By David Bigman, Guide
New technologies have made production of key agricultural products. In many developed countries no longer labor intensive while in other products seasonal workers from developing countries enabled their producers in the developed countries to continue their production. This widens the productivity and income gap between developed and least developed countries. In the past two decades, agricultural production and trade have become increasingly more complex.
Both the Green and Gene Revolutions have had far reaching achievements that transformed the structure of agricultural production: They were sparked by applying the principles that govern the structure and function of DNA and genes and both made a crucial contribution to a sustainable global food security. At the same time, advances required not only changes in the methods of productions but comprehensive changes in market conditions and major adjustments of agricultural producers. The Gene Revolution is still in at its initial steps and hotly debated. In 2006 farmers in 22 countries planted transgenic seeds on about 8 percent of the global crop area. Transgenics or GMOs, use genetic engineering to transfer one or more genes to a crop plant of a different species or genus. They have been developed by the private sector for commercial interests with considerable potential techniques for improving the productivity of smallholder farming systems and providing more nutritious foods to poor consumers. Blunting the promise of this biotechnology are controversies over possible environmental and health risks as well as political factors.
Developing countries have been adopting transgenics since 1996, but their use are limited. Transgenic food crops, in contrast, have been adopted by a relatively small number of smallholders in the developing world even though many of these technologies promise substantial benefits to poor producers and consumers. Pro-poor investments in these technologies by the public sector for food crops have been rather meager and the CGIAR spends only 8 percent of its budget on biotechnology. In contrast and have much larger public biotechnology programs, and together their expenditures are at least 10 times than the CGIAR, and the four largest private companies make far larger investments of around $1.5 billion annually. Another reason for the relatively low investments is the concern about food safety and environmental risks. Finally there are concerns about the capacity of regulatory bodies to assess environmental and food safety-risks and approve the release of transgenics in most countries.
Trade in agricultural commodities also requires rapid exchange of information, advanced communication methods, experienced management and good connections to the global supply chains; food safety standards often form high non-tariff trade barriers that require farmers to adopt more advanced and expensive production methods, follow the changes in standards that their trading partners plan to implement and may therefore restrict their trade in the future. These factors are impacting agricultural production in both developed and developing countries.
