Abstract
Diagnostic research is important in helping to create an enabling environment for promising biotechnology products in smallholder agriculture, before rather than afterrelease. The biotechnology products that now hold promise for poor people in Sub-Saharan Africa are those that tackle economically important, biotic or abiotic problems not easily addressed through conventional plant breeding or pest control, in crops that serve for food as well as cash, while posing little risk of endangering trade. Two biotechnology products we have selected for social science research in East Africa, Btmaize in Kenya and pest and disease resistance in the East African highland banana, meet these criteria. Preliminary research suggests that the expression of the trait is much more visible to farmers in maize than in bananas; for either crop, for different reasons, bottlenecks will be encountered in planting materials systems; and despite differing crop reproduction systems, transgenic varieties of either share the same environmental hazard of heightened genetic uniformity in the inserted trait relative to conventionally bred varieties. Aside from the performance of the technology, many factors that have incidence at national, regional, and farm levels will affect the likelihood that farmers will adopt transgenic varieties. Social science research can help pinpoint necessary complementary investments. Key words: Bananas, maize, adoption, smallholder farmers, transgenic crop varieties.
Highlights
Much public debate has revolved around the term “biotechnology.” Some contend that agricultural biotechnologies offer a better chance than conventional breeding to overcome challenges faced by smallholder farmers in Africa, including tolerance to drought or devastating pests
A third lesson from past experience is that though planting material may be neutral to the scale of the farm operation, there is typically an aspect of the technology that favors its adoption by certain social groups
Some have contended that the yield potential of successive maize seed releases in Kenya continued to rise but the rate of increase declined (Karanja, 1990); others argue that smallholder farmers are far from realizing yield potential because genetic advances have not been matched by improved agronomic practices and efficient support services for smallholders located in marginal areas (Hassan, 1998)
Summary
Much public debate has revolved around the term “biotechnology.” Some contend that agricultural biotechnologies offer a better chance than conventional breeding to overcome challenges faced by smallholder farmers in Africa, including tolerance to drought or devastating pests. A third lesson from past experience is that though planting material may be neutral to the scale of the farm operation (meaning that there is nothing inherent in the technology that implies large-scale farmers will have greater ability to use it than smallholder farmers), there is typically an aspect of the technology that favors its adoption by certain social groups. Those who fund research need to think about which investments provide the best payoffs in terms of the priorities as they have defined them, and success in the future must be gauged against a baseline. Our working hypotheses are based on research projects recently initiated by the national agricultural research programs in Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya with other local and international stakeholders, including several international agricultural research centers
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