The Political Economy of Regulation of Biotechnology in Agriculture

Abstract

In Europe and in many developing countries, genetically modified (GM) crops are effectively banned. Some countries limit the direct use of such crops as food for human consumption to a few niche agricultural products, such as papaya, sweet corn, and squash. These restrictions can be traced to public decision-making processes reflecting the interplay of sometimes conflicting economic interests of different groups within society. This chapter examines the political economy underlying the regulation of biotechnology in agriculture. It begins with a review of the literature on the politics and political economy of agricultural biotechnology policies, followed by a discussion of how political choices regarding GM crops have evolved over time. It then considers the agricultural economics literature regarding the distributional impacts of the adoption of GM crops, focusing on the impact of the introduction of GM crop varieties on the economic welfare of different groups in society. It also assesses the formation and evolution of agricultural biotechnology policies in Europe and their effects on salient interest groups such as consumers, farmers, environmental interest groups, and industrial sectors.

The economic power of the Golden Rice opposition

“…Their objective function may not only be based on the direct benefits and costs of the GRS. A number of political economy models have been developed to analyze policies related to the introduction of GE crops in more detail considering two or more lobby groups (e.g., Graff et al, 2009;Swinnen and Vandemoortele, 2010) and the role of media (Vigani and Olper, 2014 anti-genetically modified organism (GMO) strategy has been a successful fundraising strategy for environmental lobby groups such as Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth. The role of anti-GMO lobby groups and their strong influence on decision making, particularly in developing countries, has been well described by political scientists (e.g., Paarlberg, 2008;Herring, 2010).…”

Political Economy of Public Policies: Insights from Distortions to Agricultural and Food Markets

“…For example, in the case of genetically modified food, the farm lobby in Europe has joined forces with several constituencies in order to prevent domestic production and importation of products that may contain genetically modified organisms (Graff, Hochman, and Zilberman 2009;Evenson and Raney 2007). These constituencies include environmentalists concerned with the impact on the local environment of growing genetically modified crops, consumers worried about the safety of food containing genetically modified organisms, and life-science companies with patents threatened by the emergence of generic crop-protection products.…”

Agricultural subsidy with capacity constraints and demand elasticity

“…Generally speaking, there are two major viewpoints about agricultural support. One opinion issues that politicians who support farmers are to obtain more political votes (Swinnen 1994;Graff et al 2009;Anderson and Swinnen 2010;Anderson et al 2013), while other people declare that the reasons for governments to subsidize agriculture are that agriculture has an intrinsic weakness because the demand for agricultural products are inelastic but the supply of them are elastic (Zhang 1949;Krueger et al 1988;Zietz and Valdts 1993). Most of the studies which are based on developed countries followed the political support assumption, while other studies which focused on developing countries sustained a weak agriculture assumption.…”

“…Their studies found that high-income countries are more pro-agricultural than the low-income countries and a high RRA results in high welfare losses. Graff et al (2009) declared that the politicians support agriculture because they can acquire more votes by agricultural subsidy. Another Europe-based study drew by Greenaway and Swinnen (2009) also emphasized the distorting effects of agricultural subsidy.…”