Sementes transgênicas no brasil: neutralidades, dependências e emancipações tecnológicas

Abstract

This paper analyzes the meanings and the effects of the adherence or resistance strategies to the use of transgenic seeds in Brazil. Therefore, it considers the different models, standard and alternative, of the seed production in course in the country and its implications to the economy, to the preservation of agricultural biodiversity and its associated traditional knowledge as well as on food and nutrition security and on the national food sovereignty. The identification of the genesis and the development conditions of the alternative experiences to the production of the transgenic seeds was held from the collection and systematization of secondary data and from the use of the single case study method, applied to the Rede de Sementes Agroecológicas Bionatur. Besides, it was analyzed and systematized informations from the federal government database, from institutes of agricultural research and from agricultural extension systems, as well as legislation in place. The literature review on the subject had as its main theoretical references the ecological economics, the agroecology, the rural sociology and the social economy. Through the application of these approaches and these research activities, it was possible to point out that the agricultural production model based on the use of transgenic seeds has deleterious effects on the environmental and on the economic system that are not considered when the measurement of the performance of the national agriculture economy. On the other hand, from the analysis of the confrontation experiences to the industrial model of seed production, it was possible to conclude that the capitalist rationality of production is not the only possible or feasible for the food production, contrary to what the dominant ideology preaches.