“The Technological Fix Criticisms and the Agricultural Biotechnology Debate” by Dane Scott, as the title suggests, examines the criticisms levied at the modern practice of solving problems of food and nutritional insecurity with novel inventions and techniques. To clarify, agricultural biotechnology encompasses all the tools humanity has crafted to alter living organisms to better suit human needs and ranges from cross-breeding to genetic engineering. The article frames the criticisms into two major categories, those that are philosophical in nature and those that are practical. Opponents of biotechnology on philosophical grounds decry the uncritical faith in the adoption of new technology to solve social problems rather than investing in social engineering to combat those same problems. Because science involves the breaking down of the world into its base components and restructuring natural phenomena into inputs, processes and outputs, it plays an integral roles in perpetuating humanity’s domination of nature. After all, if a process can be understood, it can be manipulated to the benefit of humans. Through this anthropocentric (human-centric) lens, the inherent value of living organisms are easily ignored and reassigned based on its usefulness to human interest. This normalisation of the exploitation and domination of nature is considered both morally reprehensible and unjustifiable for opponent of biotechnology. Furthermore, because society operates on the paradigm of production, which assumes more production is always better, agricultural innovations trend towards becoming increasingly intensive and therefore environmental damaging and exploitative.
On the other hand, proponents of biotechnology point toward the two irreconcilable goals of ensuring food security for humanity and respecting the autonomy of nature. Since the agricultural revolution that enabled humanity’s transition from nomadic hunter-gatherers to fixed settler in communities, agricultural biotechnology in the form of selective and cross breeding has been used to improve harvests and resistance to diseases. It has become an integral part that allows society to function the way it has and for humanity to florish. Faced with these two opposing interests, the proponents claim the only way to satisfy both would be to generate a third option through the improvement of technology. The article rightly notes that this argument fails to address the underlying moral dilemma of unjust acts being committed towards nature and in fact would further exacerbate the problem as more unjust acts would be committed in hope of preventing future injustice. However, the physical reality of the situation of two irreconcilable interest also can not be dismissed. All things being equal, the interests of nature not to be dominated by humans itself can not overrule humanity’s interest in survival anymore than the other way around.
There are three paths that can be charted for the course of agricultural biotechnology: forwards, backwards and stationary. As previously discussed in the paragraph above, to continually invest in biotechnology would be to continually perpetual the domination and exploitation of nature for solutions that may or may not be effective in combating social problems. Even to halt the development of new technology and rely on current methods would still mean the continuation of the abuse of nature, if to a lesser degree. But suppose humanity decides to relinquish the tools it has thus far crafted, that would mean finding new solution to combat new problems that may arise, such as the sudden appearance of a virulent strain of disease that causes potatoes to rot and harvests to fail. A technological fix could be to produce a new breed of potatoes resistant to the disease, while some social solutions would be to plant other staple crops, import more food, attempt to contain the spread of the disease, move away, etc. In this case, a technological fix would be the simplest, most convenient to implement and cause the least societal disruption, whereas the social solutions require more thought, organisation, coordination and compliance. Yet even in this scenario, farms elsewhere will exist having crops altered by biotechnology, a clear symbol of the domination of nature that can not be reversed. No crop unaltered by human hand exist that is productive enough to sustain the current human population. None of these scenarios conclusively eliminate the philosophical dilemma of the exploitation of nature, though some alleviate it to some degree. Makes one wonder if it could ever be adequately resolved.
Work Cited
Scott, Dane. “The Technological Fix Criticisms and the Agricultural Biotechnology Debate.” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, vol. 24, no. 3, June 2011, pp. 207–226. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=phl&AN=PHL2170640&site=ehost-live&scope=site.