Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
how it may affect their ability to sell the crop or affect the price they will receive for
their harvest. A poor reputation can reduce consumers' willingness to pay and thus
the price of crops produced using a technology (e.g. transgenic versus conventional
crops), just as much as a good reputation can enhance consumers' willingness to pay
and thus the price of crops (e.g., organic versus conventional).
There may be a significant gap between public perceptions of a technology
and the reality of how it performs. The popular public perception is that the first
generation of transgenic crops—those consisting of
Bt
and herbicide tolerance
pest control traits—have been damaging to the environment, have not increased
yields for farmers, and have not helped the poor. In reality, the poorest farmers
have not adopted transgenic varieties to any great extent except for small-scale
cotton growers in India. However, the lack of adoption by poor farmers has been
mostly due to regulators; transgenic varieties have not been available to the poor
primarily due to the decisions of their governments (Paarlberg
2008
). In real-
ity, transgenic varieties, when made available, have largely increased yields and
incomes, especially for small subsistence farmers in developing countries (Pehu
and Ragasa
2007
).
Current popular perceptions of transgenic drought- and stress-tolerant varieties
are, however, considerably better: That they are yield-increasing and poor-friendly
varieties. Of course, the reality is that their impacts are yet to be observed beyond
test plots, since the varieties have not yet been commercially released. However,
economic analyses of the potential impacts of drought-tolerant varieties indicate
that while they should be significant (Rovere et al.
2009
), they are likely to be less
than the impact of insect-resistant varieties (Lybbert and Bell
2010
). Even though
drought-tolerant varieties eliminate drought loss, the expected gains from pest con-
trol is generally greater than the expected gains from drought tolerance under re-
alistic models of pest damage and drought risks. This is largely due to the fact that
pest damage is basically a more frequent threat than drought across a larger range
of growing regions.
Drought-tolerant varieties are being developed and promoted because public
perceptions of the technology are generally favorable, even when using the trans-
genic approach. While pest control traits likely would have greater impact on the
economic welfare of farmers and consumers in most developing countries, political
constraints are leading to the introduction of drought-tolerant varieties first. And
this is occurring despite our prediction that the technology will require extra support
to encourage its adoption.
3 What Is in the Global R&D Pipeline?
Given the attendant dynamics and uncertainty of the R&D process, not to mention
the strategic concerns of many of those engaged therein, it should not be surpris-
ing to find that it can be quite difficult to collect very reliable information about
what exactly is in the R&D pipeline at any point in time. Yet, it is possible to get a
