Article ID: CBB760093068

Keep Calm and Carry On: Climate-ready Crops and the Genetic Codification of Climate Myopia (September 2021)

unapi

The diverse ways that extreme climate events are expressed at the local level have represented a challenge for the development of transgenic “climate-ready” (resilient to environmental stress) seeds. Based on the Argentinean “HB4” technology, this paper analyzes how ignorance and a sunflower gene are mobilized to overcome this difficulty in soy and wheat. HB4 seeds can be understood as myopic: the technology does not obstruct the capacity of soy and wheat plants to sense droughts, but it prevents their natural reaction, which would be to put a halt on crop production and redirect their energy toward survival. Plants thus become “short-sighted” to droughts. Informed by ignorance studies and by the immunological concept of tolerance, this paper analyzes HB4 myopia as a type of nonhuman ignorance: an asset that allows plant breeders to achieve varied plant responses to droughts and to encode their capitalist values (that prioritize production over survival) into plants’ DNA. Moreover, ignorance becomes a molecular commodity that can be selected, transferred between organisms, and traded in markets. HB4’s prioritization of production resonates with other technologies of climate adaptation and mitigation that do not promote structural changes to the capitalist system.

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Authors & Contributors
Gramelsberger, Gabriele
Arancibia, Florencia
Shana Lee Hirsch
Maite P. Salazar
Otsuka, Yoshiki
María Sol Terlizzi
Concepts
Technoscience; science and technology studies
Climate change
Genetically modified organisms
Agriculture
Biotechnology
Genetic engineering
Time Periods
21st century
20th century
20th century, late
Places
Argentina
United States
Falkland Islands
South Atlantic Ocean
Congo
Columbia River
Institutions
International Council for Science
Future Earth. Systems of Sustainable Consumption and Production Knowledge-Action Network
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