Monsanto, for instance, has proposed doing this with the Global Forum for Agricultural Research. They are interested in accessing Third World gene banks but are unwilling to transfer technology to Third World researchers. This new technological frontier is risky and costly and has yet to prove its advantage for developing-country agriculture, and for developed countries for that matter. It is obviously good business for the TNCs, but farmers, consumers, and the environment are unlikely to benefit. In general, the developing-country community needs appropriate technology instead of biotechnology.
Appropriate technology is ecological, people-centered, and sustainable.
Its use optimizes and manages natural resources through community-based wisdom and production systems. Modern biotechnology, at its present level of development, is more of a risk to food security and food production in the Third World than a benefit, especially in the case of small-scale farmers, who still make up a significant part of the economically active population in developing countries. These farmers are more susceptible to the economic risks caused by the higher production costs and the economic dependence on suppliers of the seeds and chemical inputs needed for the new transgenic varieties. This economic vulnerability can increase exclusion of smallholders from the market and from the land itself. Moreover, most of the transgenic plants have been developed in northern ecological environments, very different from those of the South.