Constraints and Incentives for Agricultural Biotechnology in Brazil

The aim of this paper is to discuss the co-evolution between agricultural biotechnology and biosafety process, with a special focus on Brazilian case. This rapid diffusion process has occurred in parallel with a high transaction cost process of regulation, combining local, territorial, national and supranational evolution of rules and norms involving public sector, private representatives and other stakeholders. So Forth, Brazilian case is one of the most interesting biotechnology regulation process in the world, once the country is simultaneously looking forward to the promotion of agribusiness competitiveness, preserve biodiversity and avoid bio-piracy. In order to treat this complex framework, the first methodological step is to create a typology of stakeholders based on their position in the regulation process. Once a typology is defined, the second step is to identify the critical factors explaining their behavior. The multicriteria analysis is used to characterize the processes associated to the evolution of agricultural biotechnology and to the improvement of biosafety assessment methods. Finally, is the aim of the paper to define the friction and convergence zones between those groups, using clustering procedures.