Culturing Development: Bananas, Petri Dishes and ‘Mad Science’

Abstract

This paper analyses a biotechnology-focused project which aims to promote the development and adoption of tissue culture bananas by small-scale farmers in Kenya. The paper highlights the generation of several important narratives that are used to justify the development and dissemination of this technology. First, a disaster narrative, a series of claims regarding rural livelihoods and banana production in Kenya, is generated. This creates a political and technical space for the creation of a new science that can solve these problems. Finally a series of claims regarding the efficacy of the technology in alleviating poverty are made. The project wields these various constructs to create a particular projection of rural Kenya and banana production, deploying data, statistics, economics and 'facts' in order to continually redefine the project as a success. The project can, through a process of defining its own boundaries and limits, justify a technology-led solution to a complex and nuanced set of problems Á the biological subsuming the political. The project thus succeeds as a generator of discourses as much as a generator of technologies.

Farmer-based dynamics in tissue culture banana technology adoption: a socio-economic perspective among small holder farmers in Uganda

“…Therefore, a high yielding technology, which corroborates the socio-economic orientations of the farmers is easily accepted. Actually Smith (2007) earlier argued that that a technology is often valued according to whom it is associated, with, rather than by its utility. Even with a clear comprehension of the "yield decline" narratives in banana production, threats to the economy, livelihoods and food security, a desirable internal momentum within the smallholder farmers has not been created to adopt tissue culture banana technology to solve the threats.…”

Food as medicine: Making ‘better bananas’ in Uganda

“…The project’s goal is to find ‘the golden plant’. The golden plant, or possibly the golden plants suited for different environments, will be multiplied through tissue culture techniques, creating genetic copies (Smith, 2007). Then, if things go to plan, they will be distributed to Ugandan farmers once the regulatory framework (‘the biotech bill’) is finally passed by the government.…”

Health as growth

“…Ugandan small farmers propagate the plant by digging out and chopping off young shoots, called suckers, that emerge from the underground rootstock, and replanting them elsewhere in the field, thereby creating a copy of the 'mother'. A much quicker way for propagation in commercial banana farming is using tissue-culture techniques to create innumerable copies of a plant (Smith 2007). This, however, means that commercial farms are made up of clones of a single plant to ensure the production of uniform bananas for easy commodification.…”