. Rausser, "Value Differentiation in Agriculture: Driving Forces and Complementaries," in Galizzi and Venturini, Vertical Relationships;
50. E Nichola, "Globalization's Consequences for Vertical Coordination and Competition in the Food System," in Galizzi and Venturini, Vertical Relationships.
51. M. Boehlje and S. Sonka, "Structural Realignment in Agriculture: How Do We Analyze and Understand It?" (University of Illinois, 1998), (accessed 15 August 2006).
52. Bill Vorley, "Food Inc.: Corporate Concentration from Farm to Consumer" (London: UK Food Group, 2003);
53. Friedmann, "The Political Economy of Food."
54. Friedmann, "The Political Economy of Food," p. 53.
55. Ibid.;
56. Nichola, "Globalization's Consequences."
57. E. Wall and B. Beardwood, "Standardizing Globally, Responding Locally: The News Infrastructure, ISO 14000, and Canadian Agriculture," Studies in Political Economy 64 (2001) pp. 33-58;
58. Friedmann, "The Political Economy of Food";
59. Nichola, "Globalization's Consequences."
60. Wendy Larmer, "Neo-liberalism: Policy, Ideology Governmentality" Studies in Political Economy 63 (2000) pp. 5-25;
61. Devlin Kuyek, The Real Board of Directors: The Construction of Biotechnology Policy in Canada, 1980-2002 (Sorrento, BC: Ram's Horn, 2002).
62. Pistorius and van Wijk, The Exploitation of Plant Genetic Information.
63. Jean-Pierre Berlan and R.C. Lewontin, "The Political Economy of Hybrid Corn: A Case Study of Capitalism in Agricultural Production," Monthly Review 38 (July-August 1986), pp. 35-47.
64. Breeders begin by selecting a number of crop lines with desired characteristics and self-pollinating them. The inbreeding is then repeated with subsequent generations in order to isolate "pure lines" - plants that are homozygous and, when inbred, produce exact clones of themselves. With these pure line varieties, the breeder then experiments by crossing one pure line with a different pure line. Some of the crosses should result in a first generation of plants that are completely uniform and, due to a phenomenon called 'heterosis," higher yielding than their inbred parents. But seeds from subsequent generations will produce plants that perform unevenly and poorly, obliging the farmer to purchase new seed every year, thereby increasing seed sales.
65. The political economy of hybrid crops is well documented in Jean-Pierre Berlan, "La génétique agricole: 150 ans de mystifications. Des origines aux chimères géntiques," in Jean-Pierre Berlan, M. Hansen, P. Lannoye, S. Pons, and G.E. Séralini, La guerre au vivant: OGM et mystifications scientifiques, (Montréal: Comeau & Nadeau, 2001) and Kjoppenburg, First the Seed. I have argued that the development of hybrid corn in Ontario does not account for the increases in corn yields over the past century, as is claimed by the seed industry.
66. See Devlin Kuyek, "Reaping What's Sown: How the Privatization of the Seed System Will Shape the Future of Canadian Agriculture" (master's thesis, Université du Québec à Montréal, 2005).
67. GURTS, commonly known as Traitor or Terminator technologies, are genetic engineering techniques that modify plants so that the seeds they produce will not germinate if planted. The technique involves a method whereby a gene is turned on or off in a developmentally regulated fashion and a procedure for controlling the expression of an engineered gene from the outside using a chemical inducer or other factor, such as cold treatment. A farmer saving seeds would conceivably have to spray these seeds with a particular chemical in order for them to germinate. While GURTS technologies have yet to be commercialized, there are a number of companies, as well as the US Department of Agriculture, which hold patents for GURTS or GURTS-related technologies. The US Department of Agriculture and Delta and Pine Land, a US cotton seed company now owned by Monsanto, claim to have advanced a GURTS technology to the point of laboratory and greenhouse tests with tobacco and cotton plants. See ETC Group, "Terminator Technology: Five Years Later," ETC Communiqué 79 (2003).
68. Judge J. MacKay, "Judgement in the case of Monsanto Canada Inc and Monsanto Inc. versus Percy Schmeiser and Schmeiser Enterprises Ltd." (Federal Court of Canada, 29 March 2001).
69. Friesen, Lyle, Alison G. Nelson, and Rene C. Van Acker, "Evidence of Contamination of Pedigreed Canola (B. napus) Seedlors in Western Canada with Genetically Engineered Herbicide Resistance Traits," manuscript under review (Department of Plant Science, University of Manitoba, 2003).
70. GRAIN, "Confronting Contamination: Five Reasons to Reject Co-existence," Seedling (Grain, April 2004), pp. 1-4, (accessed 15 August 2006).
71. Pistorius and van Wijk, The Exploitation of Plant Genetic Information.
72. In a personal communication, a member of the National Farmers' Union revealed that one CFIA bureaucrat within the PBR office complained to her of "literally hundreds" of letters, faxes and e-mails commenting on the proposed changes having poured into her office (14 March 2005).
73. Peter Shinkle, "Monsanto Reaps Some Anger with Hard Line on Reusing Seeds: Agriculture Giant Has Won Millions in Suits against Farmers," St-Louis Post-Dispatch (12 May 2003).
74. Laura Rance, "Farmers Want Protection from Roundup Ready Wheat," The Manitoba Cooperator (1 March 2002).
75. "Opinion," Germination Magazine (July 2002), p. 34.
76. Pamela Cooper, "Plant Breeders Rights: Some Economic Considerations, A Preliminary Report," (Ottawa: Economic Working Paper, Agriculture Canada, 1984), p. 24.
77. Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Proceedings of the 1st European Conference on the Co-existence of Genetically Modified Crops with Conventional and Organic Crops (GMCC-03): GM Crops and Co-existence (Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Research Centre Flakkebjerg, November 2003).
78. Kneen, The Rape of Canola, p. 159.
79. Agriculture Canada, which undertook roughly 70 percent of the breeding work in Canada until at least the early 1980s, chose not to collect royalties from the varieties it licensed to SeCan.
80. National Farmers' Union, "Memo to the Canadian Wheat Board on the Subject of Producer Funding of Plant Breeding Research" (Saskatoon, 10 December 1991).
81. Kneen, The Rape of Canola, pp. 37-38.
82. R. Gray, S. Malla, and S. Ferguson, "Agriculture Research Policy for Crop Improvement in Western Canada: Past Experience and Future Directions." Report prepared for Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food (February 2001), p. 2.
83. ETC Group, "Oligopoly, Inc.: Concentration in Corporate Power, 2005" (December 2005), (accessed 15 August 2006);
84. Kuyek, "Lords of Poison."
85. For information on the example of Dalit women in India, see the website of the Deccan Development Society, .
86. For information on the case of decontamination in Mexico, see Silvia Ribeiro, "The Day the Sun Dies: Contamination and Resistance in Mexico," Seedling (July, 2004), (accessed 15 August 2006).