This document provides a description of Colombian agriculture at a glance, to then enter into a more analytical view of how macroeconomic policies have interacted with sectoral policies to contribute in shaping the activity into what it is today. The institutional framework of the biotechnology activity in the country is later exposed to lay the elements for an understanding of its potentials, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Then, the document goes into a detailed description, by prioritized crop cases, of how biotechnology interacts with other processes, sometimes as an integral part of a research program, complementing other disciplines, and other times as just being an isolated component that pursues knowledge for its own sake. The section on diffusion of biotechnology products forms a synthesis of what was previously reviewed, while the last section, on future developments, tackles an essential objective of the study which is to make proposals regarding institutional and ...