Gene revolution pingali 2010

The Gene Revolution & Smallholder
Agriculture

Prabhu Pingali
Deputy Director
Agricultural Development

Agriculture is a source of livelihoods for
billions, but a huge reservoir of poverty

Global extreme poverty 2002, $1.08 a day  2.5 billion people
involved in agriculture
 800 m smallholders
 75% of poor are rural
Global and the majority will
Urban poor be rural to about 2040
287 mill. South  900 m extreme rural
Asia rural poor ($1/day)
407 mill. In Sub-Saharan Africa,
MENA rural 
5 mill. farming accounts for
2/3 of employment
ECA rural East Asia
and
5 mill. rural Sub-Saharan 1/3 of GDP
LAC rural 218 mill. Africa rural
229 mill.  In South Asia, the rural
27 mill. poverty rate is still
approximately 40%

The Green Revolution

We know progress is possible. Rural poverty in India

From the 1960s to the 1980s, 60
Poverty rate, %

crop improvements in Asia and
Latin America helped:

50
20%
• Double food production
• Save hundreds of millions of lives
• Lay a foundation for growth in GREEN
REVOLUTION
countries like India and China PERIOD
40

1975
1965

1970

1980

1985
Nearly 20% reduction in
poverty in just two
decades.

May 6, 2010 © 2010 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation | 3

Global Agriculture R&D: record of
past success
 Production
Cereal output in developing
countries has grown 2.8 percent
annually for three decades

 Productivity
Yields, not area, were
responsible for growth.
TFP grew along with yields

 Prices
Long term declining trend in real
food prices

4

Genetic gains for the major staples have slowed down


Can biotechnology reverse the
current productivity trends?

• The tools of biotechnology range from tissue culture
for the production of disease-free planting materials,
molecular markers and double haploids for
accelerated plant breeding, to transgenic
technologies for the genetic improvement of crops.

• Transgenic technologies are used when conventional
breeding approaches cannot achieve the specific
crop improvements needed by farmers and
consumers.


Types of Biotechnology Research
and Technology
1. GMOs
– Most visible (notorious) aspect
– Widespread public interest; concern from some
– Most studied aspect of biotechnology; most data
2. Molecular Techniques for Genetic Improvement
– Marker Assisted Selection
– Cellular biology
3. Vaccines and Diagnostic Tools for Animal agriculture
4. Advances in Basic Science
– New avenues of science; new scientific horizon

7

Transgenic technologies have had significant
impact for a few crops & traits
Global Area of Biotech Crops, 1996 to
2007:
Crops created through (Million Hectares)
transgenic technologies
have generated both
special concerns and
significant benefits since
their initial
commercialization a decade
ago
By 2009, 14 million
farmers grow biotech crops
in 25 countries, of which
90% are small farmers.
Source: Clive James, 2009


Transgenics by crop, 2007

31%
13% Soybean
Maize
5% Cotton
Canola
Other
51%

Other = papaya, squash, alfalfa, tomato,
poplar, petunia, sweet pepper, carnation James, 2007


GMOs have been an effective technology
in some cases in developed and
developing countries
Sustainability problems addressed by Bt cotton
• High pesticide loads
• Insect resistance to chemical pesticides
• Soil erosion under conventional tillage
practices
• High production costs

Further progress in transgenic crops for
developing country agriculture is constrained
by:
 poor public sector R&D capacity;
 limited access to private sector innovations;
 Underdeveloped bio-safety regulations
 Low attention to crops & traits important to
the poor

Can parallel efforts in genomics and molecular
breeding fill the gap?


Molecular Breeding

 Advances in molecular biology and information technology offer
opportunities for enhancing plant breeding
 By using a plant’s genetic code to identify desired traits, Marker
Assisted Breeding (MAB) saves time compared to phenotypic selection
(PS), more popularly known as conventional breeding.
 Though upfront costs associated with marker assisted breeding are
much larger compared to phenotypic selection, the precision of MAB
over phenotypic selection significantly slashes both breeding time and
future costs.
 For rice, using MAB saved between three and six years in development
time when compared to PS. Financially, this equates to an NPV of
USD50–500 million higher, depending on the constraint and country.
Source: Generation Challenge Program, Pathways to Impact: Brief No. 3


Ex-ante estimates of financial benefits of
speeding technology development using MAB
for some key constraints

Rice Cassava
Salinity Incremental Cassava mosaic Incremental NPV
NPV disease, (million $)
(million $) & green mites
Philippines 49 Nigeria 817
Bangladesh 499
India 447 Ghana 371
Indonesia 194
Uganda 34
Phosphorus deficiency
Indonesia 282


MAB and developing country agriculture
R&D
 Weak Public sector infrastructure & conventional
breeding capacity
 Private sector genomic information not easily
accessible
 High costs of establishing and operating an MAB
program
 Low scale economies for small and medium sized
countries
 Little information for “orphan crops” of importance
to the poor


Lessons from the Green Revolution
 Focus on staple crops & traits important to the poor

 Generate global public goods through International &
Regional Research Centers

 Develop open access networks for transmitting
knowledge and technology

 Support national capacity building in plant breeding
and plant sciences

 Promote policy frameworks for enhancing
productivity

Biotech research capacity in
developing countries

 Tier 1 Countries – India, China, Brazil, etc.,
are self reliant in marker technologies
 Tier 2 Countries – Kenya, Vietnam, Chile, etc.,
have ability to do adaptive breeding using
markers from elsewhere
 Tier 3 Countries – low income countries, with
limited capacity even for basic breeding


The way forward for the Public
Sector
 Seek collaboration and partnership with the private
sector

 Concentrate on areas under-researched by the
private sector

 Establish IPR and bio-safety regulations

 Generate public goods and human resource capacity

 Explore new mechanisms for international
collaboration


Deal with the age old
problems of small farmer
constraints to technology
access and adoption, even as
we look ahead to new
technological revolutions.


Gene revolution pingali 2010

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