Zambrano Patricia, Wood-Sichra Ulrike, Ruhinduka Remidius D, Phillip Dayo, Nin Pratt Alejandro, Komen John, Kikulwe Enoch Mutebi, Falck Zepeda José, Dzanku Fred M, Chambers Judith A
International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, DC, United States.
Independent Researcher, Krems, Austria.
Front Plant Sci. 2022 Jun 23;13:825930. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2022.825930. eCollection 2022.
An enabling, evidence-based decision-making framework is critical to support agricultural biotechnology innovation, and to ensure farmers' access to genetically modified (GM) crops, including orphan crop varieties. A key element, and often a challenge in the decision-making process, involves the balancing of identified potential risks with expected economic benefits from GM crops. The latter is particularly challenging in the case of orphan crops, for which solid economic data is scarce. To address this challenge, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in collaboration with local economists analyzed the expected economic benefits to farmers and consumers from the adoption of GM crops in 5 sub-Saharan African countries. This paper focuses on case studies involving insect-resistant cowpea in Nigeria and Ghana; disease-resistant cassava in Uganda and Tanzania; and disease-resistant banana in Uganda. Estimations from these case studies show substantial economic benefits to farmers and consumers from the timely adoption and planting in farmers' fields of GM orphan crops. Our analysis also shows how the benefits would significantly be reduced by regulatory or other delays that affect the timely release of these crops. These findings underscore the importance of having an enabling policy environment and regulatory system-covering, among other elements, biosafety and food/feed safety assessment, and varietal release registration-that is efficient, predictable, and transparent to ensure that the projected economic benefits are delivered and realized in a timely manner.
一个有利的、基于证据的决策框架对于支持农业生物技术创新以及确保农民能够获得转基因作物（包括小众作物品种）至关重要。一个关键要素，且往往是决策过程中的一项挑战，涉及到在已识别的潜在风险与转基因作物预期经济效益之间进行权衡。对于小众作物而言，这一挑战尤为艰巨，因为可靠的经济数据十分匮乏。为应对这一挑战，国际粮食政策研究所（IFPRI）与当地经济学家合作，分析了撒哈拉以南非洲5个国家采用转基因作物给农民和消费者带来的预期经济效益。本文重点关注尼日利亚和加纳抗虫豇豆、乌干达和坦桑尼亚抗病木薯以及乌干达抗病香蕉的案例研究。这些案例研究的估算结果表明，及时采用转基因小众作物并在农民田间种植，会给农民和消费者带来巨大的经济效益。我们的分析还表明，监管或其他方面的延误影响这些作物及时投放市场，会使效益大幅降低。这些研究结果凸显了营造有利的政策环境和监管体系的重要性，该体系除其他要素外，还涵盖生物安全和食品/饲料安全评估以及品种投放登记，要高效、可预测且透明，以确保预期的经济效益能够及时实现。
