Nature - autonomous learning

de-naturalisation 165Figure 3.2 Seed firms, farmers and capitalist accumulation: producing nature.Reproduced from Castree (2001a)whether genetically modified crops exacerbate the environmental and socialills associated with hybrid crops.It is, I hope, clear from the discussion above that the arguments of Smith,Kloppenburg and other like-minded Marxists do not amount to the absurdclaim that capitalist firms have complete control of the non-human world.For these authors significant parts of that world are indeed ‘constructed’in the most physical of ways. But this is not the same as saying that producednature lacks a certain agency and unpredictability of its own. For instance,the biotechnology firms who have vigorously promoted GM crops forover a decade admit that they cannot anticipate the impact these cropswill have on other flora and fauna.Whatever the impact may be, from theFigure 3.1 (opposite) Production of double-cross hybrid seed corn using manualdetasseling. Reproduced from Kloppenburg (1988: 100)Note: The process begins with two pairs of homozygous inbred lines (A, B and C,D). Each pair is crossed (A B, C D) by planting the two lines in alternatingrows and emasculating the femal parent by manual removal of the pollensheddingtassel (this process is known as detasseling). Only seed from the femaleparents is collected top ensure that no selfed seed is obtained. Plants grown fromthis single-cross seed are themselves crossed following the same procedure: (A B) (C D). seed is again collected from the female parent, and it is thisgermplasm that is the double-cross hybrid seed sold for farm production