Biotech crops not only bring food on the table. They put money in farmers’ pockets too.
The farm level economic benefit of planting biotech corn in the Philippines reached $264.5 million from 2003 to 2011, according to the International Service for the Acquisiton of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA); it estimates that for 2011 alone, the net national impact of biotech corn on farm income was $93.6 million.
ISAAA cites several sources enumerating the economic benefits of planting biotech corn.
The gain in profit at the farmer level is P10,132 per hectare for farmers planting biotech corn with a corresponding savings of P168 per hectare in insecticide costs, according to a 2006 study by Dr. Jose Yorobe and Dr. Cesar Quicoy of the College of Economics and Management, University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB).
The additional farm income from biotech corn was P7,482 per hectare during the dry season and P7,080 per hectare during the wet season of the 2003-2004 crop year, according to a socioeconomic impact study conducted in 2005 by SIKAP/STRIVE Foundation, an organization in Los Baños that conducts studies on issues affecting agricultural policy.
Using data from the 2004-2005 crop year, SIKAP/STRIVE estimated in 2007 that biotech corn could provide an overall income advantage that ranged from 5 to 14 percent during the wet season and 20 to 48 percent during the dry season.
In a 2009 study covering crop year 2007-2008, SIKAP/STRIVE determined that biotech corn increased average net profitability in nine provinces by 4 to 7 percent during the wet season and 3 to 9 percent during the dry season.
The ISAAA report observes that the projected benefits from other biotech crops nearing commercialization, such as the Golden Rice, could be higher than corn.
Golden Rice could earn $88 million per year, as Dr. R. Zimmermann and M. Qaim of the International Rice Research Institute estimated in a 2004 study. The benefits from Golden Rice are derived from gains due to reduced mortality and reduced disability caused by Vitamin A deficiency. [SciPhil]
The benefits from biotech eggplant are projected at almost P9 million, according to Dr. Sergio Francisco who was the Chief Science Research Specialist at the Philippine Rice Research Institute when he made a study on biotech eggplant in 2007. [SciPhil]
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