lation of genes in the second half of the period. This allows
for greater efficiency in the use of these techniques and for
a reduction in the negative effects on the environment. Biotechnology
goes back to the technological base of genetic
improvement processes, integrated into conventional processes.
Nanotechnology for its part realizes its first successes
with intelligent systems for monitoring crops and livestock,
by using nano-electronic sensors based on DNA and other
molecules. There is also integration of the two disciplines
for development of environmental remediation systems,
although these technologies do not develop fully. Biotechnology
is also used successfully to develop plant biomass
adapted to the needs of agroindustry, producers, and consumers.
Moreover, other alternative forms of energy (wind,
photovoltaic, hydrogen, etc.) begin to arrive on the markets.
Some of them, which are more economical than biofuels,
threaten to displace them from the market. These advances
are made most often by the large transnational companies
that export know-how to the less developed countries.
3.4.1.2.2 AKST systems
The division of labor between the public and private R&D
sectors is expanded in the few countries that still have public
research institutes. Public institutes focus primarily on a
research agenda for the poor segments of rural producers
and consumers
For private transnationals that dominate R&D, research
is centered primarily on all those technologies most
directly geared to immediate application. These companies
also maintain a portfolio of basic science projects oriented
to new applications of biotechnology, nanotechnology,
and their integration. Profitable applications based on
knowledge generated by these initiatives are obtained with
increasing speed, or in other words, the time between generating
basic knowledge and its technological application is
shortened.
Public AKST organizations still active in LAC rely increasingly
on more basic knowledge generated by transnationals.
In LAC, transnational companies also play the most
important role in AKST. For this reason, there is no problem
in incorporating advances in formal knowledge; actually,
the process of obtaining advances in knowledge already has
the incorporation of those advances built in, because these
companies use the scientific skills of persons throughout the
world.
The large companies do not save resources for AKST
activities, because they need to continuously renew all the
available technologies for the agricultural sector so that they
will be in a better position to displace their competitors on
the technology market.
Governments continue to perform the function of suppliers
of financial resources for development of technologies
for the poor. Transnationals also provide financing for
this purpose, to enhance their corporate mage in public
opinion.
There are practically no more spaces—except for marginal
ones—for technological development by public organizations,
which concentrate on basic and applied research.
The public research that is done is directed to vulnerable social
groups and “social” farm products such as rice, yucca,
and beans.
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R&D is highly successful in developing products that
consumers throughout the world are eager to buy. These
products are extremely varied, to satisfy all tastes. Consequently
they form a large mass of constantly changing products,
virtually on a daily basis.
The companies also develop technology for all the components
of production chains, from producers of inputs up
to distributors of processed products. Although these products
are developed and produced efficiently, their effectiveness
is more problematical, because markets and consumers
constantly want consumer products to have new attributes.
In other words, the effectiveness of a product is ephemeral.
The technologies developed are adapted to large companies
that compete on markets for agriculture-based products
(but not necessarily agricultural products in the traditional
sense of the term). For traditional agricultural production
systems, some low-intensity technologies are also developed;
these technologies take into account their possible environmental
impact and also serve to mitigate climate change or
to adapt to it, or to do both.
3.4.1.2.3 Agricultural production systems
The process of incorporating knowledge into agriculture,
initiated during the previous period, thus continues. This
process occurs by incorporating new inputs into production
systems or because of the need to comply with regulations
or meet demands for quality. Its development is promoted
by more favorable conditions for investment in education,
greater availability of resources for agriculture, and more
open markets and borders.
In many LAC countries, farm production is directed to
external markets, especially those made up of countries with
greater purchasing power and vigorous domestic markets.
A reasonable proportion of small agricultural producers
manages to gain entry to markets, with the result that their
improved education is reflected in improved production systems
and competitive capacity. Many others, however, that
do not achieve this comparative advantage of improved education
are displaced from their rural work to the cities.
The countries in the region generally have adequate resources
consistent with their size, economy, and intellectual
and technological capacity. Transnationals are monopolies
that govern the use of natural resources, such as water and
fertile soils, for agricultural activity.
The large agriculture-based corporations experience
trade competition similarly to transnationals that dominate
the creation of agricultural technology, because they constantly
need to produce new innovative products to satisfy
their markets. The products are developed on an agricultural
basis, but they have strong components of bio- and
nanotechnology. They include, by way of example, fiber
crops with thermodynamic properties, monitored by nanosystems,
plants that synthesize HIV innoculations and microorganisms
that remedy environmental contamination.
These corporations use as inputs commodities produced on
huge tracts of land with highly mechanized and automated
techniques.
The large corporations frequently integrate all the processes
for agricultural production and production of inputs,
and other times they outsource them. They build highly
competitive, more regionalized production chains that are
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