Can the Poor Help GM Crops? Technology, representation & cotton in the Makhathini flats, South Africa

Harald Witt, Rajeev Patel and Matthew Schnurr

Review of African Political Economy, 2006, vol. 33, issue 109, 497-513

Abstract: The adoption of Genetically Modified (GM) cotton in South Africa's Makhathini Flats in 1998 was heralded as a case in which agricultural biotechnology could benefit smallholder farmers, and a model for the rest of the continent to follow. Using historical, political economic and ethnographic data, we find the initial enthusiasm around GM technology to be misguided. We argue that Makhathini's structured institutional framework privileges adopters of GM technologies through access to credit and markets. The adoption of GM cotton is symptomatic not of farmers’ endorsement of GM technology, but a sign of the profound lack of choice facing them in the region.

Date: 2006
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DOI: 10.1080/03056240601000945

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Review of African Political Economy is currently edited by Graham Harrison, Branwen Gruffydd Jones, Claire Mercer, Nicolas Pons-Vignon, Aurelia Segatti and Ray Bush

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