ANALYSING COMPETITION BETWEEN SEED VARIETIES: AN APPLICATION TO HYBRID CORN SEED IN FRANCE

This paper analyses the determinant of the sales the seed varieties sold the French corn market. The analysis is based on a model of differentiated product. The results show that the effect of the yield estimated by the extension services is positive and significant.Crop Production/Industries,

Potential Adoption of Genetically Modified Rapeseed in France, Effects on Revenues of Farmers and Upstream Companies: an ex ante evaluation

In this paper, we conduct an empirical investigation of potential adoption of herbicide-tolerant (HT) genetically modified (GM) rapeseed in France. Our aim is to study ex ante the potential impact of their adoption in France, in terms of adoption level, economic gains, and distribution of these gains between farmers and input suppliers. We use French survey data about current plant protection practices, in order to compute pesticide costs with conventional (i.e., non GM) crops for individual farms. Then, based on results of technical studies about GM variety trials in France, we compute a predicted pesticide cost with the GM variety. Next, we study adoption rates and gains or losses of farmers (adopters and non adopters) and upstream companies (sellers of conventional herbicides, of the total herbicide to which GM rapeseed is tolerant, of GM seed), depending on the GM seed license price, the margin rate on herbicide sales and the price of conventional herbicides.genetically modified organisms, innovation, diffusion, rapeseed, Consumer/Household Economics,

Incentive to reduce crop trait durability

Inbred line seed producers face competition from their own consumers: farmers who save part of their harvest can costly self-produce. To reduce this competition, seed producers can switch to non-durable hybrid seed production. In a two-period model, we investigate what is the impact of crop durability on self-production, pricing strategies and switching decision. We first study the pricing decisions and switching decisions of an inbred line seed monopoly. Then, we analyze how the monopoly's behavior is affected by the entry of a hybrid seed producer. We also examine how the introduction of royalties on farmers who self-produce improves efficiency. Our main finding is that, for some constellation of costs, an inbred line seed monopoly has an incentive to produce technologically dominated hybrid seed in order to extract more surplus from farmers. Along the same lines, an inbred line monopoly has an incentive to let a hybrid seed producer enters the market for discrimination purposes.Crop Production/Industries,

Estimating Sequential Multi-Choice Demand : An Application to Pesticides Utilization in France.

Crop Production/Industries, Demand and Price Analysis,

Incentive to Reduce Crop Trait Durability

To reduce the competition from farmers who self-produce seed, an inbred line seed producer can switch to nondurable hybrid seed. In a two-period model we investigate the impact of crop durability on self-production, pricing and switching decisions, and we examine the impact of license fees paid by self-producing farmers. First, in an inbred line seed monopoly model, we find that the monopolist may produce technologically dominated hybrid seed in order to extract more surplus from farmers. Further, the introduction of license fees improves efficiency. Second, we study how the monopolist's behavior is affected by the entry of a nondurable hybrid seed producer. We show that the inbred line seed producer might benefit from competing with a technologically dominated hybrid seed producer, as this allows for consumers' discrimination.

Pesticides Uses in Crop Production: What Can We Learn from French Farmers Practices?

This article focuses on the demand system of French farmers concerning pesticides uses. We estimate the demand elasticities of herbicides, insecticides and fungicides with respect to pesticide expenditure, and considering crop differentiation. Then we compare two indexes that are used in agronomic literature to measure the intensity of pesticides uses. We retain a Linear Approximated Almost Ideal Demand System (LA/AIDS) specification. A Full-Information Maximum Likelihood estimation procedure is used for dealing with the problem of censored dependent variable. We consider two cross-sections observed in 2001 and 2006 covering pesticides uses of three crops. We confirm the previous results of the literature that farmers response to price variation is very low, with higher prices response in 2006 than in 2001. Moreover, we find that conditional herbicides expenditure elasticities are often higher than insecticides expenditure elasticities, but lower than those of fungicides. We find higher own-price elasticities for herbicides and fungicides than for insecticides, which is the less used. Finally, application dose seems statistically better to explain herbicides decision, whereas treatment frequency index appears better for insecticides and fungicides. However, most of elasticities are closed for dose and treatment frequency index.Pesticides, LA/AIDS, Elasticities, Censored System of Equations, Two-Step procedure, Quasi Maximum Likelihood, Full-Information Maximum Likelihood., Agricultural and Food Policy, Crop Production/Industries, Demand and Price Analysis, C30, C31, C34, L11, Q11, Q12,