Economies of scale mean industries are "sticky" : Britain's cotton industry, for instance, did not go into serious decline until the 1960s even though wages were high.

In the 1860s Japan's small-scale cotton-textile industry was nearly decimated by European imports.

Genetically modified corn, cotton and soybeans are grown in the U.S., Canada, Argentina and other countries, but genetically modified rice has so far not been grown on a major scale anywhere.