just existing is resisting the everyday struggle against the expansion of gm crops in spain

Abstract: The attempt to have coexistence between organic, conventional and Genetically Modified GM crops has generated unresolved frictions between agri-food models based on different p

* Corresponding author: amaranta.herrero@genok.no GenØk – Centre for

Biosafety Siva innovasjonssenter Tromsø P.O Box 6418 9294 Tromsø

† Rosa.binimelis@uvic.cat GenØk – Centre for Biosafety Siva innovasjonssenter

Tromsø P.O Box 6418 9294 Tromsø and Universitat de Vic (Universitat Central

de Catalunya) Càtedra en Agroecologia i Sistemes Alimentaris Catalonia Spain

‡ Fern.wickson@uit.no GenØk – Centre for Biosafety Siva innovasjonssenter

Tromsø P.O Box 6418 9294 Tromsø

Abstract: The attempt to have coexistence between organic, conventional and Genetically

Modified (GM) crops has generated unresolved frictions between agri-food models based on different practices, values, worldviews and cultures This paper explores forms of everyday resistance that have emerged against the domineering power and spread of GM maize in Spain, the gateway nation for GM crops in Europe Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic work and interviews, we describe six practices by which social actors throughout the agri-food system are resisting the expansion of GM maize and forming some unlikely alliances We conclude that a myriad of practical resistance actions are taking place, from actors in both alternative and conventional food systems, as they fight for their survival against the political power and uncontrolled biological spread of GM crops These practices challenge the regulatory concept of the possibility of a harmonious coexistence between the systems and highlight how an everyday struggle is required for non-GM maize actors to continue to exist

Keywords: coexistence, everyday forms of resistance, GMOs, agricultural biotechnologies,

socio-environmental conflict, agri-food system

Introduction

Modern agricultural biotechnologies have generated fierce socio-political conflicts around the

globe In an attempt to appease these conflicts, Europe has placed significant weight on the

concept of ‘coexistence’, i.e simultaneous production of organic, conventional and

Genetically Modified (GM) crop systems without economic discrimination from one to the

other (European Commission 2003, 2010a, Directive (EU) 2015/412) The nature of GM

crops, however, is proving to be seepingly expansive and increasingly oppressive, as the

existing socio-political infrastructure and biological agency of the crops facilitates an

unintentional spread that contaminates both conventional and organic systems via various

pathways (Oehen et al 2007; Ryffel 2014; Snow 2002) The pursuit of what is called

agricultural coexistence has therefore created unresolved frictions between stakeholders of

different agri-food networks trying to access, gain or keep a market share as well as

maintain and advance the possibility of alternative agricultural futures (Binimelis 2008;

Levidow and Boschert 2008)

Frequently, opposition to GMOs has been clearly visible in the activist actions of

environmental and consumer groups working through social movements to try and influence

R&D decisions and legislation, or to enhance scientific and regulatory transparency (Heller

2006; Kinchy 2010; Scoones 2008; Schurman 2004) However, if we look at the introduction

of GMOs from a system’s perspective (Herrero, Wickson and Binimelis, 2015), we can see

that, besides the most visibly rebellious and overtly political actors, many other players have

found themselves in a situation of oppression by the expansion of GM crops (in the sense of

being subject to burdensome power and constraints by both the intentional and unintentional

spread of GMOs) and been forced to (re)act under unfavourable conditions (Binimelis 2008)

In light of the increasing demand for non-GM products (Research and Markets 2015) and the

desire to keep avenues open for alternative visions of agricultural production and

consumption, how do actors in contexts of so-called coexistence manage to resist GM crop expansion and continue to maintain and promote GM-free spaces, approaches and markets?

