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Short abstract:

This paper explores questions regarding new genomic technologies (NGTs) and how they are perceived as necessary tools in crop improvement from feminist STS perspective. It focuses on the views of Finnish farmers and ‘consumer-citizens’ against the backdrop of the EU’s new legislation.

Long abstract:

This paper explores questions regarding new genomic technologies (NGTs) and how they are perceived as necessary tools in crop improvement and more broadly, in a sustainable food system. More specifically, it focuses on the views of Finnish farmers and ‘consumer-citizens’ against the backdrop of the EU’s new legislation regulating the use of NGT in plants. The paper is based on focus group discussions with Finnish farmers, ‘consumer-citizens’, and analysis of EU proposals. It engages with feminist and queer theorizations, especially in the analysis of varying conceptions of ‘nature’ and ‘natural’.

The paper suggests that in the literature and politics, on one hand, NGTs are framed as crucial technologies that alleviate the impacts of climate change, among other crises, on crop production. On the other hand, critical views hold that NGTs may reinforce, rather than transform, the inequalities persisting in capitalist food production. With these different future visions in mind, I analyze the ways in which the EU, Finnish farmers and ordinary people generate and reproduce flexible or at times, more fixed boundaries of ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’ in part through the category of organic farming. While the ‘citizen-consumers’ are more prone to advocate ‘pure’ categories such as organic products clean from genetic modification, the farmers negotiate a more complex web of subsidies, markets, and personal dedication. I suggest that through these framings of un/naturalness or purity, also differing ideas of ethics and both the future and the present are at play.