![Sample our Economics, Finance,Business & Industry journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5931/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Economics-Finance-Business-Industry.jpg"})
Abstract
The deployment of molecular markers in the small-scale potato systems in the Bolivian Andes takes place within two contradictory understandings of potato biodiversity. On the one hand, biodiversity is understood as raw material; farmers' varieties have no intrinsic value, value is added by breeders in breeding projects. On the other hand, biodiversity is understood as cultural material; potatoes are final entities created by farmers and therefore they have an intrinsic cultural value. It is argued that the deployment of markers in the cultural understanding of biodiversity (Wiphala genomics) has potentialities to address resource-poor farmers' constraints. Furthermore, the article suggests that some participatory plant-breeding networks are appropriate social platforms for the deployment of molecular markers if the intention is to strengthen both small-scale potato systems and the farmer's position in molecular marker technological systems.
Le déploiement de marqueurs moléculaires dans la production à petite échelle de pommes de terre dans les Andes boliviennes s'effectue face à deux conceptions contradictoires de la biodiversité. D'un côté, la biodiversité est perçue comme une matière première; les variétés des producteurs n'ont pas de valeur intrinsèque, la valeur est ajoutée par le sélectionneur de semences dans le cadre de projets de sélection des semences. D'un autre côté, la biodiversité est perçue comme un facteur culturel; les pommes de terre sont des produits finis créés par les producteurs et ont de ce fait une valeur culturelle intrinsèque. L'idée défendue est que le déploiement de marqueurs, dans l'acception culturelle de la biodiversité (génome Whipala), peut permettre d'aborder les problèmes des producteurs pauvres. De plus, l'article suggère que les réseaux participatifs de sélection de plantes sont des plate-formes sociales appropriées pour le déploiement de marqueurs moléculaires si l'intention est de renforcer à la fois le système productif de la pomme de terre à petite échelle et la position des producteurs dans le système technologique de marqueurs moléculaires.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Professor Guido Ruivenkamp, Dr. Joost Jongerden, and Dr. Ximena Cadima for the comments made on previous drafts of this article. The author also wishes to acknowledge the support given, during the field work, by the researchers of the PROINPA foundation; AGRUCO at the University of Cochabamba; the NGO CENDA; and by farmers of the communities of the Ayllu Majasaya Mujlli, and of the municipalities of Morochata and Llallagua.
Notes
1. In this article, the term ‘genomics’ encompasses both the knowledge and the application of the advances made within molecular biology in the study of genes and their functions. The meaning of the term thus goes beyond more widely accepted neutral definitions like: the study of genes and their functions (www.epa.gov/comptox/glossary.html), the study of the genome (http://pbi-ibp.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/en/media/glossary.htm). Here, therefore, genomics refers also to the application of this knowledge, for example in marker-assisted breeding or biodiversity studies with molecular markers. Moreover, genomics is considered as one of the different biotechnologies.
2. The concept of subsistence agriculture is here used to refer to a type of farming in which all or most of the production is used to feed the household, with very little being sold. It is usually small-scale (with less than one hectare cultivated) and practised by resource-poor farmers. These farmers are resource-poor in terms of access to natural resources, credit, information and external inputs.
3. In this article, potato landraces are also referred to as ‘farmers' varieties’.
4. The seed systems have a circular form in which farmers periodically acquire virus-free potatoes, especially from the higher lands where infectious disease is a less acute problem and a larger number of farmers' varieties is generally grown (Thiele Citation1999; Zimmerer Citation2003).
5. In defining concepts like biodiversity, contradictory meanings are given to what is nominally the same concept by different actors. Following Foucault: as a discourse – a system of ideas or knowledge inscribed in a specific vocabulary – the conceptualisation of biodiversity is used to legitimate the exercise of power.
6. The CGIAR is an ‘alliance of countries, international and regional organisations, and private foundations supporting fifteen international agricultural centres, which work with national agricultural research systems and civil society organisations, including the private sector. The alliance mobilises agricultural science to reduce poverty’ (www.cgiar.org).
