Raney Terri
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Viale delle Terme di Caracalla, 00100 Rome, Italy.
Curr Opin Biotechnol. 2006 Apr;17(2):174-8. doi: 10.1016/j.copbio.2006.02.009. Epub 2006 Mar 7.
Transgenic crops are being adopted rapidly at the global level, but only a few developing countries are growing them in significant quantities. Why are these crops so successful in some countries but not in others? Farm level profitability ultimately determines whether farmers adopt and retain a new technology, but this depends on much more than technical performance. Recent economic studies in developing countries find positive, but highly variable, economic returns to adopting transgenic crops. These studies confirm that institutional factors such as national agricultural research capacity, environmental and food safety regulations, intellectual property rights and agricultural input markets matter at least as much as the technology itself in determining the level and distribution of economic benefits.
转基因作物正在全球范围内迅速被采用，但只有少数发展中国家大量种植。为什么这些作物在一些国家如此成功，而在其他国家却不然？农场层面的盈利能力最终决定了农民是否采用并保留一项新技术，但这取决于的因素远不止技术性能。发展中国家最近的经济研究发现，采用转基因作物会带来积极但差异很大的经济回报。这些研究证实，诸如国家农业研究能力、环境和食品安全法规、知识产权以及农业投入市场等制度因素，在决定经济利益的水平和分配方面，至少与技术本身同样重要。
