Making space for change? : following EC Regulation 1107/2009 'Placing Protection Products on the Market' into a system of agricultural innovation

• Main Author: Payne-Gifford, Sophie
• Published: University of Reading 2016
• Subjects: 338.1
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.701642

This research explored the conditions that enable and constrain innovation in Britain's system of agricultural innovation. At the meso-level of the system, this research focused on the role of regulation and legislation in influencing the development and diffusion of technologies and methods for crop production. To do this, the recent change under EC Regulation 1107/2009 'Placing Plant Protection Products on the Market' was followed through the system of innovation using a multi-sited ethnographic approach to understand how the system shaped the legislation and how the system responded to the legislation. The most notable system response to the legislation is the adjustment of agrochemical company pesticide discovery strategy and their expansion into biologically derived treatments. There have also been responses by seed companies, agricultural consultancies, levy bodies and the science base. To empirically demonstrate the adaptations that mayor may not occur as a result of 1107/2009, a mixed method case study was developed at the micro-level on potato growers and late blight protection because mancozeb, a widely used fungicide, is at risk of withdrawal under the legislation. This case study explores what methods of control are available for protection against late blight and what methods (chemical and non-chemical) growers might adopt if fungicide mancozeb is withdrawn. This case study links system-level innovation forces to the micro-level choices growers make. The conclusion reached is that potato growers will default to the other chemical fungicides available due to competing forces in the system of innovation. In the case of potatoes and late blight in Great Britain, the virulent nature of late blight locks growers in to fungicide use and market barriers lock them out of adopting blight resistant varieties of potatoes.