Institute of Development Studies

Rice Biofortification: Lessons for Global Science and Development

6 July 2010 - Sally Brooks

Biofortification - the enrichment of staple food crops with essential micronutrients such as iron, zinc and vitamin A - has been heralded as a uniquely sustainable solution to the problem of micronutrient deficiency or 'hidden hunger'. By breeding or genetically engineering crop varieties with enhanced nutrient levels, proponents argue, the solution to this intractable global problem can be built into the seed itself, and so reach previously unreachable populations in remote rural areas of the developing world.

Is biofortification the 'silver bullet' that will succeed where other interventions have failed? With nutrition higher on donor agendas than has been the case for many years, is it an idea whose time has come? Rice Biofortification: Lessons for Global Science and Development, a new book published this week, engages critically with the assumptions of this approach. Published by Earthscan, it is one of the first in a new Steps Centre book series. The Steps Centre is an interdisciplinary global research and policy engagement hub that unites development studies with science and technology studies. It is based at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and Science and Technology Policy Research (SPRU) at the University of Sussex, and it is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

Focusing on initiatives in rice, 'the world's most important crop', by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and its partners, the book reviews evidence that micronutrient deficiency may be much more complex than simple lack of available nutrients. Nor are there any guarantees that consumers with specific tastes for different kinds of rice will readily adopt generic products engineered for extra nutrients. Furthermore, claims for nutritionally improved rice have regularly run ahead of actual achievements.

A key contribution of this book is that it relates these tendencies to 'black box' scientific and policy uncertainties to an institutional history of international crop research organisations that need to raise funds and legitimate themselves to an international community of policy makers and an inherited pattern of interdisciplinary relations that is an enduring legacy of the 'Green Revolution'. These pressures are even greater today, with global biofortification programmes expected to generate 'cutting edge research' - as well as demonstrate 'impact at scale' - within ever shorter time frames.

A need to engage 'users'

A key lesson of this book is that questions of 'who' and 'where' should guide, not follow, the setting of research targets. The CGIAR and its partners, supported by new donors, notably the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, are tackling increasingly complex global problems, and this is reflected in institutional arrangements that link upstream actors from a variety of sectors and disciplines but stop short of engaging with the diversity of local needs and contexts.

Meanwhile, questions of user engagement and participation are supplanted by notions of 'consumer choice', which frame the provision of new technologies in terms of extending the choice available to the poor. In the process, diverse needs are transformed into 'demand' for products already in the pipeline. Notably missing from these deliberations are developing country governments and research institutions, who are cast as the first line of beneficiaries of international funding and global research outputs.

Rethinking upstream-downstream relations

To address these lessons requires a radical re-think of an upstream-downstream model that continues to structure the international division of labour in crop research. New models are needed which provide space for institutions best positioned to understand and engage with diversity as it exists in different localities, rather than reconstruct it as a sequence of hurdles between the products of 'global science' and its projected beneficiaries.

This goes beyond contemporary debates surrounding public-private research partnerships and the extent to which they are 'technology-driven' or 'user-driven'. More fundamental changes are required to the rules of the game that prescribe the role of actors according to their 'upstream' or 'downstream' location, and the types of partnerships that are, as a consequence, formed between them.

Towards a more reflexive ‘public goods' science?

These proposals present a fundamental challenge to a CGIAR system that has resisted pressures to restructure its relations with other institutions, particularly at the national and local level. This book shows how these external relations are inextricably linked to an internal interdisciplinary ordering, based on enduring assumptions about the value of certain types of knowledge over others.

CGIAR reforms launched in 2008 in pursuit of a 'revitalized CGIAR' included a commitment to create an 'exciting research environment ... that will support great science'. This book shows how an emerging practice of goal-oriented research and development frustrates these aims, discouraging open scientific enquiry and interdisciplinary learning. Could biofortification be an exemplar of a different kind? As an inherently boundary crossing, interdisciplinary endeavour it presents an opportunity to move beyond the rhetoric and take steps to foster such an environment.

Sally Brooks is a Research Officer with the ESRC STEPS Centre.

Related Publications

• Brooks, S (2010) Rice Biofortification: Lessons for Global Science and Development, London: Earthscan