The economics of agricultural innovation

Alston, Julian M.; Pardey, Philip G.

doi:10.1016/bs.hesagr.2021.10.001

Cited by 24 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 160 publications

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“…Limitations on their public and market acceptance have prevented genetic engineering technologies from realizing their full market potential, and concerns have been raised that other new breeding technologies, such as gene editing, may face similar barriers and suffer similar consequences [4,8]. Indeed, Lusk, Roosen, and Bieberstein [9] argue that opposition to genetically engineered foods has spilled over to affect the adoption of other breeding technologies in agriculture worldwide.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Consumer acceptance of new plant-breeding technologies: An application to the use of gene editing in fresh table grapes

et al. 2022

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This study estimates consumers’ willingness to pay for specific product (quality) and process (agronomic) attributes of table grapes, including taste, texture, external appearance, and the expected number of chemical applications, and for the breeding technology used to develop the plant. Considering varietal traits, on average our survey respondents were willing to pay the highest price premiums for specific offers of improvements in table grape taste and texture, followed by external appearance and expected number of chemical applications. Considering breeding methods, on average our respondents were willing to pay a small premium for table grapes developed using conventional breeding rather than gene editing (e.g., CRISPR). Results from a latent class model identify four different groups of consumers with distinct preferences for grape quality attributes and breeding technologies. The group of consumers most likely to reject gene editing considers both genetic engineering and gene editing to be breeding technologies that produce foods that are morally unacceptable and not safe to eat.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Consumer acceptance of new plant-breeding technologies: An application to the use of gene editing in fresh table grapes

et al. 2022

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“…society by doing more agricultural R&D, compared with investment opportunities normally available to them. Alston et al (2020, p. vi) argued that the totality of the considerable evidence on the size and nature of the payoffs, and the potential for future payoffs (see, e.g., Alston and Pardey, 2021) "… supports at least a doubling of the overall investment in agricultural R&D performed both in national and international agencies." Our results support a 2-to 5-fold increase in (public) R&D to mitigate fungal wheat pathogens, which at face value also implies placing a greater emphasis on reducing the risks associated with crop pests within the expanded portfolio of wheat research.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Other important investment questions involve who should pay for this increase in R&D funding, and how. Alston and Pardey ( 1996 and 2021 ) review many of the economic issues involved in these types of decisions, but from a global perspective, the bottom line is that the entire world’s wheat crop is highly vulnerable to these fungal diseases, so all the world’s wheat producers and consumers share in the benefits from dealing with these diseases. Thus, irrespective of whether the research is performed by national or international agencies, the funding is generating wheat innovations that have global collective value.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multi-peril pathogen risks to global wheat production: A probabilistic loss and investment assessment

et al. 2022

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Crop diseases cause significant food and economic losses. We examined the joint, probabilistic, long-term, bio-economic impact of five major fungal pathogens of wheat on global wheat production by combining spatialized estimates of their climate suitability with global wheat production and modeled distributions of potential crop losses. We determined that almost 90% of the global wheat area is at risk from at least one of these fungal diseases, and that the recurring losses attributable to this set of fungal diseases are upwards of 62 million tons of wheat production per year. Our high-loss regime translates to around 8.5% of the world’s wheat production on average—representing calories sufficient to feed up to 173 million people each year. We estimate that a worldwide research expenditure of $350-$974 million (2018 prices) annually on these five fungal diseases of wheat, let alone other pathogens, can be economically justified, equivalent to 2 to 5 times more than the amount we estimate is currently spent on all wheat disease-related public R&D.

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“…The second scenario ("Technical progress") simulates a varietal improvement that would compensate for the productivity gap between legumes and wheat (Magrini et al 2016) through investment in research, at least initially driven by public authorities. As pointed out by Alston & Pardey (2021), it is not easy to determine the research and development expenditure needed to obtain a given varietal improvement; therefore, the costs associated with this scenario are omitted from our computations and, as mentioned in the introduction, no normative analysis is conducted. We assume that this varietal improvement would lead, all else being equal, to an increase in yield per hectare of 25% for peas/faba beans/soya and 12.5% for fodder.…”

Section: Definition Of Scenariosmentioning

confidence: 99%

Regional Analysis of the Impact of the 2020 Health Crisis on the Private-Sector Wage Bill: Structural and Local Effects

Bedel-Mattmuller¹,

Kadiri²,

Zentz³

2022

Ecostat

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The lockdowns imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic had an unprecedented impact on people's time use. This article analyses the changes in time spent on household tasks and parenting by men and women during the lockdowns of the spring and autumn of 2020 in France, by social category, education, working arrangements and family configurations, using data from the major longitudinal EpiCov survey. The time spent on housework was high in the spring of 2020 and caring for children was particularly time consuming. This additional domestic and parental burden affected both women and men, but women continued to perform the majority of the housework, in spite of the similar working conditions between the sexes during this period. During the first lockdown, women at the top of the social hierarchy, who generally perform fewer household chores, spent far more time than usual on these tasks, thereby temporarily reducing social differences.

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The economics of agricultural innovation

Cited by 24 publications

References 160 publications

Consumer acceptance of new plant-breeding technologies: An application to the use of gene editing in fresh table grapes

Consumer acceptance of new plant-breeding technologies: An application to the use of gene editing in fresh table grapes

Multi-peril pathogen risks to global wheat production: A probabilistic loss and investment assessment

Regional Analysis of the Impact of the 2020 Health Crisis on the Private-Sector Wage Bill: Structural and Local Effects

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