Who Owns Nature?
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Description: This 100th issue of the ETC Communiqué updates Oligopoly, Inc. – the ongoing series tracking corporate concentration in the life industry. It analyses the past three decades of agribusiness efforts to monopolize the 24% of living nature that has been commodified, and exposes a new strategy to capture the remaining three-quarters that has, until now, remained beyond the market economy.
Corporate Power and the Final Frontier in the Commodification of Life Communiqué number: Problems, Fascinations and Opportunities: A Preface Three decades ago, humanity had a problem; science had a fascination; and industry had an opportunity. Our problem was injustice. The ranks of the hungry were expanding while the ranks of farmers were thinning. Meanwhile, science was fascinated by biotechnology – the idea that we could genetically engineer crops and livestock (and people) with traits that could overcome all our problems. Agribusiness saw an opportunity to extract the enormous surplus value that was laced throughout the food chain. The hugely decentralized food system held pockets of profit just crying out to be centralized. All industry had to do was convince governments that biotech’s gene revolution could end hunger without harming the environment. Biotechnology was presented as too risky for small companies and too expensive for public researchers. In order to bring this technology to the world, public breeders would have to stop competing with private breeders, regulators would have to look the other way when pesticide companies bought seed companies which, in turn, bought other seed companies. Governments would have to protect industry’s investments by offering patents first on plants and then on genes. Consumer safety regulations, hard-won over the course of a century, would have to yield to genetically modified foods and drugs. Industry got what it wanted. From thousands of seed companies and public breeding institutions three decades ago, ten companies now control more than two thirds of global proprietary seed sales. From dozens of pesticide companies three decades ago, ten now control almost 90% of agrochemical sales worldwide. From almost a thousand biotech startups 15 years ago, ten companies now have three quarters of industry revenue. And, six of the leaders in seeds are also six of the leaders in pesticides and biotech. Over the past three dec
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| Page title: | Who Owns Nature? | ETC Group |
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| Description: | In this 100th issue of the ETC Communiqué we update Oligopoly, Inc. – our ongoing series tracking corporate concentration in the life industry. We also analyze the past three decades of agribusiness efforts to monopolize the 24% of living nature that has been commodified, and expose a new strategy to capture the remaining three-quarters that has, until now, remained beyond the market economy. |
| IP-address: | 199.58.80.78 |
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| Date | Creation Date: 2000-11-11T22:35:57Z Expiry Date: 2015-11-11T22:35:57Z |