Tags
agriculture, Biosafety, Biotechnology, Developed countries, food production, GM Crops, regulations
This is my presentation at Georgetown University today March 31, 2014 on B”Biotechnology and Developing Countries”.
31 Monday Mar 2014
Tags
agriculture, Biosafety, Biotechnology, Developed countries, food production, GM Crops, regulations
This is my presentation at Georgetown University today March 31, 2014 on B”Biotechnology and Developing Countries”.
25 Tuesday Feb 2014
06 Monday Jan 2014
Tags
assessments, Biosafety, Biotechnology, ex ante, ex post, GMOs, LMOs, socioeconomic considerations, socioeconomics
This is the Springer editors link to our new edited book “Socio-Economic Considerations in Biotechnology Regulation” in the Series: Natural Resource Management and Policy, Vol. 37. Ludlow, Karinne; Smyth, Stuart J.; Falck-Zepeda, José (Eds.). 2014, XII, 313 p. 15 illus., 5 illus. in color.
http://www.springer.com/economics/agricultural+economics/book/978-1-4614-9439-3
07 Monday Oct 2013
Our co-edited book with Guillaume Gruere and Idah Sithole-Niang “GM crops in Africa -Economic and policy lessons from countries south of the Sahara” is finally out in electronic from. We will have hard copies a bit later.
You can download the book GM Crops in Africa here.
My deepest thanks to my co-editors and most specially all the author who contributed their expertise, experience, knowledge and patience to the development of this book.
From IFPRI’s landing page:
A variable climate, political instability, and other constraints have limited agricultural development in African countries south of the Sahara. Genetically modified (GM) crops are one tool for enhancing agricultural productivity and food security despite such constraints. Genetically Modified Crops in Africa: Economic and Policy Lessons from Countries South of the Sahara investigates how this tool might be effectively used by evaluating the benefits, costs, and risks for African countries of adopting GM crops. The authors gather together studies on GM crops’ economic effects and impact on trade, how consumers view such crops, and other issues. They find that GM crops have had, on average, a positive economic effect in the nations where they were used and identify future steps for enhancing GM crop adoption’s positive effects. Promising policy initiatives include making biosafety regulations that do not make GM crop development prohibitively expensive, fostering intraregional trade in GM crops, and providing more and better information about GM crops to consumers who might currently be skeptical of them. These and other findings in Genetically Modified Crops in Africa indicate ways biotechnology can contribute to economic development in Africa south of the Sahara.
Genetically Modified Crops in Africa – Economic and Policy lessons from countries south of the Sahara, 2013.
07 Friday Jun 2013
The following is an excerpt from our upcoming book:
Genetically Modified Crops in Africa: Economic and Policy Lessons from Countries South of the Sahara. Edited by Jose Falck-Zepeda, Guillaume Gruère, and Idah Sithole-Niang. International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). IN PRESS.I will give you more details when the IFPRI is available for distribution.
The first main lesson is that, based on available data and published studies, current GM crops have had on average a positive economic effect in African countries south of the Sahara, but the magnitude and distribution of their potential economic benefits for farmers highly depend on the crop, trait, and especially the institutional setting in which the technology is introduced.
15 Thursday Nov 2012
Biosafety and biotechnology policy developers/makers cannot continue putting forward policies or other legal instruments without putting at least some consideration to the potential implementation feasibility of such requirements. Effective biosafety and biotechnology policy formulation needs to clearly define the implementation process in order to ensure that in the end you will have a functional regulatory and technology development system that has the ability to approve, reject or ask for more information which describes a functional system.
A functional system thus implies defining who, when , how, assessment trigger, rules and decision making standards, quality controls including peer review /verifiability and other elements of best practice, and even the rationale why you are including socioeconomics, even in the case of a law that has been passed already.
Important to consider inclusion of the option in any assessment process that allows an initial screening that determines whether a specific application can be excluded (Complete Exclusion or Statements of No Significant Impact), have the possibility of a “lighter” assessment or to consider a more complete study.
19 Friday Oct 2012
Tags
Even though the following text is my personal opinion, my concern while working for the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) which has an emphasis on sustainable solutions to address hunger and poverty, are not the multinational companies. My main concern is the public sector in developing countries that are doing research on resolving obstacles and problems in crops of interest to developing countries. I’m talking of crops such as cassava, sweet potatoes, bananas, beans, rice, and others. I’m talking about research searching for resistance to fungi, bacteria, viruses, insects and weeds. I’m also talking about the search for innovative solutions that incorporate GMOs and any other technology which adequately demonstrate their value.
Interesting examples of what I am talking about are the ongoing effort to develop fungal and bacterial resistant banana varieties and drought tolerant maize in Africa, insect resistant cow pea, or the Strigaway project at AATF in Africa. The latter is a quite fascinating project as it does use a herbicide tolerant maize variety whose seed is coated with the herbicide to control enough the pernicious weed Striga at the beginning of the crop season, control is just enough to allow maize foliage coverage. No herbicide is needed afterward. Although this has not been a quite successful story as it does introduce other management issues, the important lesson is indeed finding alternatives for poor farmers in developing countries.
For the record, I know that much -or even most of the – experience in advanced technologies such as biotechnology lies in the private sector. So I tend to look at multinationals as part of the solution, not part of the problem. This means engaging in productive dialogue to channel that potential to solve out multiple problems in a way that advances their and our goals.
