Environmental benefits and costs of transgenic crops: introduction

Concern about the environmental impacts of transgenic crops is one of the major reasons for the EU’s quasi moratorium on GMOs (European Environment Council 1999). The contributions in this book show that the economic implications of these concerns are far-reaching and complex. At the centre of the theoretical framework for analysis stands the linear chain of agricultural biotechnology development as depicted in Figure 1. The public and private sector invest resources in the development and use of knowledge to produce agricultural crops with new traits. Those new crops are sold to farmers who plant them and sell the harvest to the downstream sector, which further processes the products until they finally reach the end consumer via the retailers. The major concern about environmental impact at the farm level, where the deliberate release into the environment takes place, is indicated by the circle around the box in the centre of Figure 1.