In the national and global development of the productive forces today intellectual property and ownership of patents has become a key component of the imperialist system of domination under the aegis of neoliberal capitalism—what we describe as the “imperialist system of technological innovation”. This paper explores the implications of this development for the agricultural sector and seeks to unravel fundamental features of the capitalist development process involved in Latin America. At issue in this process is the intersection between two modalities of capital accumulation, one based on the extraction of natural resources and the export of these resources in primary commodity form (extractive capitalism); the other based on the advance of “human capital” in the form of scientific knowledge and social technology, and monopoly control over the “brainpower” mobilised in the capitalist development process.