The regulatory framework for growing GM crops in Germany comprises quite liberal ex-ante regulations with very strict ex-post liability rules to protect other production forms from possible negative side effects of transgenic plants. Regulation is assumed to impose additional costs on farmers who intend to plant Bt-maize. This paper investigates the significance of these costs and the possibility of minimizing them by farm-level strategies such as coordination and cooperation between the Bt-maize growing farmer and his neighbours. A case study investigating the behaviour of Bt-maize growing farmers was carried out in the Oderbruch region in the federal state of Brandenburg, Germany. This region is leading in Bt-maize cultivation in Germany and has a high incidence of the European Corn Borer (Ostrinia nubilalis Hübner). The interviews revealed that additional costs due to ex-ante regulation and ex-post liability were only of minor importance to the Bt-maize growing farmers. All farms were large-scale and could easily manage the construction of buffer zones within their own fields and deliberately avoided the planting of Bt-maize close to their neighbours. Thus advanced inter-farm coordination and cooperation was not necessary to achieve coexistence. However, the fact that Bt-maize was only grown on large-scale farms indicates a significant threshold effect due to the regulatory framework in Germany likely to prevent small-scale farms from planting Bt-maize unless innovative farm-level strategies of coexistence will be developed.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.