New in print with @natalatl: Domestication, crop breeding, and genetic modification are fundamentally different processes. Calling #GMOs just another kind of plant modification, ignores the most critical break - the sociopolitical uses of the technology
link.springer.com/article/10.100…
link.springer.com/article/10.100…
Yes, domestication, institutional breeding, and biotech all involve genetic and phenotypic changes, but while domestication is a diffuse coevolutionary process, commercial breeding and biotech have focused overwhelmingly on crops and traits that return capital #capitalocene
Crop breeding institutions in the 20th century made it possible to alienate farmers from new plant varieties, a process legally and materially intensified by commercial biotechnology. Globally, currently planted traits are overwhelmingly pest/herbicide resistant commodity crops 
Over the past century, crop breeding and GM became the dominant process by which crops evolve, causing social and biological bottlenecks that reduce agrobiodiversity and restrict its movements and ownership.
On-farm crop improvement involves significant input and ownership by women and Indigenous people, yet female scientists are less than 1/4 of faculty/leadership at land grants; Fulltime Black, Latinx, and Native American faculty are just over 10% equityinhighered.org/resources/idea…
This imbalance contributes to ongoing mistrust between local knowledge holders and the scientific community. Replacing 10k years of domestication with crop breeding and GM reduced on-farm agrobiodiversity and capacity to respond to dynamic environmental or economic disruptions
By claiming that GM is not fundamentally different from domestication, proponents in scholarly and popular literature undermine grassroots attempts to conserve agrobiodiversity and bolster seed and food sovereignty
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