Coping with Ex-ante Regulations for Planting Bt Maize: The Portuguese Experience

Ex-ante regulations and ex-post liability rules regulate the planting of GM crops in the European Union (EU). Those rules and regulations are in addition to the rules and regulations governing the planting of the equivalent non-GM crop. The legal basis imposing additional rules and regulations—the coexistence measures—is Directive 2001/18/EC on traceability and labelling of GMOs. The European Commission has published recommendations for coexistence measures (Recommendation 2003/ 556/EC) to support national approaches. Accordingly, “coexistence refers to the ability of farmers to make a practical choice between conventional, organic and GM crop production, in compliance with the legal obligations for labelling and/or purity standards.” (Commission of the European Communities, 2003, pp. L189/36). The importance of the coexistence regulations lies in the fact that they can play a crucial role in farmers’ decisions to cultivate GM crops. They induce extra costs on potential GM farmers and therefore lower the incentives for adopting GM crops (Beckmann, Soregaroli, & Wesseler, 2006b). Soregaroli and Wesseler (2005) show that strict minimum-distance requirements will increase the adoption threshold and discriminate against smaller farms. Demont et al. (2007) demonstrate that a strict minimum-distance requirement of 50m for oilseed rape reduces adoption by about 66%, while a 100m minimum-distance requirement may reduce adoption by roughly 77% based on a GIS simulation model applied to Central France. Less strict minimum-distance requirements that allow for collaboration among neighboring farms have the potential to partially off-set the negative effect of minimum-distance requirements (Beckmann & Wesseler, 2007). In addition to minimum-distance requirements, potential growers of GM crops face a number of additional rules and regulations that further increase the costs of adoption. Beckmann et al. (2006b) provide an overview of the different ex-ante regulations and expost liability rules EU member states intend to implement or have implemented. In this article we present the results of a survey among Bt and non-Bt maize farmers in Portugal. The aim is to identify to what extent the ex-ante coexistence regulations affect the continuation of Bt maize cultivation. More specifically, we want to investigate the ease of application of the ex-ante regulations among Bt maize farmers. The second objective is to investigate if the non-Bt maize producers are aware of the Bt technology and the coexistence regulations, what led them to avoid planting Bt maize, and their intention for adoption in the short run. Interestingly, 43.7% of all the Bt and non-Bt maize producers stated difficulties in applying the ex-ante regulations. Therefore, it can be stated that, among other factors, the rigidity of ex-ante regulations seems to hamper Bt maize adoption in Portugal and in its current form reduces rather than supports coexistence. The article is organized as follows: The next section provides an overview about Bt maize production in Portugal. Following that, we present the Portuguese coexistence decree that regulates the coexistence of GM, conventional, and organic crops, and then outline the survey approach. Finally, we present the survey results and conclude the article.