Dependence and monopoly in international trade of genetically modified seeds

Author(s)

Aline Regina Alves Martins

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas
• Defense date: 2010-06-04

Examining board members

Reginaldo Carmello Corrêa de Moraes; Luís Fernando Ayerbe; Sebastião Carlos Velasco e Cruz

• Advisor: Reginaldo Carmello Corrêa de Moraes

Abstract

In the Scientific-Technical Revolution (1970), information and knowledge are transformed in sources of higher productivity and socioeconomic development. In agriculture, the genetically modified organisms represent the conformation of that new international technological dynamic. In an economy directly rooted in the production and use of knowledge, this research primarily investigates the existence of a monopoly in the field of genetically modified seeds by certain companies and countries, which would undermine less advanced countries in agricultural biotechnology. To what extent are technology and information organized into global flows or in an asymmetric structure establishing a division between countries able to participate in the process of generating new agricultural technologies and those who passively absorb knowledge coming from outside? How the polarization of strategic knowledge and information would result and perpetuate inequalities in the global economy and what legal and political mechanisms support this concentration? (AU)