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Science, Technology, & Human Values

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Crops and the

Genetic Codification
of Climate Myopia

Diego Silva1

Abstract
The diverse ways that extreme climate events are expressed at the local
level have represented a challenge for the development of transgenic
“climate-ready” (resilient to environmental stress) seeds. Based on the
Argentinean “HB4” technology, this paper analyzes how ignorance and a
sunflower gene are mobilized to overcome this difficulty in soy and wheat.
HB4 seeds can be understood as myopic: the technology does not
obstruct the capacity of soy and wheat plants to sense droughts, but it
prevents their natural reaction, which would be to put a halt on crop
production and redirect their energy toward survival. Plants thus become
“short-sighted” to droughts. Informed by ignorance studies and by the
immunological concept of tolerance, this paper analyzes HB4 myopia as a
type of nonhuman ignorance: an asset that allows plant breeders to achieve
varied plant responses to droughts and to encode their capitalist values
(that prioritize production over survival) into plants’ DNA. Moreover,

1
Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy, Geneva, Switzerland

Corresponding Author:
Diego Silva, Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy, P2-716, Chemin Eugène-Rigot 2A,
1202 Geneva, Switzerland.
Email: diego.silva@graduateinstitute.ch
2 Science, Technology, & Human Values XX(X)

ignorance becomes a molecular commodity that can be selected, trans-

ferred between organisms, and traded in markets. HB4’s prioritization of
production resonates with other technologies of climate adaptation and
mitigation that do not promote structural changes to the capitalist system.

Keywords
climate-ready crops, climate change adaptation, ignorance, ecomyopia,
Argentina, genetically modified soy

Introduction
In the past decade, the Argentine agricultural sector suffered three of the
most extreme droughts in fifty years (Agrovoz 2018). The last of them took
place in the 2017-2018 soy season and led to a decline in soy production of
33 percent with respect to the previous year (Errea and Tassone 2018).
Anticipating the increasing effects of climate change in the agricultural
sector, scientists from the Universidad Nacional del Litoral (UNL) have
carried out research since the late 1990s on so-called climate-ready
seeds––seeds that are tolerant to abiotic stress, such as droughts, soil sali-
nity, frost, and cold. In 2003, the UNL group together with the National
Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) became equal own-
ers of the patents derived from their research on the Hahb4 sunflower gene
(Biox 2019, 73), which later proved to give model plants tolerance to
droughts (Dezar et al. 2005). The transgenic event was licensed to the
Argentine biotech company Bioceres to be introduced in commercial crops
(soy, wheat, and corn). After a series of promising results in soy and wheat,
the transgenic event was named the “HB4 technology.”
Using both conventional breeding and modern biotechnologies, there
has been an abundance of research and patent claims on climate-ready seeds
since the 1990s (ETC Group 2011). Conventionally bred climate-ready
crops usually acquire their climate resilience traits from wild relatives that
have evolved naturally to adapt to local conditions (Beebe et al. 2013, 2;
Cho 2011). Instead, transgenic climate-ready crops are modified with trans-
genes of plants that show resilience to extreme climates, but that are not
necessarily related to targeted commercial plants (Nadeem et al. 2019, 13).
Genetic engineering has allowed for overcoming the associated sexual
incompatibilities between these types of plants and targeted commercial
species. For example, substantial research has been carried out using genes
Silva 3

from succulent plants, such as agave (Abraham et al. 2016) and the so-
called resurrection plants (Hilhorst and Farrant 2018).
Critics of transgenic climate-ready seeds argue that what matters in
biotech breeding is not a local adaptation but rather the introduction of
isolated traits of interest (Reyes and Cotter 2010). Critics also associate
these crops with controversial first-generation technologies of genetic mod-
ification, such as herbicide-tolerant or insect-resistant crops, that are not
region-specific but that were developed for use in widespread areas (Shiva
2011). However, since climate variability expresses itself very differently at
the local level, environmentalist groups such as ETC Group (2011, 1) argue
that transgenic climate-ready crops are a technocentric solution with global
pretensions for what is really a complex ecological problem. From this
perspective, climate resilience lies instead in locally adapted seed systems
and agroecological processes that support ecosystemic interrelations (Cho
2011).
Biotech plant breeders do not necessarily disagree with this conclusion.
As argued by Passioura (2012), in early experiments, climate-ready plants
expressed tolerance to varied adverse climate conditions under controlled
environments, but these benefits disappeared in field conditions or were
accompanied by production declines. This result was largely due to the
complexity and variability that is introduced when scaling up a trait of
interest from individual plants grown in pots to communal plants grown
in fields (Passioura 2012) and to poor knowledge of the effects that the
variability of climate events (such as the extent, intensity, and frequency of
droughts) can have over commercial crops (Chapman et al. 2000, 197).
Thus, Passioura (2012, 851) concluded that “the search for generic drought
tolerance using single-gene transformations has been disappointing.”
How have scientific plant breeders dealt with this challenge? The HB4
case presented in this paper shows that one-size-fits-all crop technologies
are giving place to crops that express climate resilience traits differentially,
not uniformly. The use of transcription factors1 that have a multigenic effect
on plants has been instrumental for this purpose (Bartels and Phillips 2010,
139). In the case of HB4, not only does the use of the Hahb4 gene (that
codes for a transcription factor) allow HB4 plants to have a phenotypical
differential response to droughts (in comparison to conventional plants), it
is also inspiring broader imaginaries of seed customization and commodity
techno-natures. HB4, for example, is just the core of a multispecies and
multitechnology seed system known as the ECOSeed, where ECO stands
for Environmentally Customized Organism.
4 Science, Technology, & Human Values XX(X)

