Contested Agro-Technological Futures: The GMO and the Construction of European Space

Abstract

This chapter explores the attempt to construct the European Union (EU) as a harmonised regulatory space for the governance of genetically modified crops and food, in the additional context of the EU’s expansion eastwards. It explores how this attempt was repeatedly thwarted by national GM bans by member states, and how this has resulted in a project to construct Europe as a space of coexistence between separate agrofood systems, including GM, non-GM and organic, and the rise of GM-free regions based upon quality regional food strategies. The chapter also uncovers the industrial agrofood models implied by the dominant GM technologies, and contrasts these with emerging alternative agrofood systems and technologies around local, organic and quality driven production and consumption. It uses this analysis to question the linear conceptions of technological progress that underlie the assumption that CEE countries such as Poland must inevitably embrace a globalised and industrialised agrofood system.

This chapter presents empirical data and concepts generated within the research project Participatory Governance and Institutional Innovation (PAGANINI), funded under the EU 6th Framework Programme for Research and Technology (Contract No. CIT2-CT-2004-505791), and also draws on work done as part of the research project Facilitating Alternative Agro-Food Networks: Stakeholder Perspectives on Research Needs (FAAN), funded under the EU 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technology. Earlier versions were presented to the conferences The New Governance of Life: Challenges, Transformations, Innovations, Vienna, 10–11 June 2007, Regions and Regionalism in and beyond Europe, Lancaster, 17–19 September 2007, and The Promises and Challenges of the Life Sciences Industry in Central and Eastern Europe, Prague, 18–19 October 2007. The authors are grateful to the other PAGANINI and FAAN project members, to participants at the above events, and to Les Levidow, Larry Busch, Piotr Stankiewicz, Andrew Barry and Bálint Balázs for helpful comments on earlier drafts.