Economic aspects of segregation between GM and non-GM Crops along the Food Supply Chain

This work provides a methodological framework for the analysis of the Italian supply chain for non-GM soybean meal, with particular regard to the upstream stages between overseas producers, international traders and feed manufacturers. Using the information collected from a set of interviews with industry representatives, we describe the organizational arrangements that agents adopt to minimize transaction costs. Consistently with transaction cost economics, we examine the impact of asset specificity and uncertainty on the coordination arrangements. We focus on two dimensions of uncertainty, namely: productquality uncertainty and environmental uncertainty. We argue that the actual organizational arrangements between transactors are consistent with the theory: whereas product-quality uncertainty and some degree of asset specificity would lead to vertically integrated forms of governance, environmental uncertainty operate in the opposite direction.