Page 72 - Breeding and regulatory opportunities, Renaud

Chapter 2

However, our study indicates that the creation and stability of self-organizing

governance networks is a challenging task, not least because the stakeholders

each tend to seek through the networks the means primarily to achieve their

own interests. Their commitment to shared goals for the sector as a whole can

be weak, conditional and or change over time. The central question remains

as to whether there is clarity as to who or what is driving regulatory closure.

Some stakeholders risk losing the resources they have invested in contributing

to organic seed related emergent governance networks because others have

not fulilled their commitments as expected. This dynamic is at play at various

points in the processes described in this chapter such as when seed companies’

revealed frustration as organic growers continue to buy conventional untreated

seed when an organic seed supply is available. The heavy involvement of non-

governmental stakeholders in the organic seed discourse, combined with the

stalled formalization of the organic seed regulation, has created some confusion.

A level playing ield has not yet been achieved such as the sub-optimal allocation

of risk that primarily rests on the certiiers’interpretive responsibility. Considerable

duplication of eforts remain demonstrated by the multiple unsatisfactory

databases attempted. After more than ten years the inal NOP guidance has not

brought suicient regulatory clarity and closure has not been achieved.

On the basis of this study, the situation is interpreted as follows. Grower and seed

sector stakeholder interests remain divergent driven by diferences in market

opportunity and their varying prioritization of proit, enterprise development,

and biodiversity goals. The main tensions which divide stakeholders are: (1)

organic versus commercial values, (2) consensus-building versus protest, and (3)

market-led versus conservation and biodiversity concerns. Similar tensions are

described also by Luttikholt (2007) with reference to the process of formulating

IFOAM’s basic principles. The diferences between stakeholders’ perspectives

and interests have made it diicult to drive regulatory closure on the basis of a

market-led business model, while the lack of closure constrains the willingness

of commercial seed producers to make investment commitments. Waterman

and Meier (1998) note that when stakeholders’ goals are not aligned, policy-

making tends to drift toward extended policymaker passivity. This may explain

the NOP’s reluctance to formally endorse a clear regulatory framework and

drive regulatory closure, suggesting that the government has not (yet) opted

to take on the role of meta-governor.

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