This paper shows that the differential functioning of HB4 plants relies
on the strategic mobilization of nonhuman ignorance. The “foundational
story” of the HB4 technology used by Bioceres argues that while HB4
allows plants to keep producing under drought conditions, this technology
does not work by making plants more resilient to water scarcity, but rather
by making them ignorant, or less sensitive, to climate stress. As argued by
the lead scientist behind the development of HB4, this effect is a type of
myopia: although plants sense water scarcity, they partially ignore such
alerts, avoiding unwanted reactions that lead to production declines (the
plant would otherwise redirect its energy to accelerate its reproduction and
guarantee the species’ survival). In short, the myopic type of ignorance
mobilized by the HB4 foundational story can be understood as the result
of an interspecies alliance that allows for the suspension or tuning down
of the plant’s climate “knowledge.” In this way, HB4 plants can pheno-
typically express different levels of drought tolerance given different lev-
els of water scarcity.
This paper considers plant myopia as a type of selective nonhuman
ignorance, where certain knowledge flows in and other knowledge is fil-
tered out, preventing economically undesired reactions in plants. Inspired
by Proctor’s (2008) agnotology, which recognizes different types of ignor-
ance that result from selective knowledge choices, many scholars have
recognized the manufacturing of ignorance in relation to agricultural inno-
vations (Stone 2010, 74; Magnus 2008; Bonneuil, Foyer, and Wynne 2014;
Elliott 2013). However, these scholars focus on the selective ways in which
some human groups prevent others from accessing “uncomfortable” knowl-
edge, without considering how ignorance is manufactured in nonhuman
organisms. When nonhuman organisms are considered in this literature, it
is not to recognize embodied forms of ignorance but to study the ignorance
that is produced about them.
Lack of attention to nonhuman ignorance might be related to the dom-
inance of what Haraway (2001) calls “the myth of body-lessness,” where
knowledge is limited to a bodiless conscious mind: a myth that is repro-
duced by “standard accounts of scientific practice and objectivity” (Myers
2015, 15). Nevertheless, the importance of embodied knowledge has been
recognized by actor–network theory scholars, who take into account the
agency of nonhuman organisms and devices (Latour and Woolgar 1986)
as well as by anthropologists (Hartigan 2017; Myers 2015) who recognize
how scientists use their bodies to learn, communicate, and coproduce
scientific knowledge with nonhumans. Finally, some plant scientists have
Silva 5

begun to explicitly recognize embodied types of knowledge in plants

(Chamovitz 2013).
In fact, one important exception to considering embodied types of
knowledge/ignorance comes from immunology studies. Ayres and Schnei-
der (2012) explore the immunological notion of tolerance as a type of
ignorance to conceptualize how the immune system responds to pathogens
in different intensities, sometimes attacking pathogens to prevent disease
and other times ignoring them to avoid overexpressing immune responses
than can be harmful to the organism. The immunological notion of toler-
ance is not only useful in this paper to highlight embodied types of ignor-
ance. It is also useful to conceptualize types of ignorance that lead to
differential responses in biological organisms, including the effect of myo-
pia in helping to produce differential phenotypical results in HB4 plants.
Thus, ignorance plays a central role in the construction of the modern
techno-natures of climate change adaptation and mitigation in a particular
stage of capitalism. Global environmental pressures with a wide range of
local expressions force humans to design techno-natures that recognize
ecosystems’ complexity and variability. The manufacturing of partial, tem-
poral, or gradual ignorance is useful for this purpose because it modulates
action in different contexts and situations. As a result, ignorance is not only
negative but can also have productive effects (Proctor 2008, 23).
Moreover, ignorance can be analyzed as an asset. Davies and McGoey
(2012, 66) consider ignorance as an asset when “social silence surrounding
unsettling facts enables profitable activities to endure.” Similarly, in the
case of HB4, water scarcity is an “unsettling fact” for plant breeders
because it triggers biological reactions in plants that hinder their production
capacity. HB4 plants are desensitized to water scarcity so that they can keep
producing, instead of redirecting their energies for the production of pro-
geny to ensure the species’ survival. In addition to this, as described by
McGoey (2012b, 7), when industries stand to gain from “known
unknowns,” ignorance can be seen as a commodity. HB4 produces known
unknowns. It allows plants breeders to engineer plants that are less sensitive
to water scarcity. Also, since the type of ignorance addressed in this paper
through the case of the HB4 transgenic trait can be selected, transferred
between organisms, and traded in markets, it can also be understood as a
commodity: an “immutable mobile” (Latour 2003) that can be traded in the
market.
Whether an asset or a commodity, it is crucial to consider who benefits
and whose values are being promoted in the manufacturing of particular
types of ignorance. This paper argues that HB4 ignorance is involved in the
6 Science, Technology, & Human Values XX(X)

molecular codification of capitalist values into plants’ DNA. Since HB4

myopia makes plants prioritize agricultural production over the species’
survival, HB4 plants are climate-ready commodities but not necessarily
climate-ready organisms. This observation has implications at the societal
level. When the commodity fetish that confounds climate-resilient com-
modities for climate-resilient organisms is lifted, it becomes apparent that
this type of myopia goes beyond the foundational story of the HB4
technology.
Myopia also plays a central role in the construction of the modern
techno-natures because it allows us to focus on hypothetical technological
solutions and to ignore the existential threat posed by climate change. Like
HB4, carbon-capture machines, synthetic forests, and carbon markets are
devised in full consciousness of the current climate risks. However, they do
not promote structural changes that prioritize humanity’s survival but rather
seek to protect the conditions for capital expansion within the market econ-
omy. Just as for HB4 plants, reaction is limited to protecting, not sacrifi-
cing, production for survival. These technologies can be seen as
ecomyopias (Casagrande et al. 2017) that attract consumers into sustain-
ability strategies where the reproduction of humanity cannot be seen as
separate from the reproduction of capital.
In the first part of this paper, I show how the rapid growth of the
Argentine soy sector has been curtailed by three droughts in the last decade.
I then present the HB4 technology as a transgenic response to this type of
climate risk. The third part argues that ignorance is central to the function-
ing of HB4 and discusses this idea in reference to the notion of myopia and
the immunological concept of tolerance. The final part explores the values
guiding the production of this technology and draws some parallels with
other strategies of climate change adaptation and mitigation. This paper is
based on five months of fieldwork in Argentina, including three months of
ethnographic work at the facilities of Bioceres in the city of Rosario, and 50
semistructured recorded interviews with plant scientists, agronomists, agri-
cultural regulators, and intellectual property lawyers.