In this article, we heterodoxically draw on the theory of Scott (1985) to examine a myriad of everyday practices of resistance by which different stakeholders (from both the chemically intensive ‘conventional’ and the organic ‘alternative’ agri-food networks) constrain and challenge the expansion of GM crops in Spain We begin by describing how we interpret the idea of 'everyday forms of resistance', how we relate to its critiques and why we feel that this theory sheds interesting new light on the context of GM crops We then characterise and provide relevant background information on the setting of our study, i.e the context of maize agriculture in Spain Using empirical data gathered through qualitative research methods, we then describe what we see as a range of everyday practices being deployed to avoid GM expansion and sustain other forms of production This also allows us to identify surprising new alliances emerging between organic and conventional stakeholders Finally we conclude with a discussion of the relevance of everyday practices of resistance in GM conflicts and how they demonstrate significant flaws in the regulatory concept of coexistence

Infrapolitics against oppressive structures

A theoretical understanding of everyday forms of resistance has been developed over the past 30 years, led by the political scientist, anthropologist and moral philosopher J M Scott While spending two years in a rural community in Malaysia, Scott became interested in the rarity of rural rebellions and revolutions there and the apparent acquiescence of farmers in situations of oppression Remarkably shifting the dominant analytical lens of that time (i.e the Marxist analysis of hegemony as ideological assimilation), Scott identified and described

what he coined as everyday forms of resistance, or infrapolitics This concept refers to

regular, oppositional, and normalised acts developed by individuals or groups in a situation

of domination that have the potential 'to mitigate or to deny claims made of that class by

superordinate classes or to advance its own claims in relation to these superordinate

classes' (Scott 1985, 290) Since the prolific research on social conflicts has been mostly

focused on explicit and dramatic political actions driven by organised and well-defined

collective actors (e.g rebellions, strikes, demonstrations, or direct actions) (McAdam, Tarrow

and Tilly 2001; Snow et al 1986), the concept of infrapolitics significantly broadened the

spectrum of what had commonly been considered to be a practice of resistance1

The strength of this concept arguably lies in its focus on common practices of everyday life

that can work as subversive actions against certain structures of oppression As Vinthagen

and Johansson (2013) point out, the term ‘everyday’ here should be understood as referring

to acts that are mundane, non-dramatic or ordinary as opposed to extraordinary or

spectacular As Scott (1985) notes, unlike other forms of resistance, these ordinary practices

are not likely to receive public attention or even be acknowledged by the domineering actors

but act as regular ways to challenge and express discontent with the existing social structure

and its embedded dominant values Actually, in contexts in which overtly collective

organising could entail great costs or be dangerous, everyday forms of resistance may also

represent mechanisms to cope with, and to certain extent, confront oppression (Scott 1985)

These practices are integrated into the normality of everyday life and, thus, intentionality,

political consciousness, or even successful outcomes are not necessarily always implied in

the acts themselves (Vinthagen and Johansson 2013) In contrast with more direct,

organised and openly confrontational forms of resistance, which aim, among other things, at

gaining visibility and recognition for the struggle, everyday forms of resistance are not easily

recognised, may not be politically articulated and may aim mostly at tacit, de facto

achievements Nevertheless, as some authors have shown (Adnan 2007; Scott 1990), this

type of resistance can become public and have an effect on more macrostructural dimensions (e.g leading to open rebellions)

Scott’s theory has risen to popularity, especially in subaltern, cultural, post-structural and gender studies, and has been used as a starting point to elaborate transformative narratives

of resistance (Ewick and Silbey 2003) as well as a tool to further develop the concept of

‘rightful resistance’ (O’Brien 2013) It has also been used to describe constant acts of defiance performed by oppressed people in a panoply of contexts such as workplaces (Anderson 2008), slave plantations (Camp 2004); prisons (Crewe 2007), military state regimes (Malseed 2009) or protected area regulations (Holmes 2007) Furthermore, it has been used to partially understand the shaping of the struggle against contemporary land grabbing processes (McAllister 2015; Martinello 2015) and even to historically reconstruct the role of gossip as a resistance practice in medieval peasantry (Wickham 1998) This wide range of applicability, however, has raised concerns related to a potential trivialisation of the term and romantisation of the ‘oppressed’ (Fletcher 2001) Additional criticisms of the theory have pointed out the need to further develop Scott’s connections between class and non-class structures of domination as, for instance, in terms of gender (Hart, 1991, Agarwal 1994) or have argued against the static conception of power used within this approach (Fletcher 2001, Johansson and Vinthagen 2016) We agree with Fletcher (2001) that resistance is a dynamic, interactive form of power but do not see that the theory of everyday forms of resistance necessarily excludes the adoption of a more relational concept of power (Foucault 1980) Nor do we think that a relational view of power excludes the existence of domination Under situations of oppression, actors can still mobilise the resources available

