In Chapter 1, we concluded that the new agenda being imposed on the agri-food system was born from a combination of pressures from civil society, the scientific community, government regulations, and new companies entering the food industry. Dominant companies initially limited themselves to small adaptations and to the incorporation of superficial aspects of the agenda's discourse. Today, however these companies are embracing more radical product innovations based on the new scientific and technological advances and appropriating the agri-food agenda in their own way.

We can appreciate the originality of the current wave of innovation if we compare it with the two great innovations that shook the agri-food system in the 20th century. It is important to recognize, however, that there is continuity between the three waves in the increasing control of biological and genetic processes. The first wave involved a combination of plant and animal breeding techniques with the growing influence of the Mendelian approach to identifying individual genes as responsible for specific characteristics. On this basis, the US government, together with the Rockefeller Foundation, developed cooperative programs with Mexico in the 1940s to develop high-yielding varieties of maize and wheat when planted with irrigation, synthetic fertilizer, and chemical pesticides. The same techniques were applied in Asia during the 1960s, now in the Cold War context, making countries like India and Pakistan self-sufficient and even exporters of these grains, in much the same way as Mexico a decade and a half earlier. The results on the African continent were less successful due to poor adaptation of the varieties and the lack of infrastructure and human capacity. It was not until the 1970s that more adapted rice varieties were developed. The diffusion of these innovations requires physical infrastructure (irrigation, roads, electricity), breeders and extension workers, and credit systems for the purchase of inputs. To this end, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT) was created in Mexico and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines. These initiatives were promoted by the public sectors in different countries, led by the United States acting in partnership with the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations. As a by-product, however, a private seed industry emerged based on the industrial secrecy of hybridization techniques – Pioneer in the United States, Limagrain in France, and Agroceres in Brazil – all dedicated to the production and commercialization of hybrid corn (Glaeser, 1987; Briney, 2020).