The Heating Up of the Argentine Soy Sector

Soy was first produced in Argentina in the summer of 1970, and production
quickly jumped to 2.5 million tons of grain by the end of that decade.
Production rose steadily during the following two decades, reaching around
20 million tons of grain by the end of the 1990s. At the turn of the
millennium, soy production continued soaring, fueled by an increasing
Silva 7

70,000,000

60,000,000

50,000,000

40,000,000

30,000,000

20,000,000

10,000,000

Figure 1. Soy production in Argentina from 1979 to 2017 in metric tons. Source:
Developed by the author using data from the Ministerio de Agricultura, Ganaderı́a
y Pesca (2020) of Argentina.

international demand for the grain and by the introduction of glyphosate-

tolerant seeds. We can see in Figure 1 the drastic increase of soybean
production after the black bar, which represents the introduction of this
technology in 1997.
The graph also shows in dark grey the dramatic production decline
experienced during the 2008-2009, 2011-2012, and 2017-2018 seasons
related to three periods of drought. In January 2009, the country was under
the worst drought in fifty years, devastating hundreds of hectares of corn,
wheat, and soy crops, as well as leading to the death of livestock (La
Nación 2009). The dire consequences for the soy sector amounted to
around US$5 billion in losses by the end of that season (Sepsi 2019).
Three years later, the droughts returned. The 2011-2012 soy season
began too dry and ended too wet, creating a difficult scenario of water
stress for soy crops. While on January 6, 2012, the Rosario Board of
Trade’s weekly report showed the anxiety created by the lack of rainfall,
by March 2012, the rain balance had gone to the other extreme, delaying
the harvesting process in some regions. Its March 15th report argued that
many farmers were not able to cover their production costs and that others
had declared bankruptcy (Rosario Board of Trade 2012).
The droughts experienced in the 2017-2018 season grew in intensity as
the season advanced. Agrovoz (2018) argued that in comparison to the
previous five decades, 44 percent of the five main soy production provinces
8 Science, Technology, & Human Values XX(X)

Figure 2. Soil humidity classification in Argentina (January 3, February 7, and

March 7, 2018). Source: Juan Forte Lay and José Aiello (in Rosario Board of Trade
2018a, 2018b, 2018c).

of Argentina had experienced poorer levels of soil humidity throughout

most of the season. The situation only worsened over time; one after
another other, the weekly reports of the Rosario Board of Trade had to
correct their loss estimates, continuously raising the bar as the season
advanced (Rosario Board of Trade 2018a, 2018b, 2018c). Figure 2 shows
the intensification of the droughts throughout the 2017-2018 soy season.
Considering that Argentina is the third-largest soy producer in the world,
the drought had a significant impact on the national economy. After the
2017-2018 droughts, analysts from the Argentine Central Bank predicted a
drop in soy production of around 33 percent (Errea and Tassone 2018).
Moreover, the effects of the drought on the agricultural sector were pre-
dicted to have a direct impact on the country’s Gross Domestic Product
(GDP) of around 0.75 percent, without taking into account the indirect
effects that the production decline would have on complementary sectors
such as transport, commerce, and industry (Errea and Tassone 2018).
In June 2018, pressured by rising criticism, Mauricio Macri, the then
President of Argentina, blamed the climate event along with other external
Silva 9

variables, such as oil prices and the US interest rate, for the failure of his
government to deliver on its economic promises (Slipczuk 2018). The
economic downturn became a veritable crisis; the national debt soared and
the value of the Argentine peso jumped from ₱18 to ₱60 per US dollar in
less than a year (Orgaz 2019). This situation resulted in the largest credit
historically granted by the International Monetary Fund to any country
(Goñi 2018) as well as in the return to power of the Peronists after the
2019 national elections (Deutsche Welle 2019).
The intensification of climate events has motivated soy farmers to seek
strategies to protect their crops against droughts and floods. Since these
climate events are usually localized in particular regions, but still difficult to
predict where precisely they will take place, some of the largest Argentine
soy producers have relied on geographic diversification; they distribute
their production plots in regions of land located at great distances from one
another and with diverse environmental characteristics. In this way, farmers
minimize the risk of a climate event affecting a large percentage of their
crops (Ordóñez and Senesi 2015, 72-73). Another instrument of risk mini-
mization that is widely used in Argentina is climate insurance, which com-
pensates farmers for their losses when affected by a climate disaster. In
addition, some farmers distribute their investments between summer and
winter crops, hoping to recover with one type of crop what they lose with
the other. Finally, farmers can invest in irrigation and drainage systems to
modulate water scarcity or excess (Ordóñez and Senesi 2015, 72-73).
These risk management strategies are, however, not always affordable or
attractive to farmers. Not all farmers have the capacity to invest in infra-
structure or to geographically diversify their production: a strategy that
requires a high degree of management skills to rent and manage lands that
are located far apart from one other (Ordóñez and Senesi 2015, 72-73).
Further, the price and coverage of climate insurance are usually less attrac-
tive in the regions that are more vulnerable to droughts and floods. Given
these limitations, there is a demand for additional strategies of climate risk
management. This paper concentrates on a transgenic alternative.

