Tags
Burkina Faso, Colombia, cotton, gender, GM Crops, Honduras, maize, Philippines
Jose Falck-Zepeda will present the paper:
Adoption Impacts and Access to Innovation in Small Resource Poor Countries: Results from a Second Round Survey and Institutional Assessment in Honduras. Falck-Zepeda Jose; McLean Denise; Zambrano, Patricia; Sanders Arie; Roca Maria Mercedes; Chi-Ham Cecilia.
We conducted a first round survey of maize producers who have adopted Bt/RR maize in Honduras in 2007. Honduras is the only country in Central America who has adopted a GM crop. Our first round survey showed that the adoption of Bt/RR maize was beneficial for maize producers in the country as it provided a yield advantage and in some cases reductions in pesticide applications compared to its conventional counterpart. These outcomes lead to a positive net income gain to producers who adopted the technology. Although the question of whether this result would be replicable in other years is important, other critical questions arose after our first study concluded about the institutional setting -including the knowledge and decision making network- that facilitated the adoption of a GM crop technology and what are the factors that may facilitate or limit the adoption by smallholder producers. In this paper we report the results from a second round survey of producers in Honduras conducted in 2012, but also small group discussions, a Net and process mapping, and semi-structured interviews with current and past relevant decision makers. Our preliminary results from the producer survey support the overall conclusions of our first survey. Our qualitative studies describe the characteristics of an innovation pathway that lead to an innovation in a resource poor country including biosafety regulatory issues, IP, legal frameworks and an assertive agricultural policy supporting sustainable agriculture and development.
Patricia Zambrano will present the paper:
Hidding in Plain Sight: Women and GM Adoption Zambrano Patricia; Banzon- Cabanilla Daylinda; Lobnibe Isidore; Maldonado Jorge H. and Falck-Zepeda, Jose.
Abstract
The literature on the social and economic impact of genetically engineered (GE) technologies is numerous and continues to grow, particularly for countries where these technologies have already been commercialized. While the overall benefits of these commercialized GE technologies have been shown to be significant, particularly in the reduction of management time and in the application of insecticides, the gender differentiated impacts have been overlooked by most authors. The evidence that has been collected around the world, and in particular developing countries, about the economic and social relevance of taking into account the differentiated impacts between male and female farmers that technology adoption and use has, points to the need to address these differences also in the case of GE technologies. To address this gap the International Food Policy Institute, in partnership with local researchers, initiated a more qualitative approach to explore the possible gender dimensions that so far the quantitative work had mainly failed to uncover. This paper builds on qualitative field studies on gender and the adoption of GE cotton in Colombia and Burkina Faso, and GE maize in The Philippines and highlights and compare the gender dynamics in the these countries. While the case studies show that their perceptions of the technology are in general positive and not necessarily the same as those perceived by men, it also calls for a more nuanced interpretation of the obstacles women face in the adoption potentially beneficial GE technologies. This paper goes beyond the focus on gender-based obstacles to examine other gender aspects and impacts of the adoption of GE crops in these countries. It argues that as with any technology, women may face more limiting factors such as access to information, credit, and control of land, but there exist some common underlying features with the potential for gender equality to unleash benefits for the society as a whole, and for women and their families in particular
More information about the ICABR conference here:
http://www.economia.uniroma2.it/icabr-conference/index.php?p=17