Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
The first significant commercial sales of proprietary seed with GM traits
occurred in 1995. Market sales of GM seed have increased rapidly; since 2006,
they have exceeded 40 percent of the total sales value of proprietary seed. The
real value of all seed has increased over the last 5 years, and this increase has
been driven primarily by the expansion of the market for GM seed.
Seed Markets by Region and Commodity
Over the past decade, commercial seed markets in three broad world
regions— Asia-Pacific, Europe/Middle East/Africa, and North American Free
Trade Association (NAFTA)—have been roughly equal in market sales,
although amounts vary from year to year. Seed markets in each region have
generally fluctuated around 30 percent of the global total, as calculated from
data reported by the International Seed Federation (ISF). The seed market in
Latin America/Caribbean makes up the remaining 10 percent. In more recent
years, the Middle East/Africa portion—under 5 percent of the global total—
can be separated from that for Europe. Industry analysts tend to estimate a
higher percentage for NAFTA and a lower percentage for Asia-Pacific, as
indicated by recent (2010) data from the ISF.
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For 2006, the Context Network estimated that field crops accounted for 77
percent of the global market for proprietary seeds. This may be further broken
down into grains (46 percent), oilseeds (20 percent), and other field crops (11
percent). Vegetable and flower seeds made up 14 percent of the proprietary
seed market, and forage and turf grass 9 percent. We assume that these
percentages apply to all commercial seed, including public-sector seed, in the
absence of data disaggregating public-sector seed.
The Context Network also estimated the value of seed markets for major
field crops. Including “technology values” for GM traits and royalties, corn
constituted about 25 percent of the total global market for commercial seed
between 2001 and 2005. The next largest commodity in terms of seed market
sales was soybeans, with over 12 percent of the total. Both wheat—the largest
crop worldwide in terms of acreage—and cotton constituted about 4 percent
each of the global commercial seed market. The value of the seed market for
these two crops is roughly equivalent, even though world wheat area is over
six times larger than world cotton area (a much higher proportion of annual
cotton seed requirements is sourced through commercial markets, and cotton
seed unit prices are considerably higher in part because GM traits have been
incorporated into cotton but not wheat). Rice, the second most widely grown
