techniques, which in developed countries is reflected in the decrease in negative effects on the environment. Biotechnology becomes the basis for genetic improvement projects; the use of conventional improvement systems moves to second place. Nanotechnology in turn is used successfully for the first time in intelligent systems for monitoring crops and livestock and food processing systems. These systems rely on the use of electronic nano-sensors based on the characterization of DNA, which are especially designed to detect threats to biosafety or biosecurity in raw materials or processed foods.
     Nanotechnology is also used to develop systems for tracing origin and preservation of identity. These systems are sold to poor countries that want to export their raw materials to rich countries and so must comply with the identity preservation requirements for exports. This technology is also used to generate strict control protocols for biosecurity and biosafety in international transactions.

Biotechnology is also used to produce plant biomass adapted to the needs of agroindustry, producers, and consumers in LAC countries in a better economic situation. Moreover, other sources of energy cheaper than biofuels begin to be developed and threaten to take over their market share. These advances are realized in most cases by large transnationals that export their know-how to less developed countries.

3.4.2.2.2 AKST systems
Scientific activity, virtually abandoned in LAC countries, is left on its own. In many countries the scarce resources of the people encourage the formation of markets for traditional products. For instance, expensive medicines manufactured by international laboratories are replaced by active principals obtained directly from plant biodiversity. However, since there is no interaction between formal and traditional knowledge, the systematization of the latter and its incorporation in formal systems are reduced. The activity of generating know-how and technology is left to the developed countries outside LAC.
     The capacity to incorporate advances in formal knowledge is in the hands of large transnational corporations, because there are actually no public or private research institutions or universities that perform this work effectively. At the outset of the period there is a fleeting attempt to incorporate traditional know-how into efforts to generate agricultural products.
     R&D resources come from major transnational corporations, which tend to focus on their short-term interests and the needs of markets outside the region. There are virtually no other sources of funds to sustain sizeable investments in R&D. The focus of the large corporations is on the competitiveness of commodities and biosecurity protocols. These are produced with technologies generated in other countries, which are directly applied or adapted to the conditions of LAC and exported to wealthier countries outside the region.
     Almost all the R&D produced by large corporations is directed to improving successful products, such as transgenic varieties, or to testing new products, to serve external and internal markets. For the R&D activities of these corporations, the countries in the region have a comparative advantage

in that they can explore the environment without facing protests from environmentalist organizations, taxes are low, and there are generally few restrictions to such exploration. Locally important food crops, such as beans and yucca, are not the subjects of the R&D done by these corporations. However, the technologies generated by the corporations are not the best suited to the diverse needs of the countries of the region, either in terms of sustainable development, or their culture or production conditions.

3.4.2.2.3 Agricultural production systems
The slow economic growth of the region makes it much more difficult to incorporate know-how into agriculture, and especially as required for the most vulnerable production systems. Moreover, the large corporations no longer operate as organizations dedicated to a broad sector of activity, such as production of inputs, for example, but instead they operate as large, well-coordinated production chains, ranging from production to sale of these same inputs, including technology, and including the production and sale of agricultural products. Know-how is automatically incorporated into these chains as part of the whole process.
     Production systems that do not participate in these chains do not have an adequate supply of technology to solve the problems of agricultural pests and diseases or to adapt to higher temperatures, nor do they have the resources to incorporate innovations when there are a few available.      The vast majority of LAC countries lose a great deal of their competitive capacity on external markets, due to the following factors:
• The rich countries become increasingly closed to guarantee the best markets to their own agricultural producers;
• The rapid change in the technological base of economic development, increasingly more dependent on expensive technologies, such as biotechnology and nanotechnology, information sciences, geomantics, and on their incorporation, which are not affordable for all countries of the region;
• The creation of new products with these technologies incorporated into them, that are not dependent on the use of commodities—the principal exports of LAC, which have experienced a sharp drop in international prices;
• The limited capacity of the region to maintain agriculture free of pollutants, diseases and pests.

Few LAC countries, especially the largest ones, sell their agricultural production on external markets. In all the LAC countries, the domestic market is an important target for agriculture. For most of the countries, that market is virtually the only market on which the large corporations participate as chains. Small-scale vulnerable producers supply the poor on local markets, or sustain themselves. It is increasingly more difficult for these producers to become part of production chains, due to their reduced capacity to satisfy certification and biosecurity and biosafety requirements.
     In view of the ongoing poverty crisis and social and productive vulnerability, the stakeholders of vulnerable production systems are reliant on assistance to mitigate social and natural emergencies.