developing countries have insisted on sustaining loose property rights systems in order to
help their farmers and obtain new technologies at the lowest possible cost3.
In this article we will analyze the case of Argentina’s property rights protection for
genetically modified organisms. We analyze the case of Soybeans and use econometric
techniques to understand both, the productivity impact of using genetically modified
soybeans and why some farms, depending on their ownership structure, prefer to use
these seeds, or not, given the uncertainty on property rights protection. We use a database
of 3000 farms from the Province of Buenos Aires, provided by the Direccion Provincial
de Estadisticas y Censo.
This article is organized as follows. The second section will provide a description
of Argentina’s corn and soybean markets. The fourth section will describe the evolution
of intellectual property rights in Argentina. The fifth section will present empirical
evidence using econometric techniques. Finally, we will present our conclusions.
Argentina in World Markets
Argentina and the United States are important actors in international agricultural
markets. In Argentina, the market liberalization during the 1990s gave new impetus to
agricultural production, and soybean was one of the crops that benefited the most.4 An
intensified interest in new seed varieties and the introduction of genetically modified
seeds in 1996 accompanied the impressive growth in grain exports.5
3 This seems to reflect a dichotomy between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres:
“The argument made by Northern countries is that while prices may rise in the short run, new technologies
will be available over the long term and will, in turn, raise economic productivity. As the result of
protected property rights, the South will gain from new investment....For the net technology using
countries (South) the significant short term costs may arise directly from an increase in the cost of the input
due to the lack of complete substitutes and indirectly from the administrative and enforcement costs of a
Northern style [intellectual property rights] IPR protection system. Adding to the complexity is the fact
that welfare impacts are best understood in a dynamic context, as the short-term losses of strengthening the
South’s IPR regime are believed to be trumped by the long-term gain from economic growth.”
Goldsmith, Ramos & Steiger (2001), at 4.
4 See Randall D. Schnepf, Erik N. Dohlman & Christine Bolling, (2001).
5 See id. at 23.