Which farmers benefit the most from Bt corn adoption? Estimating heterogeneity effects in the Philippines

Abstract

The potential contributions of new biotechnologies to sustainable food and income security have been the subject of widespread discussions around the turn of the 21st century. But distributional issues of which segments of adopters of genetically modified (GM) crops benefit the most have not been given ample attention). Using propensity scores, we apply the (a) stratification-multilevel method of estimating heterogeneous treatment effects; and the (b) matching-smoothing method of estimating heterogeneous treatment effects proposed by Xie et al. We find that the incidence of higher yields, lower insecticide use, and reduced seed utilization in the Philippines diminishes progressively as a farmer's propensity to adopt Bt corn increases. Farmers with a low propensity to adopt Bt are those who farm smaller, nonirrigated farms located farther from seed suppliers and farmers without previous training on pest identification. In most cases, while these farmers are typically poorer farmers in smaller parcels, cannot afford irrigation and are situated in remote areas away from easily accessible seed suppliers, there is no evidence, however, that profits differ across farmers with varying propensities to adopt the Bt variety.JEL classifications: Q10, Q12, Q16

Can Agricultural Cooperatives Reduce Poverty? Heterogeneous Impact of Cooperative Membership on Farmers' Welfare in Rwanda

“…Third, we analyze how the estimated income and poverty effects of cooperative membership differ across farmers. We apply methods 5 proposed by Abebaw and Haile (2013), Bernard et al (2008), and Mutuc et al (2013). We calculate the average treatment effect on the treated (ATT), which measures the impact of cooperative membership on farm income and poverty for actual cooperative members only:…”

“…. Our method, inspired byAbebaw and Haile (2013),Bernard et al (2008) andMutuc et al (2013) has the advantage that non-linearities can be revealed by looking at the whole distribution of the treatment effects.…”

Social Impacts of GM Crops in Agriculture: A Systematic Literature Review

“…At the farm level, the distributional impacts studied concerned mainly how adoption and economic benefits are distributed among farmers in different income groups or, more rarely, in relation to gender. Mutuc et al [61] presented results from the Philippines showing that poorer farmers without access to irrigation and living further away from formal seed suppliers are less inclined to adopt Bt maize. However, in another study from the Philippines, Sanglestsawai et al [62] showed that if they can adopt Bt maize, lower-yielding farmers, who also tend to be the poorest, experience higher yield increases than farmers with higher yields before Bt maize adoption.…”

Overview of the agricultural modernization in Southeast Asia

“…In EA, China reached a 90% adoption rate in 1992 (Morris 1998), and many SEA countries are catching up since 1990 ( Figure 3). In the Philippines, Bt-maize varieties have also been spreading, from 1% in 2002 to 13% in and 19% in 2009(Mutuc et al 2013. As is shown below, maize is increasingly becoming an important source of fodders for the growing livestock sector in SEA.…”