1. New biotechnologies are focused purely on adapting food production to the needs of industry and are above all profit-driven.

• Current projects include engineering fruits and vegetables to better withstand industrial harvest, transport and processing techniques rather than enhancing nutrition or taste. In fact, and more and more tomatoes grown in the U.S. are square, hard and relatively tasteless. Their real virtue is that they are easy to pick with machines and can be transported long distances. Much of the large and flawless fruit on supermarket shelves is "watery and insipid" (Goering, Norberg-Hodge & Page, p. 8).
• Among the first products of genetic engineering of crops to reach the market were seeds modified for greater resistance to specific herbicides and pesticides. This resistance allows farmers to use herbicides on a greater number of crops and in larger amounts than before. The financial incentives for the large multinational chemical companies to genetically engineer seed/chemical packages whose components cannot be used separately are enormous (Goering, Norberg-Hodge & Page, p. 9).
• To ensure complete domination of their chemical herbicides and pesticides these multinationals are seeking control of seed companies. The top 10 seed industry giants companies now have $7 billion - or 30% - of the $23 billion commercial seed trade. For the leading 10 companies, that is a sales increase of 25% in just two years. The consolidation drive is not over. The wave of acquisitions that marked the second quarter of 1998 in the US market will force a response from major European seed companies and also from other leading pharmaceutical and chemical enterprises in the US. In the environment of the globalization of the seed development industry the research focus shifts to wherever the highest value is. Producers in specific regions, which are considered marginal will be at a disadvantage (Seed Industry Consolidation: Who Owns Whom?, RAFI).
• Technology Protection System (TPS) or 'terminator gene' research will make seeds manipulated in this way grow into healthy plants that produce sterile seeds. This has been welcomed by seed companies, who view the replanting of seeds developed using basic research and technology as theft of their intellectual property. Many farmers may have little choice but to adopt the new seeds because large landowners, crop buyers, and government programs often choose the seeds that small farmers have to plant. Also the formal and informal links that biotechnology companies have formed with agricultural colleges and research stations creates peer pressure to grow genetically engineered crops (Edwards p. 22).
• The new generation of patents goes beyond the genetic neutering of crops. Patents reveal that companies are developing suicide seeds whose genetic traits can be turned on and off by an external chemical "inducer" -- mixed with the company's patented agrochemicals. In the near future, we may see farmers planting seeds that will develop into productive (but sterile) crops only if sprayed with a carefully prescribed regimen that includes the company's proprietary pesticide, fertilizer or herbicide. The latest version of Monsanto's suicide seeds won't even germinate unless exposed to a special chemical. AstraZeneca's technologies outline how to engineer crops to become stunted or otherwise impaired if not regularly exposed to the company's chemicals. Farmers call it "Traitor Technology." (A Platform for Inducing Chemical Sales, RAFI).
• Novartis, a Swiss life industry giant, has a patent (US 5,789,214) which describes a process for chemically regulating a number of developmental processes in plants -- such as germination, sprouting, flowering, fruit ripening, The patent specifically mentions that the chemical regulator can be applied to plants in combination with a fertilizer or herbicide. Genetically programming suicide seeds to perform only with the application of proprietary pesticide or fertilizer means increased sales of patented agrochemicals and other proprietary inputs (A Platform for Inducing Chemical Sales, RAFI).