Biodiversity, Identity and Global Agriculture: GMO Regulation in Mexico and Peru

• In Event: Comparative Political Economy of Food

Abstract

Over the past twenty-five years, Latin America has become a champion of genetically modified (GM) crops, and now accounts for over 40 percent of global production. This paper examines the development of GM crop regulation in Mexico and Peru, the most significant crop centers of origin and diversification within the Latin American region. Despite holding similar levels of agrobiodiversity, these countries have taken divergent policy approaches: Peru has opted for a legislative moratorium across all GM crops, while Mexico has adopted a mixed approach, prohibiting GM maize and soy, while permitting GM cotton. I trace the origins of these contrasting policies and argue that they reflect the ways in which domestic actors link agrobiodiversity—and the absence of GM crops—to national identity. My argument is that the content of these articulations of national identity (cultural identity vs. market-based) is at the root of differences in regulatory approaches across Mexico and Peru. Further, I suggest that these cases may represent a broader shift in state attitudes regarding the use, management, and documentation of agrobiodiversity across the Latin American region.

The second part of this paper presents descriptive results of a household survey of public attitudes toward GM crops in Mexico. This is the first nationally-representative survey of GMO attitudes in Mexico, and it represents an attempt to rigorously identify existing levels of knowledge, general attitudes toward GMOs, attitudes by crop type, and dimensions of public concern. I conclude with an analysis of the survey results and present an account about what this reveals about the role of the public within the formation of regulatory policy in Mexico.

Author

• David Greenwood-Sánchez, University of Iowa