Agricultural Knowledge and Technology in Latin America and the Caribbean: Plausible Scenarios for Sustainable Development | 139

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.

 

     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