to them (e.g through everyday forms of resistance) to exert power and work to challenge and change the status quo While other theories (such as Gramscian counter-hegemony or Foucauldian counter-discourse) could also be relevant for exploring the conflict over GM crops, we feel that extending the theory of everyday practices of resistance into this context

usefully sheds new light on the wide range of actions being mobilised in the dynamic

spectrum of social struggle over GMOs

In this article we therefore adapt and extend the theory to consider the GM agri-food model

as a form of domination sui generis and everyday practices of resistance as mundane

counter-power actions that work to challenge existing social structures and dominant values

In doing so, we explore how such practices of resistance are currently being deployed in

Spain in order to defy or impede the material expansion of GM crops (and therefore the

appropriation of spaces, processes and products) and advance the legitimacy of alternative

value systems and structures for agri-food regimes

Performing this work is important because in the struggle against GMOs, we see resistance

taking place in different forms, intensities and political scales, depending on the context, the

social actors involved and their windows of political opportunity Like research on practices

of resistance more generally, research on resistance to GMOs has also typically focused on

the more visible forms of political action This includes, for example, work on direct actions

against GM crops (Hayes 2007; Heller 2001, 2006; Seifert 2009; Seifert 2013), the

campaigns of social movements (Marris 2000; Schurman 2004), contestations of the validity

of regulatory approvals and the quality of regulatory assessments (Wickson and Wynne

2012), campaigns for stricter certification and labelling schemes (Kurzer and Cooper 2007;

Roff 2009) or calls for more transparency regarding field trials (Bonneuil et al 2008)

Although these visible and direct protests are a major driver for social change, they do not

comprise all the practices of resistance that we have observed taking place in GMO-related

conflicts In this paper we therefore specifically use the theory of everyday forms of

resistance as a way to add nuance and complexity to our understanding of the diversity of

today’s struggle to constrain the spread of GMOs and the power of their influence and

embedded values over agri-food systems

The dominating nature of GM crops

Scholars have often described the clash of visions, values, or paradigms enacted by different forms of agriculture (Beus and Dunlap 1990; Wickson, Binimelis and Herrero 2016) However, the dividing line between divergent models is often less than clear, with organic farming increasingly adopting more conventional models and conventional farming becoming more occupied with environmental issues (Guthman 2004) Traditionally, the antagonism has been between ideal types of conventional and organic farming but the emergence of biotechnology has opened new sources of contestation As certain GM crops have spread to become predominant in particular forms of agriculture (e.g maize, soy, cotton and oilseed rape) they displace not only organic but also conventional forms of production The struggle against the expansion and spread of biotechnological crops has therefore mobilised a wide range of actors across both organic and conventional agri-food systems who are now engaging in new forms of resistance

The politics of biotechnology has been described as a kind of ‘bio-hegemony’ (Newell, 2009, Motta 2014, Schnurr 2013), in which an “alignment of material, institutional and discursive power in a way which sustains a coalition of forces which benefit from the prevailing model

of agricultural development” (Newell, 2009:38) While we agree that institutional and discursive power plays a major role in shaping a system of domination based on the use of modern agricultural biotechnologies, in this paper we also specifically highlight and elaborate

on the material dimension of power This includes both the physical infrastructures of agricultural systems and the biological agency of plants These material aspects facilitate an uncontrolled and unintended spread of GM crops, which contaminates other forms of production, burdens them with unjust costs and forces them to struggle for their survival

