Socio-economic impacts of GMOs on European Agriculture

Summary

Genetically modified (GM) crops (e.g. maize, soybean, oilseed rape and cotton) have been produced commercially since 1996. In 2016, 185 million hectares of GM crops were grown globally corresponding to 3.4% of the worldwide utilised agricultural area (UAA). Compared to Canada or the US, cultivation of GM crops in the EU agriculture is limited and decreased by 4.2% from136,338 ha UAA in 2016 to 130,571 ha UAA in 2017. Indeed, GM crops, are mainly grown in Spain and Portugal. The EU coexistence strategy seeks to ensure the choice of consumers and farmers between conventional, organic and GM crop production. As adventitious presence of GM crops in non-GM crops cannot be excluded, suitable measures are needed during cultivation, harvest, transport, storage and processing to ensure coexistence. So far, most coexistence studies focus on costs for GM producers even though coexistence involves cost for both the GM and the non-GM producer. Furthermore, there is a lack of studies from cases where coexistence is a real issue such as in Spain. Therefore, there is the need to analyse the socio-economic impacts of GM production on the actors of organic or non-GM supply chains.