From pesticides to genetically modified plants: history, economics and politics

Two technologies of crop protection are compared, crop protection by pestic ides and by Genetically Modified Plants (GMPs). The history of pesticides p rovides lessons relevant to the future of GMPs; (1) high pesticide usage is counter-productive, (2) the technology requires intensive regulation and ( 3) has nonetheless many external effects which strongly reduce its social b enefits, (4) early calculations on net benefits of pesticides were over-opt imistic, and (5) intensive use of pesticides made farmers so dependent on t hem that they lost important options. These lessons are used to construct a framework for the economic analysis of GMPs which can be applied once suff icient empirical information becomes available. Conceptually the framework can be used for a comparison of crop protection strategies indicated as che mical crop protection, threshold-based crop protection, crop protection by ecotechnology and organic agriculture. Given the current state of knowledge on the impact of GMPs where (1) benefits are assumed rather than proven, ( 2) regulatory costs are rising and (3) environmental and human health risks have yet to be fully identified, one conclusion is that ex ante economic a nalysis which draws upon some of the lessons learned with chemical pesticid es may help to bridge the gap between the proponents and the opponents of G MT (Genetic Modification Technology).