Annotated Bibliographic Entry

Reference: ADB 2001
Title:  Agricultural Biotechnology, Poverty Reduction and Food Security
Authors: Asian Development Bank
Publisher: Asian Development Bank, P.O. Box 789, 0980 Manila, Philippines
Publication details: May 2001, 213p

 

Summary

Background
Conclusions
Specific recommendations to ADB
Table of Contents

 

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Background

The Asian Development Bank (ADB), together with the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) and the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID), commissioned a study to examine the opportunities and risks of using biotechnology in reducing poverty and achieving food security in Asia. The objectives were to: (i) examine the risks and benefits of biotechnology in relation to human health, the environment, and agriculture; (ii) identify measures to minimize adverse impacts; (iii) explore the use of biotechnology to reduce poverty and achieve food security in Asia; and (iv) develop policies and strategies for ADB in its support of biotechnology in Asia. The results of the study are reflected in this Working Paper.

Role of science and technology in Asian agriculture

Science and technology underpinned the economic and social gains in Asia over the past 30 years. Between 1970 and 1995, cereal production in Asia doubled, calorie availability per person increased by 24 percent, and real food prices halved. The key elements in these gains were government policies reflecting the belief that investments in increasing agricultural productivity were a prerequisite to economic development. These national policies were supported by the public and private sectors, and the international community. This mix of supportive public policies, scientific discoveries, and public and private investments in rural Asia, particularly in irrigation, credit, and farm inputs, led to the substantial reductions in poverty and improved food security realized throughout Asia over the past 30 years. Increased agricultural productivity, rapid industrial growth, and expansion of the nonfarm rural economy all contributed to almost a tripling of per capita gross domestic production during the period.

Present problems

The intensification of agriculture and the reliance on irrigation and chemical inputs has led to environmental degradation. Much of Asia faces problems of salinity, pesticide misuse, and degradation of natural resources. The Green Revolution technologies were useful in the favorable and irrigated environments, but they had little impact on the millions of smallholders living in rainfed and marginal areas where poverty is concentrated. In addition, there have been declining public investments in the agriculture sector across the region. These factors have been responsible for the decline in annual agricultural growth rates from an average of 3.3 percent during 1977-1986 to about 1.5 percent during 1987-1996.

Future challenges

During the next 25 years, the population in Asia is projected to increase from 3.0 billion to 4.5 billion. The demand for food is predicted to increase by about 40 percent. The projected food demand will have to be met with less labor, water, and arable land.

Strategies to meet the required increases in food supply include

Agricultural biotechnology is not the sole means for achieving food security, but in conjunction with complementary activities, it may be a powerful tool in the fight against poverty. These complementary activities would include a favorable policy environment; good governance; investments in rural infrastructure, agricultural research, extension, and agricultural credit; and marketing.

Current status of agricultural biotechnology in Asia

Several emerging economies in Asia, including the People’s Republic of China (PRC), India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Thailand, and Viet Nam, are making major investments in modern biotechnology to further the aim of improving food security and reducing poverty. In addition, several regional and international programs and a growing number of private sector companies are working on biotechnology.

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Conclusions

The major conclusion of this study is that the governments and funding agencies should continue and increase their investments in biotechnology as a means of achieving their goals of poverty reduction and food security in Asia over the next 25 years. Achieving these goals with presently available technologies will be difficult, given the present trends and challenges facing the rural sector in Asian environments. Accordingly, it is recommended that the following measures be considered by ADB and the governments in the region, in terms of overall strategy, the future role of governments, and specific recommendations to ADB.

 1. General strategy
To ensure that agricultural biotechnology will contribute to reducing poverty and improving food security in Asia, biotechnology R&D should do the following:
·   Address the problems of small farmers in the rainfed and marginal areas where most of the poor live, yet not neglect the problems of small farmers in the irrigated areas.
·   Focus on economically important orphan crops, high value crops, and livestock to increase their productivity.
·   Develop low cost, appropriate technologies for small farmers, particularly the development of new varieties adapted to the rainfed and marginal areas.
·   Develop, test, and release technologies that will pose minimal or no risks to human health and the environment.
·   Strengthen the extension, delivery, and regulatory systems to ensure that improved varieties and technologies will be disseminated widely to small farmers with little or no risk to consumers or the farmers themselves.

2. Role of Governments
To use agricultural biotechnology safely and effectively for the benefit of small farmers in Asia, governments in the region should:
·   Demonstrate a strong commitment to agriculture and rural development by providing adequate budget and staffing to the sector in general and agricultural biotechnology in particular.
·   Establish clear polices and priorities in biotechnology R&D to ensure that it can contribute effectively and safely toward poverty reduction and food security.
·   Enhance cooperation with the private sector in the development of biotechnology that will benefit small farmers.
·   Set up effective biosafety regulatory and enforcement systems to ensure that the risks of biotechnology (particularly those of genetically modified crops and livestock) will be minimized.
·   Enact IPR laws that will protect and stimulate private sector investments in biotechnology in the region.
·   Organize dialogue with non-governmental organizations, consumers, and farmers on the benefits, risks, and opportunities in the use of new biotechnology.
·   Seek assistance from international organizations and funding agencies on specific problems in biotechnology that cannot be addressed using their own resources.

