Food for the few : neoliberal globalism and biotechnology in Latin America /

This anthology is both enlightening and disturbing. A team of multinational specialists explores the political economy implications of agricultural biotechnologies and genetically modified (GM) crops in Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil from local, national, and global perspectives. This work is enlightening because it offers fresh insights and data, and disturbing because it blames global neoliberalism and particularly US biotechnology corporations for the economic woes and "social polarization" of Latin America. GM soybeans are singled out as the villain that ended traditional agriculture in sugarcane, potato, and dairy farming in Argentina. Not well scrutinized are other villains such as state failure, a rent-seeking mentality among politicians and agribusiness, new market demands in East Asia, and NAFTA. The political fracas in Brazil opened the door for smuggling GM soybeans (dubbed "Maradona" soybeans) from Argentina. The authors discuss the negative impacts of large, capital-intensive farming on small farmers and the environment, but readers familiar with Latin America's history and international political economy can quibble with the book's sweeping thesis that GM technology caused "small peasant farmers [to be] rendered inefficient and expelled from agriculture." Nevertheless, this volume addresses important, controversial issues and will be useful to readers interested in Latin America and agricultural biotechnology. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through researchers and practitioners. E. Pang Colorado School of Mines