Despite the rapid international development of biotechnology, we still lack knowledge and information about how low- and middle-income countries can best access this promising technology. Nor are the socioeconomic repercussions of applying biotechnology in these countries’ agricultural sectors well understood. This study seeks to fill in some of the gaps in our knowledge by analyzing a biotechnology transfer project that provided proprietary recombinant potato technology to Mexico.
It is now widely acknowledged that biotechnology will have significant implications for development. While biotechnology’s potential for low income economies is still the subject of controversy, this paper argues that it is precisely in these countries that food and agriculture related biotechnology could efficiently contribute to the achievement of development objectives. To date, however, biotechnological advances have been realized predominantly in industrialized countries.
This publication is based on invited papers presented at the conference "Agricultural Biotechnology in Developing Countries: Towards Optimizing the Benefits for the Poor", held in November 1999 at the Center for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn. The conference was convened in collaboration with the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), Hoechst Schering AgrEvo GmbH (now Aventis CropScience) and the German Foundation for International Development (Deutsche Stiftung fUr internationale Entwicldung - DSE).
This paper shows that the current generation of transgenic crop varieties has significant potential to improve economic welfare in low-income countries. These varieties might increase crop yields in low-income countries in cases when pesticides have not been used. They will reduce negative health effects of chemicals when they replace them. With low transaction costs, appropriate infrastructure, and access to intellectual property, multiple varieties of transgenics will be introduced.
Food quality and safety are receiving increasing attention in the food sector nationally and internationally. Emerging private sector regulations are increasingly perceived as market entrance barriers within this development. In this paper, we analyze quality assurance programs (QAPs) in the horticultural sector in Vietnam and their effect on access to international markets. A representative sample of registered fruit and vegetable processing firms provide the basis for our analyses. Results of different logistic regression models show that QAPs are market specific.
En este informe se describen las experiencias y enfoques de la constitución de cadenas agroalimentarias y se plantea la necesidad de desarrollar una nueva institucionalidad y formas de cooperación técnica para el fortalecimiento del sector agrícola y rural. Se espera que las cadenas agroalimentarias se constituyan en mecanismos de diálogo e instrumentos de gestión para la competitividad y la toma de decisiones según las demandas de los Estados Miembros del IICA.
There is an emerging body of literature analysing how smallholder farmers in developing countries can benefit from modern supply chains. However, most of the available studies concentrate on export markets and fail to capture spillover effects that modern supply chains may have on local markets. Here, we analyse the case of sweet pepper in Thailand, which was initially introduced as a product innovation in modern supply chains, but which is now widely traded also in more traditional markets.
Supermarkets and high-value exports are currently gaining ground in the agri-food systems of many developing countries. While recent research has analyzed income effects in the small farm sector, impacts on farming efficiency have hardly been studied. Using a survey of Kenyan vegetable growers and a stochastic frontier approach, we show that participation in supermarket channels increases mean technical efficiency by 19%. This gain is bigger at lower levels of efficiency, suggesting the potential for positive income distribution effects.
There is an emerging body of literature analyzing how smallholder farmers in developing countries can benefit from modern supply chains. However, most of the available studies concentrate on export markets and fail to capture spillover effects that modern supply chains may have onlocal markets. Here, we analyze the case of sweet pepper in Thailand, which was initially introduced as a product innovation in modern supplychains, but which is now widely traded also in more traditional markets.
While several studies have shown that genetically modified Bt cotton can benefit smallholder farmers economically, the sustainability of these effects is still unclear and debated controversially between biotechnology proponents and critics. We use unique panel data of 533 cotton farmers, collected in India between 2002 and 2008, to analyze Bt impacts on cotton yield, profit, and household living standards. Results from fixed effects models show that the adoption of Bt cotton is associated with a net yield gain of 24% and a profit increase of 50%.