What I can say, based on my professional experience evaluating these technologies in different parts of the world, is that the adoption of existing GM technologies has brought real benefits for many producers in the world. In many cases, the net benefits are positive for producers who have adopted and even for the country or region that have adopted such technology. Therefore, each GM technology should be considered individually by the society, and not rule out in advance their benefit based on ideologies and / or pre-conceived positions. We cannot close the door to any valuable technological options especially at this point in time where we are at a critical juncture for food production globally. Here we have to put wisdom and prudence up-front and begin investing in agricultural innovation and the biomass production system, to see the results twenty years in the future.
Jose Falck-Zepeda.
21 Friday Sep 2012
Posted Background Information, Methods, National Policies, Opinion
inIt is my personal opinion that countries debating whether to include socioeconomics in their decision making, or those who have taken the decision and are looking forward for an implementation pathway, need to take into consideration the following set of elements:
Need to maintain biosafety (risk) assessment a science and evidence based process
In as much as has been implemented in generally accepted practice, the process of conducting a biosafety (risk) assessment needs to follow elements of best practice, maintain scientific standards of excellence, and should be conducted by experienced assessors or under the supervision of such valuable human resource.
Inclusion of socioeconomics can have costs, benefits and risks -not clear whether there will be positive (net) benefit to society, thus need to weigh decision in the specific national context
Socioeconomic assessments can contribute new -and in some cases improved- knowledge. This may help separate those technologies that may be valuable from those who are not valuable to society. Yet, there are costs associated with the inclusion of socioeconomics in decision making. Costs include costs of implementation, potential of introducing uncertainty into the process and the possibility of developing an unworkable process. Inclusion of socioeconomics may increase the time of compliance a
If a country has taken the decision to include socioeconomics in decision making, then it’s a matter of devising implementation
Countries who have taken such decision need support in terms of designing a system that will be as much as possible transparent, feasible, cost and time efficient, fair and protective.
Socioeconomic assessments and analysis need to adhere to standards of excellence, elements of best practice and reliance on well-qualified experts for implementation
Regardless if the process will require de novo studies or whether it will rely on an qualitative assessments of socioeconomic issues, the assessment and analysis need to adhere to elements of best practice for implementation. This is the only way to ensure that multiple methodological issues -including own assessor biases- are properly addressed and to improve the accuracy and precision of the socioeconomic assessment.
Prudent to explore the value of a sequential process where risk assessment is completed and then if and only if anything is identified as an issue, proceed with the socioeconomic assessment
Exploring whether this option -as devised in the case of Brazil and perhaps Mexico- is prudent and valuable for implementation. This approach ensures that no resources are unnecessarily spent on a socioeconomic assessment, by conducting the biosafety(risk) assessment first and thus filtering those technologies that may not be deemed safe or in some cases ineffective. In addition this approach may help generate additional information and knowledge that may be used (prudently) in the implementation of the socioeconomic assessment and/or in conducting a socioeconomic evaluation study.
11 Wednesday Apr 2012
Tags
Agricultural Biotechnology, Biotechnology, capacity, cost of compliance, decision-making, plant breeding
The issue of public sector investments in GM crop and other organisms’ R&D is one issue that is clearly extremely important for public policy in developing countries and those interested in investing in R&D that will be of value to developing countries. We have seen the investments done in multiple developing countries not only on GM techniques but other biotechnology areas and in different crops and organisms, as well as, plant and animal breeding, conservation and other multiple areas of science and technology. Many done by the public sector and/or national private sector organizations (see list of papers below).
In the Next Harvest project, we identified that by 2001-2002, there were 209 events in what could be considered advanced regulatory stage in 16 developing countries. Much of these are events of interest to developing countries. In the paper done with Jikun Huang and colleagues from CCAP China, we documented that by 1999-2000 there were 51 cases approved for environmental release and 26 ready for commercialization approval.
Countries have invested in biotechnology and other sciences, yet we have observed only two countries with GM plants being approved for commercial release developed by the public sector, being India and China. There seem to be some public sector releases in Cuba, I will have to check exact nature of those releases.
Because of this fact alone, we have to consider all the implication from introducing regulations, and that certainly includes the cost of compliance with biosafety regulations. Unfeasible or unnecessarily rigid regulations will increase the cost of compliance and introduce a lot of uncertainty for developers especially those in the public sector, national private sector and even those activities financed by producers themselves. These groups are the ones that are most likely to invest in R&D in those crops and traits of interest to developing countries.
References for Biotechnology and Plant Breeding Capacity
20 Tuesday Mar 2012
A quite interesting book which had a quite innovative approach in its development. This is the product of a conference on biotechnology and sustainability organized by the University of Arkansas and the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Arkansas. With contributions by Peggy Lemaux, Pamela Ronald, Mark K. Sears, Eric Sachs, Alison Van Eenennaam, Dominic Brossard, William Meyers, Tony Cavalieri and myself, amongst others this book in my opinion contributes towards the goal of finding a common pathway between agriculture and environment and the shared vision necessary to ensure meeting goals from both.
To view a more complete description of the book “The Role of Biotechnology in a Sustainable Food Supply” click here
The Chapter we contributed to this edited books is:
Falck-Zepeda, J.B. and A. Cavalieri. 2012.. “Risk Assessment Approaches for Biosafety.” In The Role of Biotechnology in a Sustainable Food Supply” Editors Jennie Popp (U. of Arkansas), Maty Matlock (U. of Arkansas), Nathan Kemper (Southern Center Risk Management), Molly Jahn (U. of Wisconsin- Madison), Cambridge University Press.