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agricultural crops, and has since 1996. Argentina follows only the United States in every
measure of commitment to growing such crops, and has been a steady partner in the
Miami group promoting their free trade. Barring unforeseen developments, the only
development likely to restrict Argentine cultivation of GM crops would be the complete
shutdown of global markets for GM products (Ablin and Paz 2003). The Argentine
government’s preferred norms and principles with respect to GMOs are a near match for
those of global GM producers, although the particular Argentine experience with GM soy
undermines the property rights component of those principles. The decision-making
procedures relevant to GM production with Argentina have remained unusually
concentrated in the regulatory capacity of the national executive, notwithstanding some
very recent challenges.
GM soy is Argentina’s most extensive GM crop, comprising almost 90% of the
12 million hectares planted to soy in 2001/02 (Trigo and Cap 2003:87). The production
of soy has increased dramatically, rising from 10.9 tons and about one quarter of total
agricultural production in 1990/91 to 35.0 tons in 2002/03, a figure that was nearly half
of all of Argentina’s agricultural production (Chudnovsky 2004:16). Argentina exports
nearly all (98% in 2003) of its soy as beans or other products; collectively, they have
come to represent about 20% of Argentina’s total exports (Lapegna and Domínguez
2004:12). Argentina’s experience with GM soy is in many ways archetypal of a particular
kind of export agriculture model, but it also has unusual characteristics that mean its
comparative success there will not be readily duplicated for other GM crops or other
cultivators of GM soy.
Convention