Nicholas Kalaitzandonakes

Compliance Costs for Regulatory Approval of New Biotech Crops

The regulatory approval process for new biotech crop varieties is said to be unduly slow and expensive, presenting important barriers to the development of new cropping technologies. To date, however, the private and social costs have not been analyzed or measured, let alone compared with alternatives. This chapter reports initial findings from our continuing project on the costs of regulatory compliance for biotech crops. In this chapter we describe and document the regulatory requirements, and we provide estimates of representative compliance costs for key biotechnologies based on confidential data supplied to us by several major biotech companies.

Mass media framing of biotechnology news

In fast-changing scientific fields like biotechnology, new information and discoveries should influence the balance of risks and rewards and their associated media coverage. This study investigates how reporters interpret and report such information and, in turn, whether they frame the public debate about biotechnology. Mass media coverage of medical and agricultural biotechnology is compared over a 12-year period and in two different countries: the United States and the United Kingdom. We examine whether media have consistently chosen to emphasize the potential risks over the benefits of these applications, or vice versa, and what information might drive any relevant changes in such frames. We find that the two sets of technologies have been framed differently—more positive for medical applications, more negative for agricultural biotechnology. This result holds over time and across different geographic locations. We also find that international events influence media coverage but have been locally framed. This local newsworthiness extends to both medical and agricultural applications. We conclude that such coverage could have led to differences in public perception of the two sets of technology: more negative (or ambivalent) for agricultural, positive for medical applications. Our findings suggest that understanding news frames, and the events that drive them, provides some insight into the long-term formation of public opinion as influenced by news coverage.

Vertical and Horizontal Coordination in the Agro-biotechnology Industry: Evidence and Implications

Agro-biotechnology is evolving from a pre-commerical phase dominated by basic research science to a commercial phase oriented around marketing products. In pursuing innovation rents in the commercial phase, firms are reorienting their strategies around complementary marketing and distribution assets. This is impacting vertical and horizontal industry structure. Conversely, industry structure is also impacting firm strategies. Horizontal alliances and consolidation continue from the pre-commercial phase into the commercial phase, while vertical coordination and integration strategies are accelerating rapidly. Interplay between firm strategy and industry structure is too complex for firms to anticipate early in the pre-commercial phase for long-term strategy formulation.

Perspectives on evaluating competitiveness in agribusiness industries

This article discusses strategies to improve the competitiveness of agribusiness firms through enhanced customer value. Relationships between customer value and factors that influence the cost structure of the firm are discussed. The relationships between customer value and product differentiation, vertical coordination, niche marketing, total quality management, and related strategies are explored. Finally, implications for managerial decisions in the food and agribusiness sector are presented.

Who is driving biotechnology acceptance

Incentives and strategies of key players in the global food industry may be driving public acceptance of agrobiotechnology as much as consumer attitudes.

Agrobiotechnology and Competitiveness

By now the story of agrobiotechnology is well known. After almost twenty years in the lab and the experimental fields, agrobiotechnology arrived at the market in the mid-1990s and was quickly embraced by farmers in key agricultural producing countries (James). Consumers in Europe, and more recently in other parts of the world, however, have been skeptical and often combative toward the new technology (Gaskel, Bauer, and Durant). This apparent dissonance between technology providers and users, on the one hand, and some consumer quarters on the other hand, has led some to speculate that agrobiotechnology is heading the way of nuclear energy--a promising technology but ultimately one with unfulfilled expectations (Mitsch and Mitchell). Interestingly, such gloomy predictions coincided with others that hailed agriculture as the primary beneficiary of the emerging genomics revolution (Abelson). Will agrobiotechnology live up to the high expectations set out by its purveyors for over a quarter of a century? While it may be difficult to predict the future trajectories of agrobiotechnology, the factors that will shape them are more or less understood. Technical prospects, institutions, and markets will shape the future of agrobiotechnology. In this paper, the author looks at emerging trends in these key factors and discusses their implications for the future of agrobiotechnology and for national competitiveness.

AN ANALYSIS OF POTENTIAL CONSERVATION EFFORT OF CRP PARTICIPANTS IN THE STATE OF MISSOURI: A LATENT VARIABLE APPROACH

This study investigated the influence of economic, personal, and attitudinal factors on the intended conservation effort of a sample of Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) contract holders after their contracts have expired. Economic factors were found to dominate the decision about future conservation effort. Attitudes towards conservation were found to have no significant influence on the decision. This fact may relate to the recent changes in the regulatory environment brought about by the 1985 Food Security Act which changed conservation from a voluntary to regulated nature.

Price Protection and Productivity Growth

This study provides empirical evidence on the relationship between price protection and productivity growth. From theoretical considerations, it is concluded that the impact of price protection on productivity growth is ambiguous. Although protectionism may in some instances stimulate investment and adoption of new technologies, efficiency may decrease, particularly when farm prices and income are high. Empirical evidence from the New Zealand beef/sheep industry indicates that high protection during the 1975–85 period produced negative productivity growth. Following market liberalization in 1985, productivity growth increased substantially.

A State-Space Approach to Perennial Crop Supply Analysis

In perennial crop supply analysis, separate estimation of the qualitatively different new planting and replanting decisions is desirable. Commonly, data paucity restricts estimation to a single reduced form equation. This study develops a dynamic unobserved components method where separate estimation of the structural equations is possible in the absence of detailed data on new plantings and replantings. The proposed method is empirically implemented in a case study of the Florida grapefruit industry. In terms of both statistical and forecasting performance, the proposed structural approach is found superior to a single equation reduced form specification.

Sentiments and acts towards genetically modified foods

Hundreds of studies have elicited consumer stated preferences towards genetically modified foods at various countries around the world. Customarily, consumer stated preferences have been viewed as adequate proxies of potential response towards such products. As we have argued here, however, there are theoretical and methodological reasons as to why stated and revealed consumer preference could diverge. In this study, we provide empirical evidence of consumer revealed preferences towards branded processed products containing ingredients labelled as genetically modified. Our empirical results allow insights into the behaviour of a population of knowledgeable, informed, high-income consumers over a long period of time, across multiple products and suggest that in the Netherlands a majority of consumers did not shift away from genetically modified foods even in the presence of alternatives.