The economic impact of genetically modified cotton on South African smallholders: Yield, profit and health effects

Abstract

Results of a large-scale survey of resource-poor smallholder cotton farmers in South Africa over three years conclusively show that adopters of Bt cotton have benefited in terms of higher yields, lower pesticide use, less labour for pesticide application and substantially higher gross margins per hectare. These benefits were clearly related to the technology, and not to preferential adoption by farmers who were already highly efficient. The smallest producers are shown to have benefited from adoption of the Bt variety as much as, if not more than, larger producers. Moreover, evidence from hospital records suggests a link between declining pesticide poisonings and adoption of the Bt variety.

Social Impacts of GM Crops in Agriculture: A Systematic Literature Review

“…A commonly cited example of secondary impacts related to changes in labour demand. Some studies pointed out reductions in labour as a cost-saving effect [81,95,100,102], or as a negative effect for those previously employed for spraying [85]. Labour needs were also shown to increase in some cases.…”

“…Six studies indicated various positive effects on wellbeing for farmers. Two of these six studies provided first-hand data relating to wellbeing: Bennett et al [81] reported declining hospital visits as a result of reduced pesticide use with Bt cotton in South Africa; Qaim and Kouser [82] found a correlation between improved caloric intake and increased household incomes resulting from the introduction of Bt cotton in India. The remaining four studies reporting positive wellbeing impacts did not measure impacts directly, but relied on farmers reporting such impacts.…”

“…Higher yields and/or reduced pesticide use can then have secondary social impacts such as improved household finances, better labour conditions and health improvements. Looking specifically at studies of Bt cotton relying on own farm-level data, there were 23 such studies in the dataset [53,66,67,70,76,77,[81][82][83][84][85][86][87][93][94][95][96][97][98][99][100][101][102]. The majority (12) were from India, followed by South Africa (5), Argentina (2), Burkina Faso (2), Mexico (1) and Australia (1) as the only country representing the Global North.…”

“…These economic benefits were described as combinations of direct and secondary impacts of raised yields and/or reduced costs for pesticides [53,77,[81][82][83][84]86,87,[94][95][96][97][98]100,102]. A commonly cited example of secondary impacts related to changes in labour demand.…”

Produção da toxina Cry1Ac e preferência para alimentação e oviposição de Alabama argillacea em algodão Bt sob estresse hídrico

“…Em virtude da complexidade do controle de pragas do algodoeiro, pela existência de inúmeras espécies de pragas-chave, e do uso intensivo de inseticidas para o controle delas, a facilidade de adoção do plantio do algodão Bt tem sido uma das razões de sua utilização por pequenos produtores da África do Sul (Bennett et al, 2006b), México (Traxler & Godoy-Avila, 2004), China (Pray et al, 2004) e Índia (Bennett et al, 2006a). Similarmente, o plantio do algodão no Semiárido do Nordeste é feito basicamente por pequenos produtores, em áreas entre 0,5 e 8 ha (Fontes et al, 2006), e o cultivo do algodão Bt pode ser uma alternativa viável.…”