GM crops have been legally designated as significantly different entities from the crops used

in conventional and organic agri-food networks (e.g via the patents awarded to them as

human inventions, the creation of dedicated regulatory systems and compulsory labeling

schemes) GM crops are, however, not easily contained and regularly spread into other crop

types and agri-food networks through the unintentional admixture of seed or grain or through

genetic crossing via pollen flow Although, the potential for contamination can differ

according to biological aspects of the crop itself and/or the socio-political context of its

cultivation, processing and consumption, where it occurs, it poses a significant challenge to

the ability of alternative models to persist

The uncontrolled spread and contamination can have a huge impact on alternative agri-food

systems For example, given that organic maize can be sold for up to double the price of GM

or conventional maize a huge loss can occur if crops become contaminated The spread can

also reduce the local supply of non-GM conventional crops where such a distinction has

developed due to consumer desires and concerns In fact, in certain agricultural areas, the

unintentional and uncontrolled spread of GMOs, can also appropriate not just markets but

also shared agrarian infrastructures, such as silos or dryers (Oehen et al 2007; Binimelis

2008) Even when containment measures are put in place (such as proposed spatial

distances between GM and non-GM crops), these are often not necessarily adequate or

successful and contaminated parties can still suffer significant costs (Binimelis 2008; Cox

2008)

The social, economic and ecological costs associated with attempting to maintain the

separation between GM, conventional and organic agri-food systems are currently borne by

those who can be contaminated (non-GM actors) rather than those that can contaminate

(those developing or growing GM) Certainly, a significant degree of infrastructure and

logistical arrangements are required for allowing, restricting, organising and managing the

mobility of things and people in agri-food systems As Neilson (2012) notes, logistics should

be understood as power - and, hence, political - since they play a major role in structuring and transforming reality They are also a key element for building the networks within which social relations unfold In countries in which there is a distinction in labeling for GM and non-

GM materials, the potential for unwanted admixture of grain and the difficulty and high costs associated with its separation means that agrarian infrastructures are required to manage

GM crops in practice, including dedicated machinery, storage, transport and processing facilities If existing infrastructure is used to handle GM crops in an area, then non-GM producers will face difficulties finding non-GM infrastructure nearby and will be forced to take

on additional costs and burdens Furthermore, control of the biological agency of the plants

to minimise the potential for cross-pollination (such as delayed sowing times, separation distances or buffer crops) are typically enacted by those actors that can become contaminated rather than those with the potential to contaminate This sees GM crops exhibit a domineering and oppressive nature not only through mechanisms of bio-hegemony, but also through the material (biological and infrastructural) realities that enable them to spread and contaminate other agri-food systems, imposing additional burdensome control measures on those specifically seeking to remain GM-free and survive

To conduct this research, we spent six months performing intermittent fieldwork of varying

periods of intensity between April 2015-January 2016 In this work we combined different

qualitative research techniques, including interviews and sometimes ‘mobile methods’

(Büscher and Urry 2009), collecting a range of data from different social actors, events and

situations regarding the development, conservation, cultivation, transport, processing and

monitoring of maize in two neighbouring Spanish regions of Catalonia and Aragon These

regions were chosen because this is where most of the GM maize production in Spain is

concentrated

Within the scope of this paper, we conducted twenty semi-structured interviews with actors

who were producing or involved in the cultivation, processing or consumption of non-GM

maize (either organic or conventional) For these interviews, we began by drawing on

previous contacts established by two of the researchers and used snowball sampling to

reach different profiles of actors involved in non-GM maize food webs Specifically, we

interviewed six organic farmers; a cattle farmer; two managers of seed banks; two executive

directors and two technicians of multinational non-GM maize processing companies; three

representatives from two farmer cooperatives producing non-GM maize; the director of a

Catalan programme on organic food in schools; two representatives of Catalan organic

animal feed companies, one which only produced organic and the other one producing both

organic and GM animal feed; and the president of the Catalan certification body on organic

farming Interviews were video recorded, and varied from thirty minutes to two hours in

length The interviews explored stakeholders’ views on farming and, specifically, maize

production, their opinions on the GMO controversy and their experiences regarding GM

contamination

As a way to supplement information given by the interviewees, we also used our own

observations as a source of empirical data During the course of the research, most of these

observations were focused on the interviewees’ professional contexts, when they were performing their jobs (e.g industrial units, maize fields, dairy farms, farmer cooperatives, storage and processing facilities and seed banks) We also participated in international and local meetings as well as technical workshops related to GM agriculture Furthermore, two of the researchers are based in Spain and have been actively following the GM debate for decades and the deep knowledge generated through this has also informed and shaped the analysis