Transgenic Drought Tolerance: The Foundational

Story of the HB4 Technology
The Argentine company Bioceres was born in 2001 as a knowledge start-
up, investing in promising national research. According to the company’s
CEO, Federico Trucco, in an interview held in his office on March 7, 2019,
the company wanted to challenge the international division of labor where
10 Science, Technology, & Human Values XX(X)

peripheral countries from the South are perceived as mere suppliers of raw
material and consumers of foreign technology. Bioceres’ most promising
investment is the HB4 drought-tolerant technology for soy and wheat crops.
The technology originates from research carried out by scientists at the
UNL in Santa Fe. In the 1990s, they identified and isolated a gene from
the sunflower plant that codes for the Hahb4 transcription factor, whose
expression was induced by water scarcity and abscisic acid (Gago et al.
2002). They later transferred the gene to the model plant Arabidopsis
thaliana, which resulted in the plant being drought tolerant (Dezar et al.
2005). Since 2005, Bioceres has collaborated with the UNL group to carry
out experiments in commercial crops of soy, wheat, and corn. Today, the
company has the exclusive license over the technology, and is multiplying
HB4 soy and wheat varieties in preparation for commercial release, as
regulatory approvals for the variety advance in various countries.
Soy HB4 has been approved for use in Argentina, Brazil, and the United
States (Biox 2019, 64), but it is still not commercialized in any of these
countries due to regulatory restrictions in Argentina. Argentine environ-
mental and food regulators have considered the genetic trait to be safe.
However, its approval for commercial release is conditioned by the National
Market Directorate on the approval of the transgenic trait in China: the main
importer of Argentine soy. The concern is that if HB4 soy is found in
Chinese seed markets before official approval is granted in that country,
Argentina could lose its main market for soy.
Despite its absence in the global market, the seed is already being pub-
licized as a strategy of climate change adaptation. During Bioceres’ inves-
tors’ week in October 2019, Federico Trucco recognized that society is
demanding changes in the agricultural model. Referring to the extinction
rebellion protests in Europe,2 Trucco argued that agribusiness should no
longer be about producing more with less. It has to be about producing
better. Such an objective requires strategies of agricultural adaptation and
mitigation to climate change. The release of climate-ready seeds, the pro-
duction of biodegradable plastics, and the commercialization of fertilizers
and fungicides, which are not fuel-based but rather originate from microbial
strains, are some of the company’s strategies to contribute to this objective.
Today, Bioceres is mostly known for having developed the first drought-
tolerant soybean in the world: soy HB4. In a 2019 blog article entitled
“There Is Science in Argentina,” Federico Trucco narrates what I call “the
foundational story” of the HB4 technology. He usually begins his narrative
by exposing his initial skepticism in the early days of the technology. Back
in 2002, the Hahb4 gene had not even begun to be tested in model plants by
Silva 11

the UNL research group led by Dr. Raquel Chan. As Trucco (2019)
explains, “when I first heard about the possibility that Bioceres invested
in Dr. Raquel Chan’s project…with the objective of creating wheat, soy and
corn with tolerance to droughts and soil salinity, I thought they were going
to waste their money away.”
At that time, Trucco (2019) was pursuing his PhD in crop sciences at the
University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign. There, he said, “I had seen how
numerous projects of this type did not achieve technologically viable
results. Multinational giants, enjoying abundant resources from the first
biotechnological wave, had dedicated hundreds of millions of dollars trying
to obtain similar products.” He explained that at the laboratory level, there
had been several promising results in model organisms, such as A. thaliana,
but when these results were transferred to crops of commercial interests and
to field testing, the results were always poor: “in many cases, drought
tolerance became difficult to perceive, and in a few other cases, where the
favorable effect persisted, the benefit became associated with an important
reduction in productivity under normal rain conditions” (Trucco 2019).
Indeed, the difficulty of translating successful drought-tolerant traits from
individual plants grown in pots to communal crops in the fields is well-
documented (Passioura 2012).
In his office at the facilities of Bioceres in Rosario, Argentina, Trucco
shared with me the common arguments among his academic colleagues to
explain the failure of these attempts. The industry, he told me, was trying to
resolve a complex problem through the same “binary” techniques that had
characterized the first generation of transgenic crops. Insect-resistant or
herbicide-tolerant crops, for example, had been modified through the intro-
duction of functional pieces of foreign DNA to carry out one specific
function. Trucco used the term binary to refer to the limited response in
these crops: either these modifications worked or did not, but nothing in
between. In his words, “[the plant] tolerates or it does not tolerate glypho-
sate…it kills the insect that attacks the plant, or it does not kill it. The
responses are ones or zeros. These are binary technologies” (Interview,
March 7, 2019).
In order to explain the challenges of the so-called binary approach,
Trucco asked me to imagine a situation: “had you been a North American
scientist at the beginning of the 2000s, and had Monsanto called you to
develop drought-tolerant soy varieties, your answer would have been to
tackle the problem through comparative genomics using species from
extreme environments.” In other words, the North American scientist would
have asked, for example, “how can a cactus survive in the desert?” then he
12 Science, Technology, & Human Values XX(X)

