Agricultural Biotechnology in the European Union: Alternative Technologies and Economic Outcomes

The Affordable Resources strategy and the Milieux Embeddedness strategy as alternative approaches to facilitating innovation in a knowledge-intensive industry

“…While it is not clear exactly how the economic benefits of biotechnology innovation might be realized and how they might be appropriated by investors, most industrialized countries (and a significant number of less industrialized countries) are competing with each other to develop a strong national biotechnology industry. While the United States has been the leader in this industry (Bullock & Dibner, 1995;Bureau of National Affairs, 1989;Sharp, 1990aSharp, , 1990b, massive public sector investment and growing private sector support for biotechnology entrepreneurship in other countries has made biotechnology an arena for international competition in technological innovation (Arundel, 2001;Lipparini & Lomi, 1999;Ramani, 2002;Senker, 1998;Swann et al, 1998).…”

Agro-biotechnology, innovation and employment

“…The third factor, the existence of alternative technologies combined with low switching costs, acts to reinforce the downward pressure on costs in the agro-food chain (Arundel, 2001). GM crop varieties must compete with other technologies, both on the farm and throughout the agro-food chain.…”

“…A 1999 survey of European seed and agrochemical firms determined the percentage of R&D expenditure on genetic engineering and the applic ation of these technologies to enhance conventional plant breeding (Arundel, 2001). These rates, applied to the total number of employees in seed and agro-chemical firms, estimate an additional 8,500 biotechnology jobs.…”

KIBS Associated to Natural Resource Based Industries: Seeds Innovation and Regional Providers of the Technology Services Embodied in Seeds in Argentina and Brazil, 2000-2014

“…For the time being, at least, the innovative outputs from genetic engineering can often be achieved with other approaches. Thus key traits achieved by genetic engineering -for herbicide tolerance, coleopteran pest resistance, bcarotene enrichment and delayed ripening -have all been introduced in major food crop varieties by advanced cross breeding and mutagenesis techniques (Arundel 2001;Zamir 2008;Brumlop and Finckh 2011). Furthermore, genetic engineering techniques have not yet been able to modify complex 'quantitative' traits, such as for yield and stress resistance (that are determined by numerous interacting genes), but such traits can be modified using cross breeding techniques, especially when using advanced genomic knowledge (Fernie et al 2006).…”