Globalization of agricultural production and research: The case of the rapeseed subsector

In the realms of business, policy and intellectual discussion, science and technology have been treated historically as enabling agents for the develo pment of new products, technologies, knowledge, organizational and geograph ical arrangements of economic activities. However, relatively little attent ion has been paid to the analysis of how the globalization of production ac tivities, which has been made possible in part by various scientific achiev ements, is changing technoscience itself. This paper examines the worldwide interaction between agricultural research and agricultural production by u sing the rapeseed subsector as an example. Bibliometric data on rapeseed, a nd economic statistics of production, import and export of rapeseed and its products between 1940 and 1996 are used simultaneously to examine the glob alization of the rapeseed subsector and research activities in Canada, the US, Japan, China, India, the UK, France and Germany. A typology of producti on and research strategies that major rapeseed producing countries use to c ompete on the world oilseed market is developed.