or she would have identified the genes that make survival possible and
transfer those genes into crops of commercial interest. However, this strat-
egy did not seem to work beyond the laboratory: “when you analyze what a
cactus does in the desert, what you see is that the cactus does not have
leaves; it has thorns. It does not transpire; it survives because it uses little
water and carries out less photosynthesis” (Interview, March 7, 2019). The
point here is that without photosynthesis, there is no production. Water is
one of the main ingredients of photosynthesis, which uses water, carbon
dioxide, and light to produce sugars and oxygen. These sugars are, in turn,
the basis for the plant’s production of cereals, fruits, and leaves. Thus,
transferring the capacity of a cactus to survive with little water into a
commercial crop was producing as a result of drought-tolerant crops with
a low production capacity.
In the words of Passioura (2012, 851), “the search for generic drought
tolerance using single-gene transformations has been disappointing. It has
typically concentrated on survival of plants suffering from severe water
stress, which is rarely an important trait in crops.” In short, plant breeders
are not interested in low-yielding soy plants that survive in desserts, as cacti
do, but in commercial plants that survive moderate droughts with no yield
penalty. Thus, “a clear distinction should be made between traits that help
plants to survive a severe drought stress and traits that mitigate yield losses
in crops exposed to a mild or intermediate level of water stress” (Tuberosa
2012, 1). Single-gene technologies, which Trucco associated with binary
results in plants, would only work in the type of drought in which the
drought-tolerant trait evolved (e.g., cacti in deserts); but, when taking into
account the complexity and variability of extreme climate conditions and
plant responses to them, these technologies become inadequate.
Against Trucco’s advice, Bioceres decided to invest in Chan’s research
in 2003 to help her finish her preliminary studies and to incorporate the
Hahb4 gene of the sunflower into model plants. After obtaining positive
results, Bioceres’ collaboration with the UNL was extended to incorporate
the drought-tolerant trait into commercial plants. Even then, Trucco thought
that the company’s investors had “naively fallen in love with pictures of
model plants tolerating drought conditions in Chan’s laboratory,” and he
believed that the adventure would ultimately lead to the familiar tolerance/
productivity tradeoff. Thanks to further investment, the first field trials were
carried out for wheat in 2008 and soy in 2009 (Watson et al. 2019). To
Trucco’s surprise, Chan’s technology worked (Trucco 2019), which meant
that single-gene technologies do not necessarily lead to “binary” responses.
Silva 13

How does the HB4 technology work? It makes plants avoid their evolu-
tionary reaction to droughts. The soy plant is evolutionarily programmed to
prioritize survival over productivity. When there is water scarcity, the plant
closes its stomata3 to reduce water evaporation and it begins senescence––a
process of biological aging. The acceleration of the aging process helps the
plant to redirect photosynthates to accelerate inflorescence and the produc-
tion of seeds.4 In other words, the plant redirects nutrients to accelerate its
reproduction and to increase the chances of the species’ survival. This
reaction is, however, accompanied by a productivity decline: stomata clo-
sure prevents the plant from further metabolizing carbon dioxide, which is
necessary for the process of photosynthesis. Thus, when the plant closes its
stomata to retain water and accelerate reproduction, it simultaneously gives
up the option of producing more nutrients, which leads to lower production
levels. HB4 guides plants to avoid such a reaction.
In our first interview, Trucco explained that plants normally shut down
production early on when they still have a water reserve, which they can
use to accelerate their reproduction process:

[The plant] says, it’s better to take a conservative stance––if the cliff is over
there, then it’s better if I break over here, not wait until I am on the edge. It’s
like when you are driving your car and you are running out of fuel, the fuel
alarm turns on, but you do not have to go immediately to the gas station, you
still have around 30 km left on reserve. (Interview, March 7, 2019)

What the HB4 technology achieves is to turn the plant’s priorities on their
head, prioritizing productivity over reproduction/survival. This change
translates into crops being drought-tolerant with no yield penalty; here, in
the presence of water scarcity, HB4 plants are expected to produce more
than control plants and, under normal conditions, HB4 plants are expected
to produce at least as much as them.
The mechanism allowing for these results only became known in 2006:
“HB4 plants’ reaction to water scarcity does not implicate stomata closure,
but rather a senescence delay via the inhibition of ethylene receptors”
(Manavella et al. 2006). This feature means that HB4 plants are less sen-
sitive to signals of water scarcity (via ethylene perception) that would
normally accelerate plant senescence. In other words, instead of “panick-
ing” and shutting down production to accelerate reproduction, this lack of
sensitivity allows the plant to “keep calm” and “carry on” producing. For
Trucco (2019), this result is counterintuitive: “if you told a scientist that you
were going to desensitize a plant to droughts, then he would have told you
14 Science, Technology, & Human Values XX(X)

that you were taking its antibodies away, that you were going to make it
sick faster.” However, it is precisely by numbing the plant’s evolutionary
response to drought that HB4 plants can prioritize production over repro-
duction/survival.
Alluding to the cliff metaphor, Trucco explained, “what Chan did was to
bypass the plant’s sensor so that it can go until the edge of the cliff”
(Interview, March 7, 2019). After a short drought, HB4 plants will be able
to “replenish their water reserves” and continue developing at a normal
pace, which is important to maximize their production. On the contrary,
conventional plants will have triggered an irreversible survival response,
accelerating their development to produce progeny. However, during long
droughts, HB4 plants that are in the early stages of development will die
with no progeny, while conventional plants will have more chances of
leaving seeds behind. More precisely, Chan explains that model plants
modified with the Hahb4 gene “became, in certain form, ‘myopic’ to water
deficiency; they continue to develop when the stress is moderate and thus,
the impact on productivity is reduced with respect to control plants that
exhibit stomata closure” (González et al. 2020, 4).
It is important to highlight Chan’s reference to moderate droughts, which
recognizes the existence of drought variability. In this vein, Passioura
(2012, 851) argues that “breeding for drought tolerance in grain crops is
not a generic issue. Periods of drought vary in length, timing and intensity
and different traits are important with different types of drought.” There-
fore, as argued above, single-gene approaches that did not address droughts
differentially (the so-called binary technologies) had little chance to suc-
ceed. In the case of HB4, despite being a single-gene technology, the
technology has been proven to work better in hot droughts. This particu-
larity does not mean that HB4 is not associated with better yields in other
types of drought, it means that the technology makes modified plants
respond differently to drought conditions. The crucial factor from the bree-
ders’ perspective is that this type of differential response prevents HB4
plants from having a yield penalty in the absence of water scarcity.
It is difficult to estimate how long HB4 plants can extend production
under conditions of water scarcity, as this depends on many factors. In one
of our interviews, Trucco estimated a duration of two to three days. This
temporal interval gives plants and farmers the chance of waiting for rain,
which would replenish the plant’s water reserves without having previously
triggered stomata closure and plants’ senescence. In economic terms, two
days of full production might not seem much, but droughts can arrive
intermittently at various times in the same agricultural season. Thus, the
Silva 15

HB4 technology acts as climate insurance for crops under conditions of

water scarcity.