 3. Suggested policy for ADB on agricultural biotechnology
·   Assist developing member counties (DMCs) in policy and priority setting to enhance investments in the safe applications of biotechnology.
·   Increase dialogue with its DMCs in identifying potential benefits and opportunities in the use of different biotechnologies to address specific targets.
·   Strengthen risk assessment and management capabilities in its DMCs through systematic capacity building.
·   Facilitate access to proprietary technologies and encourage greater private and public sector cooperation in the development and delivery of new products at affordable prices for the poor.
·   Support a strategic R&D agenda and associated human resources development in Asia to generate new knowledge and disseminate the results for the public good. 
·   Support and fund national governments and international agricultural research centers (IARCs) to undertake important initiatives that will have significant impact on poverty reduction and food security in the long term in areas of market failure where the private sector is unlikely to invest.

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Specific recommendations to ADB

Recommendation 1. ADB should assist DMCs in policy and priority setting to enhance investments in the safe application of biotechnology.
(i) Provide information to enable governments to make informed decisions in relation to the use of new biotechnology applications in agriculture. Particular care needs to be taken to select those interventions that impact poor people, either directly by increasing incomes or crop yields and quality, or indirectly by improving their environment and prospects for sustainable productivity.
(ii) Assist DMCs in identifying R&D areas where the use of new scientific developments may help achieve breakthroughs in dealing with previously intractable problems. These may include ways to increase sustainable productivity in rainfed areas, for example by the use of molecular methods to select new crop varieties with higher water use efficiency.

Recommendation 2. ADB should increase dialogue with its DMCs in identifying potential benefits and opportunities in the use of different biotechnologies to address specific targets.
(i) Increase policy dialogue with governments on the importance of the rural sector in underpinning social, economic, and environmentally sustainable development. The important role scientific developments can play in making the rural sector more productive and more sustainable through better management of natural resources is an important issue. Good governance and beneficiary participation will ensure the poor, including women, have access to new technologies.
(ii) Support risk/benefit analyses as a basis for choices on the merits of new technologies to address particular problems relative to existing technologies and other options. An example of where risk/benefit analyses could be undertaken in the short term is on the potential use of transgenic cotton varieties in Asian cotton-growing countries, based on the experience of the use of transgenic cotton varieties in the PRC.

Recommendation 3. ADB should strengthen risk assessment and management capabilities in its DMCs through systematic capacity building. 
(i) Assist smaller Asian countries to set up national regulatory systems appropriate to their size and resources, while being consistent with international best practice.
(ii) Support regional harmonization efforts and activities being undertaken through ASEAN and APEC for the development of agreed upon biotechnology standards, guidelines, and regulations.
(iii) Support the development and implementation of protocols to monitor the long-term ecological impact of GMOs in the environment. Initial priorities could be for monitoring the performance of transgenic cotton and rice, since cotton is already under widespread commercial cultivation in the PRC and rice is the major food crop in Asia.
(iv) Facilitate the evaluation of potential new products in the regulatory pipeline in several countries through small-scale trials conducted under international best practice guidelines. These experiments would give data that could guide risk/ benefit analyses and future decisions on the safety of specific applications of new biotechnologies in Asian environments.
(v) Strengthen law enforcement in most DMCs to ensure that the introduction and release of GMOs follow government environmental requirements and procedures.
(vi) Support ex-ante and ex-post studies on the socioeconomic impact of transgenic crops in the region and their impact on the poor, including women.

Recommendation 4. ADB should facilitate access to proprietary technologies and encourage greater private and public sector cooperation in the development and delivery of new products at affordable prices for the poor.
(i) Facilitate negotiations with private companies on behalf of developing countries and the international agricultural research community to access key enabling technologies potentially useful on orphan commodities in Asia (i.e. staple food crops, livestock, and fish consumed locally).
(ii) Act as an honest broker or as a convenor in facilitating more public-private sector partnership in research, development, and dissemination of technologies relevant to the needs of small farmers.
(iii) Examine the feasibility of providing incentives for local private sector development in areas that would develop biotechnology-based businesses in rural areas, with high potential for stimulating income and employment opportunities.
(iv) Examine the feasibility of providing incentives for multinational companies to develop products to benefit poor people. Such incentives may be provided through tax breaks, contract R&D, guaranteeing a base market for a successful product, strategic alliances, or underwriting joint ventures with national companies. There are some experiences with these types of incentives in the health sector that merit closer examination for their applicability to the rural sector.
(v) Support national capacity building in IP management and technology transfer.

