Agricultural research and human nutrition: a comparative analysis of Brazil, Cuba, Israel, and the United States.

A tentative theoretical explanation of modern nutritional vulnerability is derived from an original study of agricultural science as part of the social process in societies distinguished by the extent to which their form of production (specifically reproduction of labor) falls within or outside the world of commodities. The selected case studies--the United States, Israel, Brazil, and Cuba--are characterized also by advanced agricultural research, remarkable agricultural productivity, and, with the exception of Brazil, a satisfactory state of public nutrition. This particular selection thus lays the basis for a holistic investigation of malnutrition which considers the mode of production as the appropriate unit of analysis. As a theoretical, not statistical, account of nutritional status variations in a variety of social environments, the study employs a two-dimensional comparison of agricultural research orientation and impact, on the one side, and of predominant modes of reproduction of labor, on the other. It is proposed that, independently of agricultural productivity effects of research, structural nutritional vulnerability prevails where the strictly capitalist commodity--labor power--is sold below its value, and because, in the framework of capitalist production, science is biased against subsistence food crops that are used restrictively in reproduction of labor. This bias is rooted not in the nature of such crops, but in their role in determining the value of labor power, which as expressed by wage, stands in inverse proportion to profit.