Climate Myopia
The scientists involved in the development of the HB4 technology, includ-
ing Chan, Trucco, and others, rely on notions such as myopia, ignorance,
and panic when they tell the story of HB4 to diverse publics: the media,
investors, social researchers, and peers. However, when they are asked
directly about these notions, they sometimes qualify them as just metaphors
weary of animating and anthropomorphizing matter, which is a common
concern among scientists (Myers 2015, 3). However, Myers (2015) and
Hartigan (2017) have shown that the metaphors and kinesthetic explana-
tions used by scientists when they talk about their work are not only efforts
to communicate science to the laymen, they are also ways of seeing the
world that are informed by particular values, and that inspire the further
production of science and technology. Thus, this section takes the metaphor
of myopic plants seriously to analyze the manufacturing of specific types of
nonhuman ignorance in plants.
According to González and her coauthors, including Dr. Chan, HB4
plants are myopic (González et al. 2020, 4). The Oxford dictionary defines
myopia as “the condition of being unable to see things clearly when they
are far away” or as “the state of being unable to see what the results of a
particular action or decision will be” (“Myopia” n.d.). HB4 plants are
“myopic” because they can no longer “see” the signals of water scarcity
clearly. As argued above, the Hahb4 gene does not prevent HB4 model
plants from sensing signals of water scarcity (via ethylene perception).
Instead, they are less sensitive to them (via the inhibition of ethylene
receptors). HB4 plants continue their developmental process as if water
conditions were not critical instead of rushing to reproduce before dying.
Thus, HB4 plants are myopic because they can no longer perceive the far-
reaching effects of droughts on the species’ survival. However, myopia is
not blindness. HB4 plants are not completely oblivious to droughts. On the
one hand, HB4 plants will eventually translate signals of water scarcity into
senescence. On the other hand, HB4 addresses only one of the many
mechanisms through which droughts affect plants. All other mechanisms
remain active and will express themselves in different ways, maximizing or
hindering the effects of the HB4 response.
The varied responses to different levels of drought that result from the
interaction of the Habh4 gene with other mechanisms that are triggered in
16 Science, Technology, & Human Values XX(X)

plants by water scarcity could be one of the reasons for the differential
response of HB4 plants to droughts. An additional reason is related to the
multigenic effects of the Hahb4 transcription factor gene in HB4 plants.
Carlos Dezar, former scientist in the UNL group responsible for the HB4
research, explained to me that “the exact mechanism is still not completely
understood…it can be said that the more intense the drought, the higher the
expression of the Hahb4 gene, and the better HB4 plants will respond
phenotypically in comparison to control plants” (Interview, December 4,
2019). In other words, the more intense the drought, the more pressure
conventional plants will have to accelerate senescence, which will result
in lower production levels. Meanwhile, the Hahb4 gene of HB4 plants will
tend to maximize its expression, allowing plants to ignore climate stress.
Conversely, in the absence of droughts, the stress experienced by both types
of plants will be very low, and HB4 plants will have very little to ignore,
making them produce at least as much as control plants. Thus, this type of
ignorance works by creating temporal moments of silence where knowl-
edge about risks is suspended or tuned down when production is threatened.
A similar type of ignorance is conceptualized in immunology studies
through the notion of tolerance. Ayres and Schneider (2012) highlight the
centrality of ignorance/silence in hosts’ immune responses to pathogens. As
opposed to resistance, which qualitatively determines whether or not a host
can defend itself from pathogens, tolerance can express itself in different
intensities. Here, ignorance is central and productive; the quantity or degree
to which immune responses express themselves or remain ignorant/silent
determines the capacity that a host has to defend itself from a pathogen.
Such an expression is necessarily differential, since “an overly exuberant
immune response can cause collateral damage through immune effectors
and because of the energy allocated away from other physiological func-
tions” (Ayres and Schneider 2012, 271).
In a similar way, the habitual response of soy to water scarcity causes
collateral damage to crops. When the plant’s response is triggered and the
plant accelerates its senescence to a point of no return, soy production will
be lost, even if water conditions improve. The plant cannot go back in time
and “un-see” the climate condition that led it to sacrifice its production
while redirecting its energy to accelerate reproduction. Thus, for the sake
of productivity, it makes sense to devise ways for plants to ignore signals of
water scarcity just as the immune system tolerates the presence of certain
pathogenic attacks without responding to them. In both cases, tolerance
does not refer to complete resistance or immunity but to changes in the
Silva 17

sensitivity of organisms to certain triggers (Ayres and Schneider 2012, 273),

so that they can temporarily ignore potentially harmful conditions.
This type of nonhuman ignorance is not limited to the immune system or
HB4 plants. For example, gene-silencing techniques prevent the expression
of particular genes. Interestingly, Pablo Manavella, the scientist who dis-
covered the HB4 mechanism of action in 2006 (Manavella et al. 2006),
began working on gene-silencing techniques in 2008. Today, Manavella
carries out research to understand the functioning of gene-silencing path-
ways in plants. In particular, this technique is used in his laboratory to
produce fruits and seeds with high levels of carotenoids and vitamins by
turning off catabolic channels at specific moments (Interview, October 9,
2019). To be clear, HB4 plants were not developed through these types of
“silencing” techniques, and its mechanism of action was understood by
Manavella when the HB4 had already been patented. However, his aca-
demic choice to focus on gene-silencing techniques after discovering the
HB4 myopic mechanism reinforces the idea that myopia is not just a meta-
phor. Interpretations of nonhuman mechanisms inform ways of seeing the
world and the coproduction of science and technology with nonhumans.

