Interviewees’ understanding of trust
Interviewees were asked to define trust and identify its elements in the context of the Bt maize project in South Africa. The key elements of trust, as identified by the participants, were honesty and delivery of accurate information in a timely manner. One interviewee defined trust as “being honest, [and] sharing the right information at the right time.” The interviewees described trust as being very much determined experientially, pointing out that trust is established if parties upheld their end of a deal and delivered what they promised in a timely manner. The interviewees also described trust as something that had to be “earned over time.” Interviewees agreed that trust was highly important in agbiotech PPPs, such as the Bt maize project in South Africa. The findings of this study are amalgamated into four key lessons on trust building.
1. The technology is nothing without the farmer: engage the end user early to ensure adoption of the technologies
The importance of building trust between farmers and the private sector was articulated by some interviewees. One representative from the private sector stated: You have to build trust with your customers, which in our case would be the farmers. Establishing and maintaining the trust of farmers is essential for effective technology adoption. And as one small-scale farmer stated, “if I didn’t trust them [Africabio], I wouldn’t use their seed.” Building trust with farmers has been shown to be achievable in a number of ways in South Africa. The following are some examples of practices that were used to build or erode trust between farmers and the private sector in the context of Bt maize in South Africa.
On-farm demonstrations
One trust-building practice identified by farmers was the use of on-farm demonstrations that display the comparisons between Bt maize and conventional maize in the field. In 2001, Monsanto sought to engage with farmers by holding nine workshops across South Africa to introduce over 3000 small-scale farmers to Bt maize. Each farmer was given two bags of seed, one each of Bt and conventional maize, to plant in their own fields and compare the results [2]. This was one of the first farmer engagement initiatives undertaken by Monsanto after MON810, its GM event responsible for insect resistance in Bt maize, was approved for use in South Africa.
In a typical on-farm demonstration, seed companies or distributors would provide both Bt and conventional maize seeds for free to farmers to plant in a section of their fields and compare crop performance and yield. In addition, farmers were funded to host field days and invite other farmers in the community to observe the differences in performance at the demonstration sites. A farmer interviewee, commenting on this, said: Yes, we did not pay. They gave us [seeds] for free, and we planted the seeds. And then they helped us with money to hoe the fields and they come and they demonstrated the crops to other farmers. This practice was employed in six demonstration plots organized by AfricaBio between 2004 and 2005, which showed that there were higher yields of maize due to reduced stem borer infestations in Bt maize compared to the non-Bt maize [3].
Interviewees who had taken part in demonstrations described them as trust-building practices because of the support that seed companies and AfricaBio would provide to farmers in terms of supplying seeds, compensating for labor, and educating them about the technology. The primary goal of these on-farm demonstrations was to foster trust among attending farmers, who were able to judge first-hand the performance of Bt maize compared to traditional maize. Many interviewees corroborated the effectiveness of this practice. However, interviewees who had hosted on-farm demonstrations recounted the erosion of trust that occurred when promises of financial compensation for their efforts were withdrawn or left unfulfilled by the seed companies or distributors. Some farmers reported that they would no longer host field days and crop demonstrations due to this lack of compensation. A small-scale farmer interviewee said she “used to trust AfricaBio because of those things they were doing” but when support in cash and inputs dwindled, trust declined in a similar manner. Another farmer, making reference to the unreliability of the government arm to supply inputs, said, “we [farmers] don’t look too much to the government.”
Information dissemination and communication
In addition to on-farm demonstrations, several interviewees felt that education and information dissemination about Bt maize was an important trust-building practice that could be achieved through a variety of avenues. One interviewee stated: the biggest trust creation is generating of science data, and then disseminating that data, and putting it out there on the website, in leaflets and all that so that the people understand what this is all about. One government initiative that contributed to trust building through education was the Public Understanding of Biotechnology Program. As indicated by the senior manager of the Technology Innovation Agency, this program sought to “demystify this passive talk about what biotechnology is and provide factual evidence [on what biotechnology is capable of doing].” Another initiative was the organization of regional study groups for farmers, the purpose of which was information and knowledge sharing among farmers.
