Agriculture Technology Development in 20th Century

Most private companies that became involved in genetic engineering and plant breeding over the last three decades of the twentieth century started as chemical companies. Genetic engineering allowed for commercially attractive combinations of crops and chemicals. A classic example is the herbicide Roundup, developed by the chemical company Monsanto. Several crops, most prominently soy, are made resistant to the powerful chemical. Buying the resistant seed in combination with the chemical makes weed control an easy job for farmers. This type of commercial development of chemical technologies and products dominated the agricultural and food sector over the twentieth century. Artificially made nitrogen fertilizers are one such development that had a worldwide impact. In 1908, Fritz Haber, chemist at the Technische Hochschule in Karlsruhe, fixed nitrogen to hydrogen under high pressure in a laboratory setting. To exploit the process, Haber needed equipment and knowledge to deal with high pressures in a factory setting, and he approached the chemical company BASF. Haber and BASF engineer Carl Bosch built a crude version of a reactor, further developed by a range of specialists BASF assigned to the project.

The result was a range of nitrogen fertilizer products made in a capital and knowledge-intensive factory environment. This type of development was also applied to creating chemicals such as DDT for control of various pests (dichloro-diphenyltrichloroethane), developed in 1939 by Geigy researcher Paul Mu¨ ller and his team. DDT may exemplify the reverse side of the generally positive large-scale application of chemicals in agricultural production-the unpredictable and detrimental effects on the environment and human health. The commercial factory setting for technology development was omnipresent in the food sector. The combination of knowledge of chemical processes and mechanical engineering determined the introduction of entirely new products: artificial flavorings, products, and brands of products based on particular food combinations, or new processes such as drying and freezing, and storing and packaging methods.