ABSTRACT
Biotechnologies have completely transformed agricultural value chains. As the first country to legalize genetically-modified (GM) seeds in South America, Argentina is an ideal site to analyze how this transformation unfolds. This chapter presents the concept ‘Biotechnological Agrarian ModelÈ (BAM) as a way in which agrarian extractivism expands in Argentina. It is a process of change and restructuring in which biotechnologies, including GM seeds, shape agrarian relations of production. The importance of these technologies in the dynamics of agrarian change requires a deeper understanding into the laboratories and universities in which they are produced, and the constant and fluid process of expropriation and reappropriation of knowledge. This chapter explains how GM seeds are born from the production-expropriation-appropriation of knowledge as exchange value, and why the BAM expresses the violence of accumulation by dispossession that shapes extractive capitalism. Finally, this chapter reveals how this model (that strengthens the integration of science and agriculture) created institutional and regulatory frameworks in Argentina to consolidate and expand the political domination of this new phase of capital accumulation in agriculture.
