Increasing Production: What role for
Agricultural and GM Technologies in
Developed and Developing Countries?
José Falck Zepeda
Research Fellow/Leader Policy Team Program for
Biosafety Systems
Environment and Production Technology Division
IFPRI

Agricultural Science and Technology
• Interdependency
• Impact on society’s goals and outcomes
• Ag technology is highly contextualized
• Linear thinking - Linear outcomes

The potential role of agricultural technologies
1. Reduce
vulnerability by
targeting production
shocks, trends and
seasonality
2. Improve current
level of livelihood
assets
3. Affect (be affected Source, Falck Zepeda, et al. 2003
by) institutions,
policies and
processes

Core questions for agricultural technology
and S&T programs and policies
• How can they most Goals / Outcomes
effectively contribute to an
improved quality of life for Economic
the largest share of society? Environmental
• How do they affect what Social
society does and the choices
society makes? Economic
• How do their implementation Sustainability
affect the distribution and
equity of outcomes?

What agricultural technologies are out there?
• Agronomic Biotechnology
• Conventional plant
• Pest & disease management breeding
• Irrigation management •Tissue culture
• Genetic marker
• Fertilizer management assisted selection
• DNA manipulation
• Management technologies
• Knowledge (cross cutting) • Genomics
• Proteomics
• Integrated Pest Management • Metabolomics
• Organic agriculture
• Biotechnology

Why GM crop technologies?
• Embodied technologies
• Address specific productivity constraints not easily
addressed / intractable problems
• Can be deployed in low resource use production systems
• Flexible – fit with other production systems
• GM and Integrated Pest Management
• GM and organic production
• Impacts can be non-pecuniary, indirect, and scale neutral
• Scalable

Lessons from first generation crops
• GM crop impacts have been in average, positive
• But, average masks significant variability across households,
regions, countries, crops and traits
• Limiting institutional issues => negative and/or highly
variable outcomes
• Institutional issues including knowledge flows will
determine outcome and impact
• Remarkable history of safe use
• Positive impacts on environment, biodiversity and
society/economy possible

Need for second generation GM crops
• 2nd generation GM crops: increased attention to
improvements in production, productivity-efficiency and
consumer benefits
• We may have no choice but to pursue appropriate first
and second generation GM crops based on
projected/expected demand and supply conditions
IF they prove their worth benefiting society
• Pay special attention to innovative ways to use first &
second generation GM crops  Strigaway technology
Is the R&D pipeline there to respond to multiple and
more complex problems? For developing countries?

Challenges in and for developing countries –
Investments and priorities
• Insufficient R&D investments
• Identification of priority crops, traits and technology
choices
• Need more participatory approaches to innovation, not less…
• From public sector lead to private sector lead innovation
systems
• Public sector in developing countries is investing in
biotechnology R&D
• Investments and the reality of small fragmented agro-
economic-ecologic niches in developing countries

Challenges in and for developing countries –
changing production paradigms
• Avoid focusing on technological solutions to
complex problems
• We cannot avoid the political context
• Critical to explore complementarities and
synergies of current production systems
• From a compartmentalized production systems to a
highly interactive and flexible production system
• From ‘best practice’ to ‘best fit’ to 'best mix of modular
components’

Challenges in and for developing countries –
poverty and poverty alleviation
• Poverty is multi-dimensional - interventions will
also have to be multi-dimensional and focused
on solutions
• Leverage science and technology, R&D,
innovation and available resources to address
specific poverty issues
• Public sector and the development of public
goods

Challenges in and for developing countries –
GM crop specific issues
• Regulated technologies
• Compliance with biosafety regulations assure that the
technology meet an agreed safety standard
• Risk assessments and decision making
• Regulatory compliance needs to be done in a cost effective
manner
• Excessively precautionary regulations – beyond what is
need to prove safety – is costly, unnecessary and a
waste of scarce resources
• Regulatory costs can reduce innovation stream and
impact public sector and small private firms
disproportionately

Best bet areas and traits to address
production, productivity and poverty
Area addressed Best bet traits / emphasis
Climate change – variability - vulnerability Drought tolerance
Salinity tolerance
Pest and disease resistance
Increase production / livelihoods assets Improve nitrogen use efficiency
Improve phosphorus use efficiency
Modify photosynthesis pathway
Drought tolerance
Salinity tolerance
Aluminum tolerance
Reduce environmental damage Reduced phosphorus/nitrogen effluvia
Pest and disease resistance
R&D Areas Emphasis
Rapid response to pest and diseases Fungal, bacterial, insect, nematodes, …
Integrated Crop Health and Management Multi-disciplinary R&D and deployment
Systems
Conventional and participatory plant Conservation, characterization, improvement and use of
breeding plant genetic resources for agriculture
Genomics and derived application Identification of valuable traits for DC
sciences