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Short abstract:

This talk mobilizes theories of "technology sovereignty" to address how Argentinean biotechnology imaginaries get articulated through the development and promotion of the first GM wheat approved for human consumption.

Long abstract:

With the recent election of right-wing populist Javier Milei as president, the future of public science in Argentina is uncertain. Milei campaigned on promises to defund public R&D, and to cut environmental and health programs. Simultaneously, public/private partnerships in genetic engineering put the biotech sector in a “very small club” with Argentina ranking among the top countries for biotech (Stubrin et al 2023). Being one the few countries “with the capability to improve crops through modern biotechnology” (Patiño 2023), poises Argentinean biotech to disrupt the North-South knowledge transfer paradigm (Medina et al. 2014).

But Argentinean biotech is treading into highly contested territory to do so. Out of a public/private partnership has come the world’s first GM wheat approved for humans. HB4 Wheat is touted as a breakthrough for “regenerative” agriculture and proof that national S&T ought to be among the global technological elite. HB4 wheat was, however, designed to solve a problem partly created by GMO monocropping in Argentina (drought) and it fails to address related socioenvironmental impacts of ag biotech. We explore the transformation of Argentinean biotechnology imaginaries through attention to how HB4 wheat was designed and promoted. Drawing on Montenegro de Wit’s (2022) theory of technology sovereignty, we focus on innovation imaginaries in which Argentinean biotech could be the sector that resurrects the country’s troubled economy and global standing, even while that may only further the technological lock-in the sector currently finds itself (Marin et al. 2023; Rickards et al. 2017).