AGRICULTURAL BIOTECHNOLOGY TRANSFER TO DEVELOPING COUNTRIES UNDER THE COOPERATION-COMPETITION PARADOX

Abstract

This is a time of cooperation, competition and contradictions. The paper provides a historical framework for understanding (I) how the process of transferring agricultural technology from developed to developing countries has evolved from colonial times to the present; (II) how international cooperation initiatives have developed from the era of exploitation without cooperation to the era of cooperation for convenience to the era of cooperation and competition; and (III) why some major contradictions are emerging under the cooperation-competition paradox. The paper also reveals how over time the degree of (under)development of S&T has influenced the strategies used by developed countries to benefit from developing countries' weaknesses built by the scientific and technological gap between them; from the era of economic botany to the era of agricultural chemistry to the era of Mendelian genetics to the era of molecular genetics.