One interviewee reflected on a positive trust-building experience he had with AfricaBio when they invited him to visit a university research laboratory to investigate the process of Bt maize development and discuss any concerns he had about the safety of the crop. The interviewee appreciated that AfricaBio “did not play hide and seek” about the technology but was willing to go to such an extent to educate him about Bt maize. A farmer, commenting on this issue, stressed the need for “straightforward channels” to foster good communication and stated, “If you have good communication, you can sort anything out.”
2. The seed speaks for itself: delivering effective technology builds trust between the industry and the farmers
Many interviewees emphasized the importance of an effective technology—in this case, an effective Bt maize seed—in building trust. An interviewee representing a seed company and distributer said that the ability of the technology to increase crop yields or reduce input costs is critical to the success of Bt maize: If it was a technology that was not providing benefits, they [farmers] would not be using it.
An interviewee from Monsanto attributed much of the project’s success to “good genetics.” A large-scale commercial farmer said: if you deliver a good product, you start to build trust in that product. One small-scale farmer also stated, “We’re building trust with the seed itself […]. The performance of the seed is what you trust.” In the case of the Bt maize project in South Africa, “the trust held in place because the technology worked,” said an independent researcher.
Guarantee that the Bt maize technology works and honesty about its expected performance was cited as an important trust-building practice by the private sector. An interviewee from Monsanto described it thus: They [farmers] need to trust you that the product they’re buying from you will perform to expectation. In order to ensure that realistic expectations are set, an interviewee from another private seed company said, “we never misrepresent whatever information that we share. So if a product does not perform, we will say that it does not perform. If a product does not perform, we will not take it to the market.”
Despite these intentions, some interviewees described instances when the performance of the Bt maize technology did not meet their expectations. A few of these instances created an opportunity to build trust as some private companies took responsibility for the product failures and compensated the farmers affected. From one farmer’s perspective, this “built a lot of trust. Because that’s putting your money where your mouth is.” The important lesson on trust that resulted from these cases can be summarized by the following statement made by an industry representative: The farmer knows that if there is a problem that he could come back to the company to say ‘listen, there is a problem’ and the company then attends to the problem to resolve it.
In other cases, instances of product failure resulted in the erosion of trust between the farmer and private seed company when the latter failed to acknowledge or take responsibility for the reported discrepancies. As one farmer stated, “I don’t have any trust in your [the seed company's] product anymore. Because the technology is failing under certain circumstances and [the seed company] don’t acknowledge that.”
The benefits of these trust-building practices can be significant. In particular, once trust is established between the farmers and the private companies, or between the farmers and the seed companies, the power of word-of-mouth within the farming community can be a great asset to the private sector. As one small-scale farmer described, “What I’ve done is to tell other farmers that I’m planting this [Bt maize seed], [and that] this is going to help you to get more yield.”
Acknowledging faults and taking responsibility in instances of product failure was found to be an important trust-building practice. The failure to do so, however, was cited by some interviewees as a great barrier to trust building and in some instances led to ceasing use of the technology. Ensuring that Bt maize performs as expected and is beneficial to the farmers is therefore important for the adoption of the technology and the maintenance of trust between farmers and the private sector.
3. Full disclosure facilitates regulatory processes and enhances mutual trust between industry and government
The regulatory process for GM crops in South Africa is outlined in the GMO Act, which was passed in 1997 and came into effect in 1999 [15]. This Act created the Executive Council, which is a decision-making body that is responsible for approving or rejecting applications to commercialize GM crops [15, 16]. Monsanto’s MON810 was approved for commercial production by the Department of Agriculture in 1998, upon the recommendation of SAGENE. Syngenta’s Bt maize was likewise approved in 2003 [4]. In order to build trust during the regulatory approval process, it is important that both the applicant and the regulator fully disclose all relevant information throughout the process.
