GM Watch
  • Main Menu
    • Home
    • News
      • Newsletter subscription
      • News Reviews
      • News Languages
        • Notícias em Português
        • Nieuws in het Nederlands
        • Nachrichten in Deutsch
      • Archive
    • Articles
      • GM Myth Makers
      • GM Reports
      • GM Quotes
      • GM Myths
      • Non-GM successes
      • GM Firms
        • Monsanto: a history
        • Monsanto: resources
        • Bayer: a history
        • Bayer: resources
    • Videos
      • Latest Videos
      • Must see videos
      • Agriculture videos
      • Labeling videos
      • Animals videos
      • Corporations videos
      • Corporate takeover videos
      • Contamination videos
      • Latin America videos
      • India videos
      • Asia videos
      • Food safety videos
      • Songs videos
      • Protests videos
      • Biofuel myths videos
      • Index of GM crops and foods
      • Index of speakers
      • Health Effects
    • Contact
    • About
    • Donations
News and comment on genetically modified foods and their associated pesticides    
  • News
    • Newsletter subscription
    • News Reviews
    • News Languages
      • Notícias em Português
      • Nieuws in het Nederlands
      • Nachrichten in Deutsch
    • Archive
      • 2022 articles
  • Articles
    • GM Myth Makers
    • GM Reports
    • GM Quotes
    • GM Myths
    • Non-GM successes
    • GM Firms
      • Monsanto: a history
      • Monsanto: resources
      • Bayer: a history
      • Bayer: resources
  • Donations
  • Videos
    • Index of speakers
    • Glyphosate Videos
    • Latest Videos
    • Must see videos
    • Health Effects
    • Agriculture videos
    • Labeling videos
    • Animals videos
    • Corporations videos
    • Corporate takeover videos
    • Contamination videos
    • Latin America videos
    • India videos
    • Asia videos
    • Food safety videos
    • Songs videos
    • Protests videos
    • Biofuel myths videos
    • Index of GM crops and foods
  • Contact
  • About
SUBSCRIBE TO REVIEWS

GMWatch Facebook cornfield banner

INTRODUCTION TO GM

GMO Myths and Facts front page.jpg

SCIENCE SUPPORTS REGULATION OF GENE EDITING

Plant tissue cultures

GENE EDITING: UNEXPECTED OUTCOMES AND RISKS

Damaged DNA on fire

GENE EDITING MYTHS AND REALITY

A guide through the smokescreen

Gene Editing Myths and Reality

ON-TARGET EFFECTS OF GENE EDITING

Damaged DNA

News Menu

  • Latest News
  • News Reviews
  • Archive
  • Languages

News Archive

  • 2023 articles
  • 2022 articles
  • 2021 articles
  • 2020 articles
  • 2019 articles
  • 2018 articles
  • 2017 articles
  • 2016 articles
  • 2015 articles
  • 2014 articles
  • 2013 articles
  • 2012 articles
  • 2011 articles
  • 2010 articles
  • 2009 articles
  • 2008 articles
  • 2007 articles
  • 2006 articles
  • 2005 articles
  • 2004 articles
  • 2003 articles
  • 2002 articles
  • 2001 articles
  • 2000 articles

Please support GMWatch

Donations

You can donate via Paypal or credit/debit card.

Some of you have opted to give a regular donation. This is greatly appreciated as it helps place us on a more stable financial basis. Thank you for your support!

GM Bt cotton production risks in Burkina Faso "high" – study

  • Print
  • Email
Details
Published: 30 August 2014
Twitter

High seed costs and pests prove problems for farmers

A study in Burkina Faso found that due to high seed costs, the risks of GM Bt cotton production were "disproportionately high" (item 1 below).

And a guest editorial (item 2) co-authored by the same researcher and published in the same journal, Geoforum, recommends that discussions about GM crops and the future of food production in the Global South abandon generalised rhetoric about "feeding the world", since food production is "inescapably local".