While this paper does not specifically cite ethnographic material as evidence for the arguments we are making, it is important to note that the fieldwork, participatory observations and historical involvement of the research team in this debate, lead us to see a disconnect between urban anti-GM actors and those living and working in the rural communities where GM maize is cultivated, despite the negative impacts on the latter being significant Through this ethnographic work we became aware of the ongoing struggle against GM contamination (despite the European commitment to co-existence) that was not particularly visible, recognised or receiving the attention that it deserves Understanding this phenomenon then became the focus for analysing the transcribed interviews That is, our ethnographic research informed and directed our analytical gaze towards how the different social actors working to prevent GM contamination, the main motives behind these practices, their effectiveness and their implications An iterative process between our ethnographic observations, theory and interview data eventually lead to the categorisation of different practices developed by stakeholders throughout the production chain that we present here as everyday forms of resistance against GM expansion in Spain In other words, while we only cite interview data as supporting evidence in this paper, the ethnographic work performed was key for informing the choice of the theoretical framework for the analysis of our interview material

Spain, a telltale case of the impossibility of coexistence

Spain is the only country that currently has large-scale cultivation of GMOs in Europe, and

this is restricted to the GM maize event known as MON810 This GM maize is widely

cultivated in Spain and since its introduction in 1998, the number of available GM varieties

incorporating this transgenic event has increased to more than 100 (Hilbeck et al 2013)

This event creates maize plants that express a pesticide (throughout all parts of the plant)

from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), making it toxic to caterpillar pests The genetic

cassette used to make these GM plants also contains genetic material from other bacteria

and viruses to make it function, however, it is the expression of the Bt toxin that is the

desired trait and which is therefore emphasised in the name ‘Bt maize’

Spanish farmers’ adoption of GM Bt maize has been heterogeneous, with great geographical

differences In 2015, 107.750 ha of Bt maize were sown in Spain2, which is more than 28%

of the total surface area dedicated to maize that year (Ministry of Agriculture 2015a, 2015b)

The highest concentration of GM maize is found in North-Eastern Spain (the regions of

Catalonia and Aragon) where it has risen to 50% and 70% respectively of the total surface

area under maize cultivation (Gobierno de Aragón 2016; Serra 2015) This expansion has

clearly negatively impacted the production of organic maize According to the Organic

Certification Body in Aragon (CAAE), the area sown with organic maize drastically

decreased by 75% in Aragón between 2003 and 2007 This was after the first analyses for

detecting GM contamination were performed in which '100% of the analysed samples were

positive (for GMOs) in 2004; 40% in 2005; 50% in 2006; 60% in 2007; and 37% in 2008'

(Martínez 2009) Also in Catalonia, as Figure 1 shows, the area of organic maize

significantly decreased between 2003 and 2007 During those years, several cases of

genetic contamination were reported (either by the organic certification bodies or by

environmental organisations) and organic certification was withdrawn in these cases (see,

e.g CCPAE 2012, 2014, 2015) This situation triggered social conflict (Assemblea Pagesa et

al 2006; Greenpeace 2008) and generated hesitancy amongst farmers to continue cultivating organic maize in future years (Binimelis 2008; Binimelis, Monterroso and Rodríguez-Labajos 2009) After 2008, the area under organic maize cultivation in Catalonia has remained consistently small, even though the total area of organic food production more than doubled between 2007 and 2015, from 60,000 to 142,000 ha (Valls 2015) This trend is mirrored on the national level where despite a steadily significant increase in organic agriculture more generally throughout Spain (Ministry of Agriculture 2013), organic maize production has remained remarkably marginal over recent years