7. The GCP is a ‘research and capacity building network that uses plant genetic diversity, advanced genomics science, and comparative biology to develop technologies that could enable plant breeders in developing countries to produce better varieties for resource poor farmers’ (www.generationcp.org/whoweare.php).
8. Fundación para la Promoción e Investigación de Productos Andinos.
9. Wiphala is the emblem that represents Andean cultural and natural diversity.
10. Introgression is in this article defined as the introduction of certain traits (e.g. disease resistances) of one variety into another one. This can be achieved by traditional breeding or by genetic modification.
11. Instituto Boliviano de Tecnología Agropecuaria.
12. In addition to PROINPA, two other local development organisations have been involved in this study: AGRUCO (www.agruco.org) and CENDA (www.cenda.org). Although these two bodies have no technical expertise as such in the development of genomics, their opinions about it may be influential in biotechnological development in the region.
13. See www.worldbank.org.
14. Bolivia has one of the highest levels of income inequality in the world. Regarding rural poverty in particular, World Bank figures for 2002 have some 80% of the rural population as living in poverty, with over half living in extreme poverty (http://siteresources.worldbank.org).
15. It is estimated that Bolivians in general eat an average of 100 kg potatoes per year (Ugarte and Iriarte Citation2002).
16. An appreciation of the revolutionary process of 1952 is essential to understand modern agriculture in Bolivia (see Delgado Citation2002; Regalsky Citation2003).
17. There are six species of sweet potatoes – Solanum stenotomum, Solanum x ajanhuiri, Solanum goinocalyx Solanum phureja, Solanum chaucha, and Solanum tuberosum spp andigena – and an additional two species of bitter potatoes – Solanum x juzepczukii and Solanum x curtilobum.
18. It appears that the communities around Llallagua city in the province of North Potosí in the Potosí department manage around 180 varieties (Franz Terrazas, personal communication, October 2006).
19. By way of example of the massive emigration, around 350 persons of the total population of 1,400 have left from the valley of Piusilla, in the municipality of Morochata, Cochabamba over recent years. (Justo López, personal communication, October 2006). This type of movement is not only from rural to urban areas, but also emigration abroad, especially to Spain (around 600 Bolivians arrive in Spain every day – Junquera Citation2007).
20. They are supported by international institutions like the World Bank or the International Potato Centre of Peru.
21. There are several types of techniques to identify MMs such as microsatellites, AFLP, FRLP, etc.
22. Gabriel et al. (Citation2006) report that only 25% of farmers' varieties have been used in breeding programmes.
23. Genetic fingerprinting is based on the assumption that every plant individual variety of population has a representative genetic profile. This technique can also be used to support property claims.
24. PROINPA has to think about alternatives to some expensive elements that they employ to apply molecular markers. For instance, they use large wooden mortar instead of an ice grinding machine, or sugar cane alcohol as a substitute for the imported ethanol.
25. These activities are especially concentrated on searching for duplications within the bank collection and on developing core collections as strategic entrance into the collection for plant breeders. For these purposes, PROINPA uses microsatellites MMs (J. Rojas, personal communication, 2 November 2006; Jentzsch Citation2003).
26. In his most recent book ‘Global Biopiracy’, Ikechi Mgbeoji (Citation2006) uses the term ‘biopiracy’ to describe the process by which industrialised countries appropriate knowledge about the use of plants built up over centuries by farmers in the poor third world and appropriate the genetically wealthy position from the South by building up their own stores of genetic material. Mgbeoji analyses this process as operating in three main ways. Firstly, it operates at a socio-cultural level. This is expounded in discursive Foucaultian terms with the ‘denigration and denial of the intellectual input of traditional farmers and breeders, particularly women, in the improvement of plants’ (by the scientific discourse). Secondly, it works at the institutional level by the systematic collection of plant materials from the South and the setting up of an international system of gene banks strategically situated in the centres of genetic diversity (like the International Potato Centre in Peru). These centres have been sponsored by the North and their materials have flowed in the opposite direction to the financing. Thirdly, there is a legal operation level of biopiracy. This has been made possible by ‘a deliberate lowering of the threshold for patentability and several other forms of judicial and legislative intervention in the patent law system that have resulted in serving the ever-expanding interests of Western corporate seed merchants and pharmaceutical and biotechnological companies’.