Myopia and Commodity Fetishism

Clearly, what is under protection in the HB4 case is not a living organism.
The feature evolutionarily embodied in the soy plant––to accelerate its
reproduction to produce progeny and ensure the species’ survival––is
exchanged for a human decision of a different kind: yield maximization.
As recognized by McGoey (2012a, 553), ignorance can be considered as an
asset when it is useful to obscure knowledge that stands in the way of
making profit. Also, Proctor (2008) argues that ignorance can be productive
as the “deliberate abandonment of skill” is sometimes useful to “improve
some way of life” (p. 29). Similar to these accounts, the deskilling of HB4
plants is deemed acceptable by industrial plant breeders, as it allows pro-
ducing crops that yield more under conditions of water stress. Contrary to
these accounts, the myopic type of ignorance that is at the core of this
technology originates in a nonhuman-embodied genetic trait. HB4 plants
are, therefore, an interspecies alliance, wherein sunflower plants share their
embodied climate knowledge/ignorance through the mediation of humans.
Despite the sunflower’s association, human mediation here is crucial, as it is
humans who select the plants and the genes that react to climate stress in
ways that end up being valuable for business.
18 Science, Technology, & Human Values XX(X)

It is, therefore, important to consider who benefits and whose values are
promoted by particular types of ignorance. The response of HB4 plants to
water scarcity is attractive to plant breeders because it is in accordance with
their economic values. It is the industrial plant breeder who decides that
plants should prioritize production over reproduction/survival in conditions
of climate stress and who devises interspecies networks that discipline
plants into following such values. It is important to note that this phenom-
enon is not an isolated case. Plant breeding has historically been based on
trade-offs that favor crop productivity over a plant’s resilience in wild
environments, effectively making the reproduction of commercial plants
dependent on human and market forces (Warman 2003, 27; Pollan 2016,
19; Hartigan 2017, xx). What is interesting about HB4 is that the prioritiza-
tion of production over reproduction/survival is mediated by the manufac-
turing of ignorance and that this is reflective of a particular stage in
capitalism characterized by environmental pressures.
My argument here is not to suggest that when production takes prece-
dence over reproduction/survival, the outcome that seems to be pursued by
the plant’s evolutionary response is undermined. In fact, the market (as long
as it exists) will guarantee the plant’s reproduction as a species (insofar as it
remains commercially interesting to producers). Moreover, the introduction
of the drought tolerance trait does not undermine the plant’s reproduction
any further: modified plants are already elite commercial varieties, meaning
that they are already caught within the times and rules of capital.
Instead, my argument is that ignorance is central to the construction of
modern agricultural techno-natures in the age of climate change. Given the
current environmental crisis, modern techno-natures are increasingly forced
to recognize ecosystems’ complexity and variability if they are to seriously
represent strategies of climate change adaptation and mitigation. As certain
types of nonhuman ignorance are suitable for the differential expression of
plant traits, ignorance is considered to be an asset that can be selected,
isolated, and transferred at the molecular level. Although this type of embo-
died ignorance is not solely the result of human design, its inclusion in
agricultural techno-natures is guided by human economic values.
Importantly, plant breeders’ molecular selection of this type of ignorance
is not necessarily intentional. As mentioned above, the HB4 mechanism of
action was only first understood in 2006, when the HB4 technology had
already been patented. Notwithstanding, the speculative interest that was
sparked by the HB4 technology after 2006, and the enthusiastic explana-
tions of its functioning by scientists and entrepreneurs alike, shows that the
myopic mechanism behind the HB4 technology has been received with
Silva 19

open arms by Bioceres and its investors. It has also inspired the further
coproduction of science and technology based on the mobilization of embo-
died ignorance as an asset.
Why would these reactions be surprising, given that the guiding princi-
ple of private companies is to maximize profit generation through sustain-
able or unsustainable means? I argue that the fact that industrial seeds are
produced for the market and therefore, embody market values, is not as
obvious as it might seem at first sight. Talking of climate-ready seeds does
not automatically bring to mind the commodity form and the expansion of
capital, as much as it makes one think of climate-resilient organisms. As we
have seen, this is not necessarily the case for climate-ready seeds in general,
where drought tolerance means continued production (not survival) under
climate stress (Passioura 2012, 851; Tuberosa 2012, 1), and for the HB4
technology in particular, where drought tolerance is achieved through myo-
pia, not resilience.
To consider these types of seeds to be climate-ready organisms instead of
climate-ready commodities is to fall under the spell of commodity fetish-
ism, which is also myopia. As argued by Debord (1970, 38), “the spectacle
is the moment when the commodity has attained the total occupation of
social life. Not only is the relation to the commodity visible but it is all one
sees.” When the spell is broken, the counterintuitive approach leading to the
HB4 technology is no longer paradoxical. For Trucco’s hypothetical scien-
tist puzzled by a climate-ready seed built by numbing the seed’s climate
“antibodies,” one would simply have to respond by suggesting that what is
under protection is not a plant but a commodity.
To say that we live in “the society of the spectacle,” as per Debord, is not
to argue that commodities do not have a materiality or use value of their
own. Rather, it is to recognize the distorting power of looking at reality
through the lens of economic values. Not only are we persuaded that
climate-ready commodities are climate-resilient organisms, we also do not
question the use of a climate adaptation technology in soy: a crop that has
been associated with the acceleration of climate change through deforesta-
tion and its close connection to the CO2-emitting meat industry.

