ARTICLE: Why Agricultural Biotech Hasn’t Reached Its Potential

The following is a blog post by David Zilberman at the University of California, Berkeley website. 

Some of the key questions we raised as we celebrated the 20th anniversary of the ICABR consortium were “why haven’t GMO crops been accepted and adopted as Green Revolution crops or medical rDNA?” “What are the constraints to the adoption of GMO?” “What are the differences among nations?” Several speakers addressed these questions and here is my interpretation of their answers.

Rob Paarlberg gave a brilliant talk on the political economy of agricultural biotechnology. He introduced several theories that were used to answer these questions, and each theory provides some insight. This is not surprising since agricultural biotechnology has many features and countries are diverse in their policies and politics.

I myself believe that rent-seeking behavior can explain much of the continental divide between Europe and the U.S. Rent seeking means that different sectors of society use their influence, driven by self-interest, to affect politics to their benefit.

Click here to read the entire blog post.