Recommendation 5. ADB should support a strategic R&D agenda and associated human resources development in Asia to generate new knowledge and disseminate the results for the public good. It should support and fund national governments and IARCs to undertake important initiatives that will have significant impact on poverty reduction and food security in the long term in areas of market failure where the private sector is unlikely to invest.
(i) Applications of biotechnology to orphan commodities. Support public R&D on orphan commodities by national and international agencies. This may best be done by developing more efficient methods of crop improvement through the use of marker-assisted selection for complex traits such as drought tolerance. In other cases, the most appropriate approach may be the development of transgenic varieties with specific characteristics such as disease resistance or improved nutritional quality.
(ii) Ecological research. Support national governments and international agencies in developing methods for undertaking participatory field studies on the ecological impact of the first generation of genetically modified crops. For example, insect-resistant cotton and rice are being released for field testing and commercial production in Asia, particularly in the PRC. These assessments should involve local communities in the evaluation of the new technologies, similar to the approaches developed in Asia for integrated pest management.
(iii) Strategic research on functional genomics. Support regional efforts on functional genomics to understand the genetic basis of the agriculturally important crops and livestock in Asia. For example, genomic studies on rice, maize, and sorghum may identify potentially useful genes for drought and salinity tolerance that may have wide applicability across all cereals.
(iv) Exchange of information. Support the sharing of knowledge and experience among Asian countries on the applications of biotechnology to specific targets, the risk/benefit analyses that underlie particular choices, and the data on food safety and environmental risks that will be acquired as experience accumulates and strategic R&D is conducted.

 

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ADB 2001. Agricultural Biotechnology, Poverty Reduction and Food Security

Contents

Foreword vii  
Acknowledgments ix
Abbreviations xi
Executive Summary xv

I Introduction 1  
A. Past Successes in Reducing Poverty Through Agricultural Science 1
B. Present Problems 2  
C. Future Challenges 3
D. Rationale for ADB’s Involvement in Biotechnology 5
E. ADB’s Poverty Reduction Strategy 6
F. Key Questions 7

II Scientific Context 9  
A. Promethean Science 9
B. Definition, History, and Scope of Biotechnology 10
C. Economic Concentration in Agricultural Biotechnology 12
D. Applications of Biotechnology 15

III Present Status of Agricultural Biotechnology in Asia 19
A. Selected Country Experiences 19
B. Regional and International Programs 21
C. Activities of Funding Agencies 23

IV Risks Assessment and Management 33
A. Public Perception of Risks 33
B. Potential Risks of Biotechnology 34  
C. Risk Management 41
D. International and Donor Support for Biosafety 47  
Capacity Building in Asia
E. Genetically Modified Organisms: Food and Environmental Issues 48  
F. Future Perspective 49

V Using Biotechnology to Address Poverty Reduction and Food Security in Asia 51
A. Linkage Between Biotechnology and Poverty Reduction and Food Security 51
B. Why Invest in Agricultural Biotechnology? 52
C. Applying Biotechnology in Resource Poor Areas 53
D. Applicability of Biotechnology to Specific 55
Agricultural Objectives
E. Benefits from Agricultural Biotechnology 58
F. Weighing Risks and Benefits of Biotechnology 60

VI Issues and Options 63
A. Policy and Priority Setting 63
B. Priorities for Research and Development 64
C. Intellectual Property Management 66
D. Public-Private Sector Partnership 69
E. Biosafety 71
F. Fostering Better Public Awareness 73

VII Conclusions and Recommendations 75
A. Conclusions 75
B. Recommendations 76

Appendixes
1 Techniques of Biotechnology 83
2 Applications of Biotechnology To Agriculture 87
3 Agricultural Biotechnology in the People’s Republic of China 99
4 Agricultural Biotechnology in India 109
5 Agricultural Biotechnology in Indonesia 117
6 Agricultural Biotechnology in Malaysia 125
7 Agricultural Biotechnology in Pakistan 135
8 Agricultural Biotechnology in the Philippines 143
9 Agricultural Biotechnology in Thailand 151
10 Agricultural Biotechnology in Viet Nam 165
11 Biotechnology Activities of the CGIAR Centers Relevant to Asia 169
12 Intellectual Property Rights 177
13 Increased Public-Private Sector Collaboration 187  
Glossary of Terms 195
References 199

Tables
2.1 The Evolution of the Science of Genetics, Leading to Modern Biotechnology 13  
2.2 Summary of Applications of Modern Biotechnology to Agriculture 16  
3.1 Status of Agricultural Biotechnology in Some Asian Countries, 2000 24
3.2 Summary of ADB-Funded Projects in Biotechnology 26
4.1 Summary of Perceived and Genuine Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods and Crops 35
4.2 Status of Biosafety in Selected Asian Countries 46
5.1 Characteristics of the Green Revolution and the Biorevolution 54
5.2 Potential Benefits from Plant Genetic Engineering 59

Figures
2.1 Gradient of Biotechnologies 11
4.1 Procedures for Release/Commercialization 42

Boxes
3.1 Asian Rice Biotechnology Network 28
3.2 Asian Maize Biotechnology Network 29
5.3 The Success Story of Shrimp Biotechnology in Thailand 57

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Website: http://www.adb.org/Documents/Books/Agri_Biotech/default.asp