Regulatory Regime Selection: Shopping, Shaping, and Staying in the Genetically Modified Corn Seed Industry

• In Event: 058 - Regular Session. Food and Agriculture: Seeds, Safety, and Systems

Abstract

In this paper, I build a framework to understand the process by which transnational corn seed firms tailor local conditions to meet their regulatory needs and the ways in which communities show their resilience. My account is based on a multi-sited ethnography of two key research and development hubs for the U.S. corn seed market in Puerto Rico and Hawaii, as well as the headquarters of an Iowa-based industry leader. My work shows that firms must balance a site’s natural endowments with its sociopolitical and regulatory context to be successful. In contrast with theoretical approaches that view firms’ localization as a single moment of decision-making, I conceptualize localization as an ongoing process of negotiating a regulatory regime with local actors and institutions – not just shopping for the right environment, but also shaping it, and actively staying there. I argue that firms’ competitiveness depends on successfully navigating these place-based mechanisms to extract technology rents and protect their right to operate in locales with specific natural and regulatory assets. Because firms’ competitiveness hinges on staying in these particular environments, firms become place-bound, which may be used by communities and local governments as a negotiating tool for better environmental and labor arrangements.

Author

• Annabel Ipsen, Michigan State University