27. The debates on biodiversity in the environment sector culminated in the (1992) Rio de Janeiro UN Conference on the Environment and Development. One chapter of ‘Agenda 21’ deals with biodiversity. Through the Convention on Biological Diversity, biodiversity became a natural resource that could in fact be traded. Biological diversity includes all living matter, including natural and agricultural species (Louwaars et al. Citation2006).
28. The debates on biodiversity in the trade sector led to the (1994) Marrakesh agreement, which included the establishment of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the TRIPS. The TRIPS specifies minimum standards for IPRs in the territories of member countries of the WTO. TRIPS requires that all products and processes must be patentable, with some possible exceptions like diagnostic, therapeutic and surgical methods for the treatment of humans or animals.
29. The ACC is the main policy-making body of the Andes region. Its members are Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, and Colombia. Its legislative role is effected through the adoption of decisions taken by the Andean Council of Foreign Ministers.
30. Such regional and national regulations effectively allow for bilateral agreements between states. Although not mandated by as such by the CBD, this is how most countries have chosen to exercise their sovereignty (Pistorius et al. 1999).
31. Three native varieties have been exported to Switzerland, a process led by the Bolivian potato seed company SEPA. To my knowledge, this is the only instance of a foreign organisation managing to complete all the bureaucratic procedures required to get potatoes out of the country.
32. This penchant for collecting is institutionally recognised by the Centre for Genetic Resources, and operates as a two-way process – an illustration of which would be the ‘repatriation’ in 2006 of 528 accessions of 30 wild relative species from Wageningen ‘back’ to the potato gene bank of Bolivia.
33. Global capital harnessed to the institutional mission of industry (profit maximisation) is clearly, one would think, a far more powerful force than the collecting/repatriation approach represented by university biotech departments such as at Wageningen.
34. International discussion here contributed to the debate on farmers' rights and rights pertaining to indigenous knowledge, which led to the establishment, in 2000, of the Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge, Genetic Resources and Folklore, under the auspices of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
35. See www.constituyente.bo.
36. Municipio Biocultural y de la Conservación de la Papa Nativa, and Municipio Agroecológico y de la Diversidad.
37. Jack Kloppenburg suggests that the types of so-called ‘alternative’ or ‘community’ or ‘traditional’ resource rights that have so far been developed are really just derivatives of western intellectual property rights. He adds: ‘I haven't seen any frameworks of mechanism that effectively protect the interest of indigenous peoples or of villages of or regions from the predations from biopirates of the North’ (GRAIN 2005). Maybe the developments in Llallagua and Colomi are the beginning of a new trend.
38. The GCP will focus on the 22 CGIAR mandate crops, of which the potato is one.
39. See above, note 6.
40. Microsatellite is one type of molecular marker.
41. EMBRAPA (Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuaria) is the public Brazilian agricultural research corporation mandated to ‘provide feasible solutions for the sustainable development of Brazilian agribusiness through knowledge and technology development and transfer’ (www.embrapa.br).
42. This includes, of course, farmers' varieties. In fact, the potato collections in Bolivia are formed by some 528 accessions of 31 wild relatives and 1700 accessions of native or farmers varieties.
43. An interesting GCP approach is the humanitarian licence initiative, according to which farmers below a certain income level do not need a licence in order to use GCP-developed technologies (which includes the reproduction and sale of seeds of varieties that are protected or contain protected inventions) (Louwaars et al. Citation2006). Ironically, these farmers are not used to asking for permission to use new varieties anyway.
44. The Qulla Suyu was the south-eastern part of the Inca Empire, covering present day Bolivia. The Qulla emblem, sometimes referred to as the Bolivian Indian flag. Tupac Katari (born Julián Apasa) was a leader of the rebellion against Hispanic rule – heading a force that reached 40,000 during a bloody, unsuccessful siege of La Paz, in 1781 – and whose memory was invoked in the first Aymara political parties during the 1970s – the Tupac Katari Revolutionary Movement (MRTK, Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Katari) and the Tupac Katari Indian Movement (MITKA, Movimiento Indio Tupac Katari) – and then later in the early 1990s guerrilla army (EGTK, Ejército Guerrillero Túpac Katari) (www.crwflags.com, http://migs.concordia.ca/documents/RobinsSymbolicDiscourse.doc, www.zmag.org).
45. Centro de Apoyo al Desarrollo.
46. PROINPA supports other similar experiences with retail trade of potato native varieties. One is organised by the farmers' association APROTAC (Asociación de Productores Andinos 1ra. Candelaria), in the municipality of Candelaria, Cochabamba. Another one is organised by the farmers' association APRA (Asoción de Productores Andinos San Isidro), in the municipality of Morochata, Cochabamba.
47. Together with other factors like insect pests and the introduction of improved varieties, Phytophthora has even led to the complete loss of native varieties in the community of Compañia Pampa, Cochabamba (Herbas, Torrez, Almanza, Thiele and Gabriel Citation2000).
48. Though not necessarily genes themselves, quantitative trait loci (QTLs) are stretches of DNA that are closely linked to the genes that underlie a trait. QTLs can be identified molecularly (for example, with PCR) to help map regions of the genome that contain genes involved in specifying a quantitative trait. This can be an early step in identifying and sequencing these genes (www.wikipedia.org).
49. STM1104, STPoAc58, STM0019, STM0037, STWAX-2, STM1052, STM0030, STM1016, STM1097, STM1106 (Rojas and Canedo Citation2005).
50. Although these are the intentions, there have not been any developments for the implementation of this property framework within practical experiences to date (J. Gabriel, personal communication, 23 October 2006).
51. See www.prgaprogram.org
52. See www.papandina.cip.cgiar.org
53. Polypotent: potent in many ways.
54. Indeed, the foregoing section showed how research institutions can also be polypotent, i.e. function in ways that imply more than one assumption about a technology's aim and effects, especially in regard to the social dimension.
55. International Rice Research Institute and International Maize and Wheat Research Institute.
56. Both IRRI and CIMMYT were co-founded by the Rockefeller Foundation.
57. Mendel's laws: the laws of the transmission of hereditary characteristics from parent to progeny organisms.
58. The Centre for Genetic Resources in the Netherlands (gene bank), for example, calls Quechua and Aymara varieties ‘primitive’ varieties, a term that carries obvious pejorative connotations (www.cgb.wur.nl). While such terminology has long since passed out of the vocabulary of the social sciences, the physical sciences would appear to assume an objective distance from such considerations, removing them the socio-political realm. As argued, this really is not appropriate in the case of (bio)technology. While hard science might justifiably wish to be spared the passing terminological fashions of the humanities and liberal arts, it cannot claim immunity from a sea change.
59. Tired seeds (semilla cansada) are seeds affected by viruses that are transmitted from generation to generation, a process to which potatoes, as tubers, are particularly vulnerable. Yields are cut by up to 20% (Thiele Citation1997).
60. From the 4000 kg of seed potatoes produced in 2006, around 3000 kg were commercial varieties.
61. Both men and women; they were equally involved in the process.
62. Almost all based on the most popular variety, Waych'a.
63. Notice that in most participatory plant breeding projects, crosses are performed by plant breeders (Bentley Citation1994).
65. For other, interesting examples of participatory plant breeding in which PROINPA plays an important role, see www.preduza.org (Danial, Parlevliet, Almerkinders and Thiele Citation2007; Gabriel et al. 2007). However, because the economic restrictions that typically characterise ‘pro-poor’ institutions like PROINPA, and since there are no large public extension facilities, their projects are usually limited in scope, oriented to just few communities instead of wider areas and larger groups of farmers. The structural impact of these interesting projects is consequently rather small.