Annotated Bibliography Entry

 

Reference: Pardey 2001
Title: The Future of Food: Biotechnology Markets and Policies in an International Setting
Authors: Pardey, P.G. (ed.)
Publisher: International Food Policy Research Institute, 2033 K Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20006-1002, U.S.A.
Publication details: 2001.

Summary
Foreword by Per Pinstrup-Andersen
Table of Contents

 

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Summary

On January 22, 2001, a workshop on “Agricultural Biotechnology: Markets and Policies in an International Setting” was held in Adelaide, Australia. The event was convened jointly by the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economic Society (AARES) and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) of Washington, D.C., in conjunction with the annual AARES meetings. This book includes revised versions of the papers presented at that workshop.

 

Foreword, Per Pinstrup-Andersen

What is the future of food? Looking forward, a thinking person could adopt either a pessimistic or an optimistic outlook. On the bleak side many hundreds of millions of poor people are still malnourished, and there will be an additional 1.5 million mouths to feed by 2020. Little new land remains to bring into agriculture, and the water and other natural resources needed for agriculture are being degraded and siphoned off for use in other sectors. Being upbeat, one can marvel at the productivity gains seen over the past several decades and be reassured the same will hold true for the decades to come. The sense that a new technological era in agriculture is upon us bolsters the optimists but the latest crop of biotechnologies, and the context in which they are being developed and used, are attracting much controversy and criticism.

In the minds of many, agriculture is a natural endeavor and should remain so: yet in many ways it is the antithesis of “natural.” Farmers managed and manipulated the genetic makeup of crops for the first 10,000 years of agriculture, giving rise to slow, but by contemporary standards only modest, gains in crop function and yield. The science of genetics took off in the early twentieth century and so did crop performance, with unprecedented increases in yields over much of the world in the second half of the last century. Yet these efforts came with their fair share of controversy. Some saw the hybrid corn technologies that spread rapidly beginning in the 1930s in the United States as a thoroughly unwelcome change. The technology was deemed “unnatural” and deprived farmers of the chance to save seed for next year’s crop. It also heralded the privatization of large parts of the seed sectors in many developed counties. The new semi-dwarf (short statured) rice and wheat varieties that became available to farmers in the 1960s were tarred with the same brush. Unfamiliarity bred contempt, and similar sounding arguments swirl around the transgenic crops and other biotechnologies science is just beginning to provide.

There is no question of the need for substantial yield gains over the decades to come, nor that genetic manipulation in tandem with other technologies is necessary to achieve these boosts in productivity. What is in question is the part biotechnology will play in achieving food security for all and especially for the world’s poor who are yet to gain access to the food many of us simply take for granted.

The ramifications of the market and policy choices taken now regarding agricultural biotechnologies will reverberate for decades to come. The consequences will be global, and the choices controversial. The chapters in this book confront this controversy with new analyses and insights from economists and technologists. The topics covered include an assessment of differences in perceptions among rich and poor countries; a quantitative investigation of the effects of rich-country restrictions on international trade in GMO crops on the welfare of poorer parts of the world; an analysis of alternative technology trajectories; an exploration of the effects of intellectual property rights on the bioscience done by public agencies the world over; and several economic appraisals of the economic impacts of the technologies —past, present, and future.

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Pardey 2001. The Future of Food: Biotechnology Markets and Policies in an International Setting

Contents

Tables ix

Figures x

Foreword xi

Acknowledgments xiii

Part 1 Introduction

Chapter 1 Biotechnology Markets and Policies—Overview 3
Philip G. Pardey

Chapter 2 Agricultural Biotechnology—An Australian Perspective on a Global Science 11
Michael J. Taylor

Part 2 Looking Forward on a Global Scale

Chapter 3 Rich and Poor Country Perspectives on Biotechnology 17
Per Pinstrup-Andersen and Marc J. Cohen

Chapter 4 Estimating the Global Economic Effects of GMOs 49
Kym Anderson, Chantal Pohl Nielsen, Sherman Robinson, and Karen Thierfelder

Chapter 5 Transcending Transgenics: Are there "Babies in the Bathwater" or is That a Dorsal Fin? 75
Richard A. Jefferson

Comment 93
Brian Fisher

Part 3 Intellectual Property Policies and Practice

Chapter 6 Addressing Freedom-to-Operate Questions for International Agricultural R&D 99
Carol Nottenburg, Philip G. Pardey, and Brian D. Wright

Chapter 7 Public Good and Private Greed: Realizing Public Benefits from Privatized Global Agrifood Research 129
Peter W. B. Phillips and Dan Dierker

Comment 149
Ron Duncan

Comment 151
Bob Lindner

Part 4 Biotechnology Impacts: The Economic Evidence

Chapter 8 Agricultural Biotechnology: A Critical Review of the Impact Evidence to Date 155
Michele C. Marra

Chapter 9 The Economics of Herbicide-Tolerant Wheat and Bifurcation of World Markets 185
Richard Gray

Chapter 10 Potential Impacts of Biotechnology-Assisted Selection on Plant Breeding Programs in Developing Countries 197
Michael L. Morris, Jean-Marcel Ribaut, Mireille Khairallah, and Kate A. Dreher

Part 5 Regional Perspectives on Biotechnology Policies

Chapter 11 Agricultural Biotechnology and Rural Development in Latin America and the Caribbean 221
Eduardo J. Trigo, Greg Traxler, Carl Pray, and Ruben Echeverría

Chapter 12 Biotechnology Policies for Asia: Current Activities and Future Options 251
John Skerritt

Chapter 13 The U.S. Biotech Story: As Told by Economists at USDA 273
Nicole Ballenger

Part 6 Concluding Comments

Rural R&D Technology Policy 293
Jock R. Anderson

Biotechnology Policy Issues 298
Walter J. Armbruster

Public Policy Responses to Biotechnology 303
Bob Richardson

Acronyms and Glossary 307

Contributors 311

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