2
Upon the domestic political scene, the modern scientific age has had three major effects.
Power has shifted from the people to the government. Within the government, power has
shifted from democratically responsible officials to certain technological elites, military
and scientific, which are not democratically responsible. In consequence, popular
participation in, and control over, the affairs of government has drastically decreased.
Hans J. Morgenthau
Contemporary debates over genetically modified food (GMOs) are polarized
between proponents claiming they seek to end world hunger and opponents insisting that
“Frankenfoods” will destroy the ecosystem.
1
While these debates focus on the virtues
and vices of scientists and corporations, they conspicuously ignore the significant
involvement of the American state in spurring the development of GMOs. This paper
intervenes into these debates by exploring the U.S. government’s role in laying a market
foundation for the agricultural biotechnology industry. I argue that the agricultural
biotechnology industry should be viewed as the beneficiary of a strategic industrial policy
aimed toward outperforming competitors in world food markets. While this argument is
central to my overall dissertation project, I concentrate in this paper on only a thin slice.
2
In particular, I examine the domestic strengthening of intellectual property rights as a key
policy tool of this broader state strategy between 1970-1974.
By isolating this policy tool, this paper seeks to introduce the concept of
‘manufacturing scarcity’ as it pertains to the paper’s title.
3
In so doing, it emphasizes
1
For a sampling of contrasting views, see Robert L. Paarlberg, “The Global Food Fight,” Foreign Affairs
(May/June 2000) and Vandana Shiva, Monocultures of the Mind: Perspectives on Biodiversity and
Biotechnology (London: Zed Books, 1993). Gentically-modified foods are often abbreviated as GMOs
which stands for genetically-modified organisms.
2
My dissertation is currently entitled, “Institutionalizing Food Power: U.S. Foreign Policy, Intellectual
Property Rights, and the Agricultural Biotechnology Industry, 1972-1994.”
3
Susan K. Sell and Christopher May, “Moments in law: contestation and settlement in the history of
intellectual property law,” Review of International Political Economy 8:3 (Autumn 2001): 467-500. Sell
Convention