29 The prospects for policy reform will also be influenced by the changing landscape of organized economic interests, particularly the formation of coalitions among agricultural interests and food-policy groups. Interactions between the interests of farmers and those of landowners, agribusiness, food and retail companies, and other groups have always been complex.<sup>39</sup> Clearly, in all countries, these interests influence agricultural-policy negotiations and debates. Moreover, their positions often shift in relation to each other. Agribusiness and food companies differ from farmers in their capital-labor ratios, their mobility, the votes they can muster, and their ability to organize. They are also typically more capital-intensive than farms, so that as the economy develops, their share of GDP declines much more slowly than does primary agriculture’s share. Nevertheless, the vertical relationships between farmers and agribusinesses are often critical.<sup>40</sup> Similarly, while the interests of farmers’ groups have often conflicted with those of environmental groups or food consumers, the nature of these conflicts has evolved as increasing opportunities to cooperate have arisen. In high-income countries, farm organizations have often formed coalitions with environmental groups and energy interests (in particular biofuels)—and even with food consumers—as a way to sustain continuing farm subsidies. Since the 1990s, for example, some countries have increasingly insisted that agriculture deserves support because its outputs are “multifunctional.” In fact, some countries have increasingly offered to pay farmers for environmental services or to support agriculture’s role as a provider of local public goods. Such measures often receive political support from environmental groups (Baylis et al. 2008; OECD 2008). Furthermore, concerns regarding plant, animal, and human health often lead to import bans rather than less draconian ways of reducing the risk of importing disease (James and Anderson 1998).

Similarly, faced with dramatic food-safety crises and animal-welfare problems, farm organizations have sought to obtain political support from food consumers in order to receive subsidies to “compensate” them for the regulatory burden of tightened food-safety and animal-welfare standards (Josling, Roberts, and Orden 2004; Swinnen and Vandemoortele 2011). For example, in the case of genetically modified food, the farm lobby in Europe has joined forces with several constituencies in order to prevent domestic production and importation of products that may contain genetically modified organisms (Graff, Hochman, and Zilberman 2009; Evenson and Raney 2007). These constituencies include environmentalists concerned with the impact on the local environment of growing genetically modified crops, consumers worried about the safety of food containing genetically modified organisms, and life-science companies with patents threatened by the emergence of genetic crop-protection products.

Another issue related to potential policy reform that has received little attention is the role of bureaucratic organizations and political entrepreneurs (Rausser 1990, 1992; Rausser and Johnson 1993; Prendergast 2007). While the literature in economics and econometrics on the role of entrepreneurship has grown, the same is not true in formal political-economic studies. Political scientists may emphasize the role of individuals in narrative analyses of policy reform, but more quantitative approaches rarely do so. Nonetheless, political entrepreneurs may play a role in organizing interest groups and making their own preferences more influential.

Still another challenge is the need to distinguish between short- and long-term effects of external crises. From a dynamic perspective, a frequent approach is to analyze the pre- and

> 39 The relationship between farmers, agribusinesses, food processors, and supermarkets is sometimes mentioned but seldom tested in studies. Exceptions are studies such as that of Lopez (2008), who focuses explicitly on the US food industry.

> 40 The importance of vertical linkages and differentiation is emphasized, for example, by Cadot, de Melo, and Olarreaga (2004).