Ecomyopia: Green Growth and Climate Change

What can this myopic type of ignorance tell us about other technological
strategies of climate change adaptation and mitigation that do not question
capital expansion? The myopia embodied by HB4 plants resonates with
discussions held between promoters of green growth and degrowth about
20 Science, Technology, & Human Values XX(X)

what is at stake: humanity’s survival and economic production. Degrowth

thinkers urge us to reflect on humanity’s reproduction on a planet where
survival conditions are no longer guaranteed (cf. Steffen et al. 2015; Alex-
ander 2012; Latouche 2010). By pursuing capital expansion, we have
reached a point of existential threat that provokes us to consider difficult
questions: how many planets would we need in order to continue growing
at this pace or even to sustain human life as it is? How many generations
will have to pay for the exorbitant amount of raw materials that we con-
sume and the exorbitant amount of pollution that we produce? How will we
proceed when planetary limits make the flaws of a system based on con-
stant growth undeniable?
Meanwhile, mainstream promoters of green growth would argue that
putting a halt on production would come with dire consequences (World
Bank 2012, 4-5; Büchs and Koch 2019): how will we feed the world? How
will we deal with the poverty generated by declining production and job
numbers? Who will pay for environmentally friendly production and for the
cleaning of industrial pollution? This perspective proposes that we need to
keep the engines going while solutions arrive from within the current sys-
tem: “it is the quality of growth that matters” (Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development [OECD] 2017, 15). We need to keep grow-
ing while technological innovation and economic incentives allow us to
replace our current ways for more sustainable ones.
Some refer to this attitude as “ecomyopia”: “the tendency for societies to
ignore, not recognize, or fail to act on new ecological information that
contradicts political arrangements, social norms, or world views” (Casa-
grande et al. 2017, 23). Carbon capture machines, synthetic forests, and
augmented reality conservation strategies, for example, are all well-
intended strategies that do not promote structural change. They do not seek
to change the way in which we produce but instead are designed to clean
capitalism’s pollution or to help us adapt to its environmental effects. In
doing so, they promise to extend in time the life of the economic system
without addressing its limits structurally. In other words, just as HB4 plants,
these technologies are deployed in full consciousness of the climate crisis,
but they are caught within the times and needs of capital. From this logic,
the reproduction of humanity is linked to the reproduction of capitalism and
the reproduction of living organisms linked to the reproduction of
commodities.
Moreover, some of these technocentric strategies are not yet scientifi-
cally and economically feasible; they remain within the realm of the ima-
ginary. My concern is that the hope mobilized by these technological
Silva 21

imaginations could end up promoting a passivity in the way we confront

our environmental crises: a passivity that translates into the prevalence of
production over survival. Just as myopia allows HB4 plants to “keep calm”
and “carry on” producing under water stress, ecomyopia allows us to find
reassurance in imaginary technocentric strategies, while the capitalist
engines keep running and polluting. However, while HB4 plants can keep
producing without endangering their reproduction (as long as they remain
desirable for the market), the same is not true of human civilization: we
cannot prioritize production over survival without consequence.

Conclusion
This paper examined the nonhuman myopia embodied by the HB4 drought-
tolerant technology. It presented this molecular myopia as a material type of
strategic ignorance that is mobilized to produce climate-ready commodities,
not climate-resilient organisms. In light of the immunological concept of
tolerance, this type of “ignorance as commodity” can be seen as productive;
its gradual expression allows for the differential response of HB4 plants to
different levels of water availability––a challenge that prevented early
climate-ready plants from reaching the market. While plant breeding has
been historically based on trade-offs that favor crop productivity over a
plant’s resilience to natural environmental conditions, the HB4 case shows
something new in this regard: ignorance in capitalism today can be consid-
ered as a biological asset that can be selected, transferred, and marketed at
the molecular level, highlighting the role of capital as an evolutionary force.
My intention here was not to criticize a crop technology in particular.
Rather, I attempted to show that this technology is obliged to recognize
ecosystems’ complexity and variability in the promotion of modern techno-
natures. However, these techno-natures are guided not by biological evolu-
tion, but by market values, prioritizing production over survival, and the
immunity of markets over that of organisms. Reality under the lens of
economic value creates powerful spectacles that equate commodities with
living organisms and that ignore the contradictions of using climate adapta-
tion technologies in a crop that has been associated with high CO2-emitting
industries.
At the societal level, this type of myopia resonates with the ecomyopias
promoted by other strategies of climate adaptation and mitigation that seek
to protect production from climate change without questioning capital
expansion. These technologies are myopic in the sense that they are devised
in full consciousness of the climate crisis but do not react to it by slowing
22 Science, Technology, & Human Values XX(X)

down capitalist engines, as degrowth thinkers would propose. Instead, these

strategies are devised from a perspective that links the reproduction of
humanity to the reproduction of capital. Since these technologies have not
yet materialized, their so far unrealized existence promotes a passivity that
translates into the prevalence of production over humanity’s survival.

Acknowledgments
Special thanks to the scientists and workers of Bioceres Crop Solutions and to the
scientists involved in the development of the HB4 technology for their openness,
availability, and willingness to collaborate with me. I am grateful to the Swiss
National Science Foundation (SNF) for financing this research (postdoctoral grant
no. P2GEP1_178189) and to the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society at the
University of Oxford; the Instituto de Altos Estudios Sociales at the Universidad
Nacional de San Martin in Buenos Aires; and the Anthropology Department of the
University of California Santa Barbara for hosting me during this research.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was conducted with the
financial support of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF; postdoctoral
grant no. P2GEP1_178189).

ORCID iD
Diego Silva https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5441-9937

Notes
1. “Transcription factors are…proteins that possess sequence-specific DNA-binding
activity, and either directly or indirectly influence the transcription of genes in
proximity to the binding site” (Hughes 2011).
2. A series of protests organized by the environmentalist group “Extinction Rebel-
lion” and carried out in 2019 in some European cities. The protests’ main goal
was to push governments to declare a “climate and ecological emergency” and to
take immediate action to address climate change.
3. Stomata are pores found in leaves that facilitate gas exchange.
4. This process is called drought escape (Mitra 2001, 758).
Silva 23

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Author Biographies
Diego Silva is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Albert Hirschman Centre on
Democracy in Geneva, Switzerland. His research is located at the intersection of
science and technology studies, environmental anthropology, and political ecology,
paying special attention to the socio-technical networks that are necessary for the
deployment of agricultural innovations.