1. Engineering yields and inequality? How institutions and agro-ecology shape Bt cotton outcomes in Burkina Faso
2. Editorial: Seeds and places: The geographies of transgenic crops in the global south

1. Engineering yields and inequality? How institutions and agro-ecology shape Bt cotton outcomes in Burkina Faso

Brian Dowd-Uribe

Geoforum
Volume 53, May 2014, pp. 161–171
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718513000456

Abstract

The research presented in this paper assesses how four social and agro-ecological factors – credit, governance, seed price and pest dynamics – mediate Bt cotton outcomes for producers in Burkina Faso. It finds that the cotton sector’s integrated credit provisioning scheme provides a mechanism for all socio-economic groups to adopt Bt cotton. High seed prices, however, are likely to dissuade resource-poor farmers from Bt cotton adoption, despite the presence of secure credit institutions. Governance issues, including corruption and late payments, demand greater attention since they are driving large numbers of producers to abandon all forms of cotton production. Bt cotton will control target pests, but secondary pests are likely to emerge shortening the benefits of the technology. These findings suggest that many issues with Bt cotton adoption in Burkina Faso lie in the social and agro-ecological context of adoption, which traditionally is not examined in farm-gate analyses of transgenic crop outcomes. An examination of relevant social and agro-ecological factors improves assessments of the likely outcomes of transgenic crops for producers, and allows for greater understanding of their differential impacts.

Highlights

* This research assesses how institutions and agro-ecology mediate the performance of Bt cotton in Burkina Faso.
* Unique seed pricing arrangements and secure credit enhance the success and evenness of Bt cotton.
* High seed price, persistent corruption and late cotton payments reduce adoption rates.
* Risks associated with Bt cotton appear to disproportionally affect resource-poor farmers.
* Bt cotton’s performance cannot be separated from its sociological and agro-ecological context.

2. Editorial: Seeds and places: The geographies of transgenic crops in the global south

Guest editors Brian Dowd-Uribe, Dominic Glover, and Matthew A. Schnurr

Geoforum
Volume 53, May 2014, pp. 145–148
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718513001991

Summary by GMWatch:

Many decision-makers, policy analysts, and media commentators take it for granted that humanity must take urgent steps to produce much more food. The population is still growing, albeit at a reducing rate; recent projections suggest the number of humans will surpass 9.5 billion in 2050.

Yet the global supply of dietary energy reached 121 per cent of the global requirement in 2010–2012, continuing a steady rise from 114 per cent 20 years earlier.

This substantial increase in the food surplus occurred during a period when the global population swelled from about 5.3 billion to an estimated 6.9 billion.

Over the same period, the daily amount of protein available per person increased from 69g (1990–1992) to 78g (2007–2009) – the latter is about 139 per cent of the amount recommended by the US Centers for Disease Control for male adults.

Evidently there is plenty of food.

Moreover, 1.4 billion people are overweight and, surprisingly, an increasing proportion of these overweight people are relatively poor. Apparently, the situation humanity faces is not a simple shortage of food, but something much more complex.

The public discourse about global food security occurs at a high level of abstraction. A 2011 special report published by The Economist is a good example. The report is sprinkled with passing references to particular situations and places, yet its authors address themselves sedulously to the macro question of how ‘the world’ or ‘nine billion people’ can be fed. This global food security discourse presents a kind of ‘view from nowhere’: a sweeping perspective on food (in)security as an undifferentiated global concern, rather than a phenomenon that has very local characteristics, causes and likely solutions.

Public debates about transgenic crops and the future of agriculture in the global South should renounce globalising rhetoric about ‘feeding the world’ and reject simplistic assumptions about food scarcity and the supposed need to raise yields and produce more food. Geographers can steer the discussion in more appropriate directions by insisting on the importance of place, politics and history, and affirming the need for a fine-grained analysis of patterns and dynamics of food production and consumption that are inescapably local.

Menu

Home

Subscriptions

News Archive

News Reviews

Videos

Articles

GM Myth Makers

GM Reports

GM Myths

GM Quotes

Non-GM Successes

Contacts

Contact Us

About

Facebook

Twitter

Donations

Content 1999 - 2023 GMWatch.
Web Development By SCS Web Design