On the government side, it is important to clarify the requirements for regulatory approval and communicate them to the private companies. As stated by a former regulator and now a seed company executive, the early stages of developing the Bt maize was a learning process for the regulators that was enhanced by open communication with the industry. Because Bt maize was the first GM crop product, the regulators “were not really sure what exactly they wanted to see or to evaluate to determine safety.” Open communication between regulatory bodies and private companies was therefore a “big factor that added to building trust,” which in turn led to better compliance to the regulatory process.
Once the requirements for regulatory approval are clearly communicated, it is important that the private sector fully discloses all information necessary so that the regulators can make decisions about the technology. The government needs to be able to trust that the private sector will “give accurate information, truthful information, not withhold the information that could impact their decision. And to comply with any conditions that have been given.” In return, the private sector must feel assured that the government will maintain confidentiality on all sensitive product information.
The mutual trust built between the regulator and industry has led to enhanced communication and consultation between them. For example, an interviewee from the seed industry noted that, when lobbyists or anti-GMO organizations lodge a complaint against Bt maize technology, the government trusts the private sector enough to approach them by “say[ing] that ‘this is an accusation that came in pertaining to your products, what information can you give us?’” This positive relationship was enabled by mutual trust between the regulatory bodies and private sector stakeholders.
4. Good agronomic practices sow success and foster trust
Another important issue related to trust was the upholding of good agronomic practices by the farmers when growing Bt maize. Good agronomic practices include the distancing of GM and non-GM crops physically and temporally, and planting refuge areas in order to prevent insect resistance build-up to transgenic crops such as Bt maize [17]. Refuge areas, or refugia, are the buffer zones of non-Bt maize (susceptible to stalk borers) planted in close proximity to Bt maize to provide a pool of stalk borers susceptible to Bt maize. This is meant to delay development of resistance to the toxic protein produced by Bt [18]. As South Africa was the first African country to report stem borer resistance to the Bt toxin, the need to ensure a proper refuge area is becoming more important. Many interviewees (including farmers, industry and government executives) emphasized the importance of planting Bt maize correctly and particularly underlined the importance of enforcing the planting of the refuge area between conventional and Bt maize.
Farmer interviewees attributed positive trust-building experiences to good agronomic practices: number one, we planted exactly the way they [the seed company] said. They taught us how to plant and we did exactly what they said. And then they told us that we must de-weed every time we see the weeds coming out. And we did exactly what they said… that’s why our maize was so beautiful. Enforcing these agronomic practices is not only beneficial to the farmer but also to the companies selling the technology. As an interviewee from a seed company described: We want to make sure that they [farmers] also plant the refugia, and that they abide by the rules. It’s of interest to all of us. Refugia is not something to make it difficult; it’s there to protect the traits. We want it to be protected for as long as possible.
Failure to enforce the refuge area, on the part of both farmers and the private sector, was cited as a challenge to building trust. Some farmers chose not to plant a refuge area due to their desire to maximize profits per unit area. They said they were hesitant to reserve a portion of their fields for a refuge area of conventional maize, which would produce lower yields compared to Bt maize and, in turn, lead to reduced profit. Moreover, other farmer interviewees recalled that some seed companies fail to enforce the refuge area by neither educating their customers about the need to plant nor monitor it. One farmer stated, “they [seed companies] don’t promote the refugia areas enough,” and each time the seed company sold seeds to him, he would ask, “'but what about my maize for my refugia area?'” He further stated: They don’t tell you that if you’re going to buy 100 bags, 95 bags must be Bt and 5 bags must be for your refugia area. What ensues from industry member's failure to ensure appropriate management of the refuge area is the erosion of trust between the farmer and the private sector. While the private sector companies are hesitant to trust farmers to use proper agronomic practices, some farmers cannot trust seed distributors to adequately promote and provide the necessary conventional maize to plant their refuge area. In order to maintain trust and protect the effectiveness of the Bt maize technology, it is critical that both farmers and the private sector work together to enforce and monitor proper agronomic practices.