First the Seed: The Political Economy of Plant Biotechnology (Science and Technology in Society)

First the Seed spotlights the history of plant breeding and shows how efforts to control the seed have shaped the emergence of the agricultural biotechnology industry. This second edition of a classic work in the political economy of science includes an extensive, new chapter updating the analysis to include the most recent developments in the struggle over the direction of crop genetic engineering. 1988 Cloth, 1990 Paperback, Cambridge University Press Winner of the Theodore Saloutos Award of the Agricultural History Society Winner of the Robert K. Merton Award of the American Sociological Association

First published in 1988, Kloppenburg's (agricultural and life sciences, U. of Wisconsin-Madison) text offers a political and economic history of plant breeding and the seed industry, showing how efforts to control the seed have shaped the emergence of the agricultural biotechnology industry. The second edition includes an extensive new, final chapter examining recent developments in the global and increasingly well-organized opposition to the way that private industry has chosen to develop biotechnology, which has materialized not only in advocacy and activist groups but within the public plant science community as well. Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

First the seed spotlights the history of plant breeding and shows how efforts to control the seed have shaped the emergence of the agricultural biotechnology industry. This second edition of a classic work in the political economy of science includes an extensive, new chapter updating the analysis to include the most recent developments in the struggle over the direction of crop genetic engineering.--Publisher description "First the Seed spotlights the history of plant breeding and shows how efforts to control the seed have shaped the emergence of the agricultural biotechnology industry. This second edition of a classic work in the political economy of science includes an extensive, new chapter updating the analysis to include the most recent developments in the struggle over the direction of crop genetic engineering."--BOOK JACKET