Maize production in Spain is not currently meeting the national demand In 2014/5 Spanish maize production only covered 42% of its domestic demand (Ministry of Agriculture 2016) This means that the country imports most of maize from the largest GM maize producers, Argentina, Brazil and USA Both maize production and imports are primarily used for the production of feed for the meat industry In the Catalan region, 80% of maize is processed for feed, and domestic production is only covering around 20% of the demand (Serra 2015) Interestingly, in the same year, organic maize production in Catalonia only covered 3% of the demand, seeing organic animal feed producers and maize processing industries importing the rest from abroad (mainly from Italy) (Valls 2015)

As the President of the Catalan Organic Certification Body notes:

certification] they are forced to sell to the conventional market and the price difference

between these two products is really important

The production of maize in Spain is integrated into grain cooperatives, many of them

covering the entire production chain from field to meat production Under this system, the

farmer then resembles a wage-earning worker Farmer cooperatives are at the heart of this

system, as they sell the inputs (seeds, fertilizers, herbicides), lease the machinery to the

farmers, and process and sell the product Often, they grant credit to farmers during the

season to cover the costs of inputs that are repaid upon harvest The cooperative manager

or technician also provides the technical advice, becoming a key actor for rural extension

and for the introduction of new technologies at the field level This model also implies a

concentration of infrastructures, which makes it difficult and expensive to separate GM

production from organic and conventional at later stages of the production chain In fact, only

a minority of the cooperatives in Aragon restrict the use of GMOs in their facilities and there

are no specific dryers for organic maize in either Catalonia or Aragon The latter is a

tremendous problem for organic farmers, as they cannot use such infrastructure (dryers)

when it is used for GM or conventional grain, unless they are completely cleaned

beforehand, which is not economically viable given the low levels of organic maize

production in these areas

Despite the widespread use of GM maize in Spain, co-existence has not yet been regulated

and no specific compulsory measures exist to support it While European legislation

recommends that coexistence measures are developed and adopted by Member States

growing GM crops, and in fact several countries use this to protect alternative agri-food

networks, in Spain there are only guidelines issued by the seed companies selling GM maize

and their uptake is neither enforced nor monitored This also implies that there is no redress

or liability system in place for when contamination occurs Furthermore, unlike other nations

in Europe, there are no official registers for GM field locations in Spain that would allow individual farmers or cooperatives to see where the potential for contamination may be highest and therefore where measures would need to be strictly followed to enable coexistence without contamination This is especially relevant in the context of Catalonia and Aragon, where the average size of maize farms is small and the holdings are highly fragmented, making contamination via pollen flow likely and control measures such as buffer zones difficult for farmers to enact

An anti-GM movement developed in parallel to the introduction of GM crops in Spain and the climax of this movement was when Catalonia tried to pass a regional law on coexistence At this time, several visible anti-GM protests took place and brought the GMO debate to the public agenda via the media Despite a peak of civil protests in 2005, however, “the GMO debate steadily disappeared from the media, following a pattern of institutional marginalization” (Vilella 2010:1) Since then, due to a general decay around the topic of GMOs in the public agenda and a comparatively low level of political effectiveness from activists, the Spanish anti-GM movement has steadily desegregated (Seifert 2013) Some organisations (e.g Greenpeace, Ecologistas en Acción or Amigos de la Tierra) are still campaigning on GMOs, however, they mainly do advocacy work and remain quite marginal

in terms of social mobilisation and visibility This may give the impression that there is no significant resistance to GM crops in Spain today However, our research has revealed that resistance practices are still taking place in everyday forms

Repertoire of everyday resistance to GM crop expansion

Despite the lack of a strong anti-GMO movement in Spain, everyday forms of resistance are manifest through actions that seek to counterbalance and/or contain the dominance of GMOs by minimising the chances of GM expansion in either material or symbolic terms This

includes not only practices aiming to avoid genetic contamination but also those to actively

promote agri-food systems other than and/or opposed to the GM model (i.e organic and

conventional) In this way, the practices express a discontent with the structures and values

embedded within and perpetuated by biotechnological approaches These types of

resistance practices are highlighted below

1 Changes in farming practices

Both conventional and organic farmers are changing the way they grow maize to reduce the

possibility of cross-pollination between GM and non-GM crops so as to be able to continue

non-GM forms of agriculture To do this, they either advance or delay the time of sowing to

avoid having the two types of crops flowering at the same time However, this is a strategy

that can fail as they may anyway be contaminated depending on the choices of their

neighbours – i.e if they choose to grow GM and, for whatever reason, also choose to

advance or delay their sowing without informing the surrounding farmers The following

quote from an organic farmer illustrates this point:

I had to start separating the flowering of my maize from that of other farmers or it

would be bad for me I started creating a 2 weeks, 3 weeks, 1 month delay but, of

course, there is always people who sow later for certain reasons [P.] I had to wait

for so long [to sow organic maize] that I went from yields of 8,000-9,000 Kg/ha [ ]

to 4,000-5,000 Kg/ha [ ] Doing everything possible to avoid GM contamination

has become the new normal for me And despite that, I have been contaminated 4

times in the last 10 years.[ ] Coexistence is impossible

The consequences of changing the farming practices vary depending on whether the sowing

is advanced or delayed (Catalan Department of Agriculture 2011) Nevertheless, in both

impacts for them If farmers choose to delay their sowing to try and avoid contamination, they risk that the soil may be warmer and drier and they will have to deal with more weeds Additionally, there is an important element of insecurity involved as these farmers depend on the activities and timing of other farmers who could at any moment jeopardise their production There is also a remarkable investment of working time in relation to getting the information about and following up on what their neighbours are sowing and when Very often this information proves difficult or impossible to obtain because of the lack of mandatory public registers for commercial or trial GM fields

Pursuing this mode of resistance becomes even more challenging due to the scarcity of organic maize varieties available in Spain A limited range of available varieties means that there is a limited range of variance for the farmers to choose from when trying to find plants that can tolerate the conditions induced by late or early planting (e.g warmer soils and shorter growing seasons) Only heirloom varieties are available as truly organic maize seeds

in Spain and due to a lack of available seeds produced under organic conditions, virtually all professional organic maize farmers in Spain use seeds produced from conventionally grown varieties The difference that makes these seeds sold as ‘organic’ is that they have not received chemical seed treatments prior to being sold for planting Due to the current low demand for these untreated varieties, seed companies only offer a very limited number of them (Ministry of Agriculture 2015c), and these are usually long cycle varieties, which might not be in the ground long enough for their best performance if sowing is delayed This means that although changes in farming practices such as early or delayed sowing is a practice farmers are adopting to resist GM contamination and spread, the success of the action is constrained by what neighbouring farmers choose to do, what seed markets have

on offer, and what regulatory authorities do (or in this case, do not) require

2 Use of economic incentives

Many European consumers are skeptical towards GM food and mandatory labeling laws are

in place that (in principle) allow them to avoid it In order to satisfy consumer values and

demands and produce non-GM products during the years of GM expansion in Spain,

processing companies have had to import non-GM maize from abroad, which has

significantly increased their production costs (Unió de Pagesos 2012) In order to reduce

these costs, several non-GM maize processing companies now use economic incentives to

try to convince farmers and/or farmer cooperatives to sow conventional rather than GM

maize They use economic incentives to increase the benefits for non-GM maize farmers

and thereby provide a local or regional source of non-GM maize for their business at a

reduced cost These economic incentives can take different forms For instance, these

companies can buy non-GM maize at a higher price, they can assume the costs for

harvesting and/or transport machinery, or they can give advice to the farmers on seed

choice In the latter case, the advice is not only focused on saving money by buying non-GM

seeds, but is also grounded in the results of their own research/trials that have used

profitability (instead of yields) as the main criterion As the director of a non-GM maize

processing company stated:

The economic incentives are important because this is a sector that has been

traditionally neglected [P.] We search for the most profitable varieties The less

investment required by the farmer, the better

This strategy is very effective and around 1,400 farmers only in the region of Aragon are now

producing non-GM maize for these companies each year The vice-director of a farmer

cooperative producing non-GM maize explains their motives to produce non-GM maize and

the implications this has, not only for conventional farmers but also for organic ones: