Jose Falck Zepeda presentation on biotechnology and developing countries Georgetown University april...

Program for Biosafety Systems – http://pbs.ifpri.info/

“Biotechnology and Developing Countries”

José Falck ZepedaSenior Research Fellow

International Food Policy Research Institute - Program for Biosafety Systems (IFPRI - PBS)

Presentation made at Georgetown University, April 2014


Content

1. Background and conceptual framework

2. Biotechnology as a tool

3. GM biotechnology as the regulated technology

4. Socioeconomic assessment experiences

5. Concluding comments


The challenge according to FAO

• To feed a population of 9 billion persons by 2050, without allowing for additional imports of food, continents have to increase their food production roughly:

– Africa 300%

– Latin America 80%

– Asia 70%

– Even the US has to increase food production by 30% just to supply food for the projected population of 348 million person


“New” constraints

• Erosion, water and irrigation problems• Climate change => Global warming?• Soil fertility• Urbanization and land being retired from production• Consumer concerns about intensive agriculture: Organic, Fair

Trade• Competition from biofuels production• Social, philosophical, ethical and religious concerns over the

food production system • Concerns over globalization and corporate control of

agriculture• …


The Green Revolution

• Transformation of agriculture during 1940s-1970s that lead to significant increases in yields

• Firmly based on:– Agricultural production needs to keep

pace with population growth

– Agricultural sciences philosophy of maximizing production per unit of land

– Plant breeding developments of the late 19th early 20th centuries

• Initially focused on a few crops (Wheat, rice, maize) but has been expanded


The Green Revolution: A 1967 Frame of Mind

• Haiti Can’t- be-saved

• Egypt Can’t-be-saved

• The Gambia Walking Wounded

• Tunisia Should Receive Food

• Libya Walking Wounded

• India Can’t-be-saved

• Pakistan Should Receive Food

- Paul and William Paddock, 1967 book

“Famine 1975!”


Norman Bourlag: Father of the Green Revolution

• Developed the wheat program that later became CIMMYT in 1963

– Shuttle breeding– Incorporate short-stature genes into

wheat– Increased yield and rust resistance in

wheat

• Mexico:– 1948 self sufficient wheat producer– 1965 Net exporter

• Won Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 and World Food Prize

• Genesis of the Consultative Group of International Agricultural Research ( CGIAR)


How was the Green Revolution possible? An agronomist perspective on a technological triumph as an engineering feat…

• Incorporation of a dwarfing genes from natural populations into wheat and rice

• In maize: more vertical orientation of leaves, reduces self-shading while allowing planting of narrower rows and thus increases in densities

• Plants bred to dedicate a larger share of photosynthesis efforts to grain rather than to stems and leaves– Harvest index of older varieties was 20% whereas HYV around 50-55%

• Relatively insensitive to day length – can be planted in a wider range of latitudes

• Increased responsiveness to fertilizer and water


Green Revolution: Successes

• Significant increases in yields and production– From 1950 to 1992, the world’s grain output rose from 692 million tons

produced on 1.70 billion acres of cropland to 1.9 billion tons on 1.73 billion acres

– India: food production increased from 50 to 205 million tons during the last 5 decades

– But, barely happened in Sub-Saharan Africa

• Economic output per hectare increases significantly

• 30% increase in cereal and calorie availability per person

• Poverty reductions—some studies show this is attributed to GR raising farmers incomes


Green Revolution: Social and Economic Criticisms

• Does not address underlying social, cultural, ethnical and institutional constraints that create vulnerability and thus affect livelihoods– Is hunger and food insecurity a question of production or unequal

distribution of resources?

• Increased mechanization affected rural labor employment• Debt effects and credit institutions necessary• Technology not scale neutral

– Uneven adoption as larger/wealthier farmers adopted first capturing larger share of benefits

• Landowner/Landholder displacement• Dependence on pesticides and fertilizers


Green Revolution: Environmental/Ecological Criticisms

• Loss of agricultural biodiversity, not so clear effect on wild biodiversity– Focus on few crops => monocultures

• Increased used of pesticides and the pesticide treadmill

• Increased use of fertilizers• Irrigation

– Negative impacts of salinization, damage to soils, and lowering of water tables

– Need to build dams and irrigation systems


Lessons Learned

• Increasing agricultural productivity is necessary but not sufficient to guarantee food security

• Scale neutral technologies

• Knowledge transfer to/from farmers

• Need to consider agriculture within the social, political, economic, national/international context

• We can’t continue proposing “technology-only solutions” to complex problems....nevertheless technological responses are indeed critical to the “solution”

• Learn from mistakes and inexperience to come up with better alternatives => Policy options, strategies and outcomes


CGIAR Changing ParadigmAgronomic

Paradigm

• Increase

production

• Maximize

yields

• Improve

fertilizer and

water

efficiency

Sustainable

Agriculture

Paradigm

• Improve and/or

maximize livelihoods

• Reduce vulnerability

• Environmental /

ecological

• Gender

• Collective action

• Sustainable

intensification

Time

Production

Economics

Paradigm

• Maximize profit

or net

returns...is not

the maximum

yield


2. Biotechnology as a tool


What is biotechnology?

• Manipulation of living organisms for a useful purpose

• Definition that covers a broad range of techniques

– Traditional: Plant breeding, tissue culture, micro-propagation

– Modern: Marker assisted selection, Genetic Modifications and Genomics

• Only GM products are currently regulated for biosafety


GM Biotechnology – What is its status?


A reality check?


Diffusion to developing countries


Implications for developing country agriculture

• Majority expansion is in four crops and two traits (insect protection and herbicide tolerance) produced by industrialized countries for its agriculture

• Diffusion to developing has been a (fortunate) development

• Challenge now is meeting explicit needs of

– Developing countries

– Smallholder / resource poor farmers

– Crop / traits


R&D and innovation for and by developing countries

• Crops and traits of interest/value have been produced

• Capacity to develop GM crops and other biotechnologies

– Advanced => China, Brazil, Mexico, India, Argentina

– Medium- Advanced => Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia

• Next Harvest documented 270 technologies in 16 developing countries

Why aren’t these technologies in the hands of famers?


Why GM biotech?

• Embodied technologies

• Address specific productivity constraints not easily addressed by conventional means

• Can be deployed in low resource use production systems

• Flexible – fit with other production systems

– GM and Integrated Pest Management

– GM and organic production methods (!!!)

• Impacts can be non-pecuniary, indirect, and scale neutral

• Scalable


3. Biotechnology as a regulated R&D activity


Biosafety as a process…

Contained Use

Experiments

Confined

Field Trials

Deliberate

ReleasePost

ReleaseDeregulation

Regulatory decision points

Familiarity

Learning


R&D and product development life cycle

1 – 3 yrs. 1 – 3 yrs. 1 – 3 yrs.

Product Concept

Discovery Early Product Testing & Development

Integration & Product Selection

Product Ramp Up

Market Introduction

1 2 3 4 5 6

Confined Field Trials

Author: Ramaeker-Zahn


Regulatory processes, decision making and assessments

Environmental and Food/Feed

Safety Assessment

Socio-Economic

Assessments (plus others?)

Decision Making


Impacts on biodiversity

• Which biodiversity? Agricultural vs. Wild

• Agricultural biodiversity –intraspecific vs interspecific

• Tradeoffs between land use and the maintenance of the agricultural frontier and encroachment in protected and/or “wild” areas

• Biodiversity valuation issues and measuring taxonomic diversity and richness

• Ecosystem services


Environmental biosafety assessments: A Roadmap under review at the Cartagena

Protocol on Biosafety

• Impacts on non-target organisms

• Gene flow

• Impacts on sexually compatible species

– Increase in weed behaviour

– Competitive advantage/fitness


Example from seed adoption sector“Farmer preferences for Milpa diversity and genetically modified

maize in Mexico” (Birol, Villalobos and Smale 2007)

• “Milpa” is crop production system in Mexico and C. America– Private economic value: food security, diet quality and livelihoods

– Public economic value: conserving agrobiodiversity, especially that of maize landraces (potential to contribute unique traits for future plant breeding efforts

• Subject to multiple externalities which have a negative impact

• Farmer heterogeneity is an issue identified by the study– (i) Landrace Conservationists

– (ii) Milpa Diversity Managers

– iii) Marginalized Maize Producers

• Contrast results with the 2004 Commission for Environmental Cooperation report


Food/Feed Safety Assessments• CODEX Alimentarius guidelines (CAC/GL 46-2003)

• Procedure roadmap

A) Description of the recombinant-DNA microorganism;

B) Description of the recipient microorganism and its use in food production;

C) Description of the donor organism(s);

D) Description of the genetic modification(s) including vector and construct;

E) Characterization of the genetic modification(s);

F) Safety assessment:

– expressed substances: assessment of potential toxicity and other traits related to pathogenicity;

– compositional analyses of key components; evaluation of metabolites, effects of food processing

– assessment of immunological effects, assessment of viability and residence of microorganisms in the human gastrointestinal tract, antibiotic resistance and gene transfer; and nutritional modification.


What is socio-economic impact assessment?

• Different levels – Household, Farm, Communities,

Industry, Consumer, Trade

• May be done before or after adoption of the technology (ex ante or ex post)

• Compare effects of intervention against a counterfactual– Economics => monetary costs and

benefits

– Sociology /Anthropology => impact on people


4. What do we know about the socio-economic impact of GE technologies?


What do we know from the economic impact assessment literature to date?

• A review of 187 peer reviewed studies

• Examined studies with a focus on:

– Farmers, household and community

– Industry and markets

– Consumers

– TradeCitation: Smale, Melinda; Zambrano, Patricia; Gruère, Guillaume; Falck-Zepeda, José; Matuschke, Ira; Horna, Daniela; Nagarajan, Latha;

Yerramareddy, Indira; Jones, Hannah. 2009. Measuring the economic impacts of transgenic crops in developing agriculture during the first

decade: Approaches, findings, and future directions. (Food policy review 10) Washington, D.C.: International Food Policy Research Institute

(IFPRI) 107 pages


Food Policy Review 10 conclusions

• On average LMO crops have a higher economic performance — but averages do not reflect the variability by agro-climate, host cultivar, trait, farmer

• Too few traits, too few cases/authors—generalizations should not be drawn yet...need more time to describe adoption

These conclusions are no different than those for most technologies released to date…


Food Policy Review 10 conclusions

• Address cross cutting issues for further study including impacts of poverty, gender, public health, generational

• Develop improved methods and multi-disciplinary collaborations to examine broader issues


A meta-analysis paper by Areal, Riesgo and Rodriguez-Cerezo (2012)

“GM crops perform better than their conventional counterparts in agronomic and economic (gross margin) terms”

“GM crops tend to perform better in developing countries than in developed countries, with Bt cotton being the most profitable crop grown”


How does a producer benefit? Insect resistance traits

The case of Bt cotton

Producer Profit

Producer Surplus

Cost to Benefit

Additional

Cost of

Using the

Technology

Tech fee:

US$80/ha

0

+

-

Decrease

pesticide

application

cost

-Insecticide

-Machinery &

Equipment

Yield /

Reduction

in damage

-Timing

applications

-Reduced

damage bolls

Price change

due to increase

in supply

Additional

cost of

controlling

secondary

pests

Amenable to

IPM and/or

controlled

easily

Labor

Labor


Black Sigatoka Resistant Bananas in Uganda

Consider irreversible and reversible cost and benefits by using the Real Option model

One year delay, forego potential annual (social) benefits of +/- US$200 million

A GM banana with tangible benefits to consumers increases their acceptance for 58% of the population

Photos credits: Kikulwe 2009 and Edmeades 2008

Kikulwe, E.M., E. Birol, J. Wesseler, J. Falck-Zepeda. A

latent class approach to investigating demand for genetically

modified banana in Uganda Agricultural Economics 2011.

http://www.gmo-compass.org/features/zoomimage.php?image=/data/imagescontent/grocery_shopping/017_banana-blacksigatoka_zoom.jpg&width=500&height=332

http://www.gmo-compass.org/features/zoomimage.php?image=/data/imagescontent/grocery_shopping/017_banana-blacksigatoka_zoom.jpg&width=500&height=332


Bt cotton in Uganda

Positive yield impacts and net benefits

Smaller rate of return probably explained due to low base yields Need to improve overall cotton

productivity

Probability of a negative return can be as high as 38% with a technology fee as charged elsewhere

Photos credit: © Horna 2009

Horna, et al. (2013) . “Economic Considerations in the Approval

Process of GM Cotton in Uganda: Designing an Ex-ante

Assessment to Support Decision-making. “IFPRI Monograph.


Bt maize in the Philippines

• Growing Bt maize significantly increases profits and yields

• Significant insecticide use reductions

• Adopters tend to be– Cultivate larger areas

– Use hired labor

– More educated

– have more positive perceptions of current and future status

Change in economic surplus

(mill pesos)

Producer Surplus 7906

Seed Innovator 703

Total Surplus 8609

Producer Share (%) 92

Innovator Share (%) 8

Bt maize studies in Philippines led by Dr. Jose

Yorobe Jr. with 466 farmers in 16 villages Isabela

Province, Luzon, South Cotabato Province,

Mindanao


Bt cotton in Colombia

Evidence of yield enhancement rather than pesticide reductions

Bt farmers benefited where the target pest is economically important

Sampling bias important: adopters were better–off farmers

Institutional context critical

Photos credit: © Zambrano 2009

Source: Zambrano, P., L. A. Fonseca, I. Cardona, and E. Magalhaes. 2009. The

socio-economic impact of transgenic cotton in Colombia. In Biotechnology and

agricultural development: Transgenic cotton, rural institutions and resource-poor

farmers, ed. R. Tripp. Routledge Explorations in Environmental Economics 19.

London: Routledge. Chapter 8. Pp. 168-199


Bt maize in Honduras

Excellent target pest control

Bt yield advantage 893-1136 Kg ha-1 yield (24-33%)

Bt maize yields preferred even by risk averse producers

100% higher seed cost than conventional hybrid

Institutional issues important

Photos credit: © Sanders and Trabanino 2008

“Small “Resource-Poor” Countries Taking Advantage of the New Bioeconomy

and Innovation: The Case of Insect Protected/Herbicide Tolerant Maize in

Honduras.” Jose Falck Zepeda, Arie Sanders, Rogelio Trabanino, Oswaldo

Medina and Rolando Batallas-Huacon. Paper presented at the 13th ICABR

Conference “The Emerging Bio-Economy”, Ravello, Italy June 17-20, 2009.


Concluding comments

• Biotechnology and Genetically Modified Crops are still only technologies

• Similarities and differences with other technologies

• Actual and potential benefits from GM technology adoption…important tool to consider. Cannot disregard

• Developments in the public sector in developing countries

• Additional crops/traits of interest whose limitations can probably be only addressed through biotechnology means, will be available if we manage to resolve institutional and regulatory issues.

José Benjamin Falck-Zepeda, Ph.D.Senior Research Fellow / Leader Policy Team Program for

Biosafety SystemsIFPRI

2033 K Street NWWashington, DC 20006-1002

[email protected]

Brief bio/pubs: http://www.ifpri.org/staffprofile/jose-falck-zepedaBlog: http://socioeconomicbiosafety.wordpress.com/

Follow me on Twitter: @josefalck

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.ifpri.org/staffprofile/jose-falck-zepeda

http://socioeconomicbiosafety.wordpress.com/

Jose Falck Zepeda presentation on biotechnology and developing countries Georgetown University april...

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