Recency negativity: Newer food crops are evaluated less favorably

Can digital farming technologies enhance the willingness to buy products from current farming systems?

While current global agriculture allows for efficient food production, it brings environmental disadvantages, which resulted in a lack of public acceptance. Digital technologies (e.g., technologies that enable precision agriculture) have been suggested as a potential solution to reconcile environmental sustainability and yield increases. By embedding digital technologies into holistic farming system visualized through mission statements, this study tests the effect of different intensities of digitization, as well as environmental arguments on the willingness to buy food produced by farms in Germany. We use a 4 x 4 repeated measure experimental design surveying a representative sample of 2,020 German citizens recruited online. Our research framework captures the farming system (comparing low intensity of digitalization for a small or organic farm and low, medium, and high intensity of digitalization for large or conventional farms) and environmental arguments (comparing no arguments, and altruistic, egoistic, and biospheric arguments). The results show a negative effect of digital technologies on willingness to buy. However, this relationship turns positive when introducing environmental arguments. Furthermore, there is a moderation effect for respondents’ attitudes towards technologies that varies depending on whether altruistic, egoistic, or biospheric concerns were stated. The results indicate that digital technologies can increase willingness to buy products from both large and conventional farms, but not to the level of small farms and organic farms.

Towards social acceptability of genome-edited plants in industrialised countries? Emerging evidence from Europe, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan

The agricultural biotechnology world has been divided into two blocks; countries adopting GM crops for commercial cultivation (adopters) and others without any or without relevant cultivation of such crops (non-adopters). Meanwhile, an increasing number of adopter countries have exempted certain genome-edited (GE) crops from legal GMO pre-market approval and labelling requirements. Among them are major exporters of agricultural commodities such as United States, Canada, and Australia. Due to the relaxed legislation more GE plants are expected to enter the market soon. Many countries in the non-adopter group, however, depend on import of large volumes of agricultural commodities from adopter countries. Unlike first generation GM, certain GE crops cannot be identified as unambiguously originating from genome editing using available techniques. Consequently, pressure is mounting on non-adopter jurisdictions to reconsider their policies and legislations. Against this backdrop, the paper explores recent developments relevant for social acceptability in selected non-adopters, Japan, New Zealand, the EU, Norway, and Switzerland in contrast to United States, Canada, and Australia. While Japan is already opening-up and Norway and Switzerland are discussing revisions of their policies, the EU and New Zealand are struggling with challenges resulting from high court decisions. In an attempt to take a closer look into the inner dynamics of these developments, the concept of social acceptability proposed by Wüstenhagen et al. (Energy Policy, 2007, 35(5), 2683-2691) is employed. This aids the understanding of developments in the jurisdictions considered and identifies specific or cross-cutting challenges.

Swedish consumers´ attitudes and values to genetic modification and conventional plant breeding - The case of fruit and vegetables

This study examined public attitudes to genetic modification (GM) and conventional plant breeding and explored general differences in attitudes to these two types of breeding concepts, including the effect of individual personal characteristics such as gender and age. It also sought to identify the influence of personal values linked to attitudes to GM crops and conventional plant breeding, following Schwartz value theory. Relations between specific values and attitudes to GM organisms (GMOs) have been studied previously, but not gender- and age-specific relations between specific values and attitudes to conventional plant breeding. Data were collected in this study using a questionnaire completed on-line by 1500 Swedish consumers in 2019. The questionnaire covered three different aspects: 1) sociodemographic data, including gender and age; 2) attitudes to GMO/conventional plant breeding; and 3) values, measured using the human values scale. It was found that consumers expressed more positive attitudes to conventional plant breeding than to GMO, men expressed more positive attitudes to both conventional plant breeding and GMO than women did, and younger consumers expressed more positive attitudes to GMO than older consumers did. A negative correlation between attitudes to conventional plant breeding and the value ‘tradition’, but no correlation to ‘universalism’, ‘benevolence’, ‘power’ or ‘achievement’, was identified for men. For women, correlations between attitudes to conventional plant breeding and ‘benevolence’ (neg.) and ‘achievement’ (pos.) were found. For both men and women, attitudes to GMO were negatively influenced by ‘universalism’ and ‘benevolence’, and positively influenced by ‘power’ and ‘achievement’. The implications of these results are discussed.