Page 50 - Breeding and regulatory opportunities, Renaud

Chapter 2

governmental guidelines as to how the regulatory clause should be interpreted

and translated into practice have not been formally published. The steps for

compliance have evolved in practice but harmonisation and transition toward

100% compliance has been hindered by divergent interpretations and interests.

Although the results of the study reported here indicate that stakeholders agree

that organic seed usage is necessary, the question remains as to how to achieve

this goal without forsaking the integrity of the organic production system by

use of organically produced seed, proitability, maintaining biodiversity in

production systems, and access to an appropriate and suicient diversity of

seed varieties. At stake is the assurance of an appropriate assortment of organic

varieties in suicient volume and suited to various organic farming conditions,

without use of chemical herbicides, pesticides and fertilisers. In this perspective,

the development of the organic seed regulation can be considered a stepping

stone towards a seed industry that breeds well-adapted varieties which support

optimized organic production systems.

The central aim of this chapter is to analyse the development of organic seed

regulation in the US over six years from 2007 through 2013 through the lens

of historical institutionalism (Steimo, 2008; Hall and Taylor, 1996). This lens

enables identiication of patterns in social, political and economic behaviour

over time. The study traces how the evolution of organic seed regulation in the

US has been guided by both formal policy development and by the informal

interpretations, behaviours, actions and choices of the various stakeholders.

Speciically, three main issues are addressed: (1) how proposals for the wording

and implementation of the regulation constrain seed choices and give rise to

unintended consequences, (2) how emergent organizations and procedures

have responded to the tension between sustaining seed diferentiation to match

the characteristics of local markets, organic production and agro-ecologies, and

the narrowing of varietal choice in catalogued seed so as to expand commercial

organic seed markets and encourage organic seed breeding, (3) why consensus

on the content of formal seed policy has failed to develop despite a high level

of stake holder engagement. The study also explores how the varying capacities

of an increasing number of private and public stakeholders in the organic seed

sector each with specialized tasks and competencies has led to fragmentation

rather than convergence of efort.The dynamic relationships which have evolved

between varying coalitions of interest and in the various networks that have

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