Corn Culture and Dangerous DNA: Real and Imagined Consequences of Maize Transgene Flow in Oaxaca

"Genetic pollution" in Oaxaca has become Exhibit A for critics of crop genetic engineering and the focus of angry charges and counterclaims by biotechnology researchers. Like many disputes about science and technology, this one is linked to economic and resource-control conflicts. To understand why this controversy is so intense, we need to locate the scientific findings and claims about crop gene flow within the broader frame of international agro-food restructuring and its consequences for agrarian communities. The dispute over maize transgene flow in Mexico has unfolded in the context of U.S. and "life industry" agendas for trade liberalization and worldwide expansion of intellectual property rights. Equally germane is the cultural and economic significance of corn and of small-scale farming in Mexico, where rural livelihoods have been hard hid by neoliberal reforms. Whether or not the contested report in Nature (November 2001) stands up to scientific scrutiny, it is probable that the introgression into Mexican local maize varieties of Bt transgene constructs from genetically engineered U.S. corn has occurred, despite Mexico's ban on GE grain planting. The possible risks posed by traveling transgenes are not well understood, but there are plausible scientific reasons for concern about possible hazards to agricultural biodiversity and agro-ecosystems. More troubling, however, are the likely consequences -for local food security, cultural survival, and national economic sovereignty- of the private ownership of staple-crop genetic resources and of the influence on trade policy, agricultural research, seed and food markets, and farming-system options of a small number of powerful states and transnational firms. Processes at the global level (e.g., in the WTO), regional level (e.g., trade pacts in the Americas) and local level (farmers' successes in agroecology and organizing) suggest that the political space for alternative agendas may be opening. Despite the privatization and narrowed focus of much research funding, genetics, ecology, crop science, and participatory research have much to contribute to widening this space by evaluating sustainable-farming options as well as biotechnology applications.