Biotechnology offers great potential to contribute to sustainable agricultural growth, food security and poverty alleviation in developing countries. Yet there are economic and institutional constraints at national and international levels that inhibit the poor people's access to appropriate biotechnological innovations. Agricultural Biotechnology in Developing Countries: Towards Optimizing the Benefits for the Poor addresses the major constraints. Twenty-three chapters, written by a wide range of scholars and stake-holders, provide an up-to-date analysis of agricultural biotechnology developments in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Besides the expected economic and social impacts, the challenges for an adjustment of the international research structure are discussed, with a special focus on intellectual property rights and the roles of the main research organizations. Harnessing the comparative advantages of the public and private sectors through innovative partnerships is the only way forward to optimize the benefits of biotechnology for the poor. The book will be an invaluable resource for both academics and policy-makers concerned with agricultural biotechnology in context of developing-countries.

Following on from earlier titles in this series, this volume presents further material generated by the World Bank/ISNAR/Australian government biotechnology study.It covers the present status and future prospects for the application of biotechnology to solve agricultural and environmental problems in a number of developing countries. Particular focus is given on to developments that have taken place over the last decade.

This book is a compendium of knowledge, experience and insight on agriculture, biotechnology and development. Beginning with an account of GM crop adoptions and attitudes towards them, the book assesses numerous crucial processes, concluding with detai

Crop biotechnology could boost global food production in a sustainable way. However, the economic repercussions of biotechnology for developing countries are largely unknown and have been the subject of acute controversy over the last few years. This study deals with the topic and provides some preliminary empirical results. An analytical framework for the ex ante evaluation of biotechnology in smallholder agriculture is developed, which is then used within three different case studies in Kenya and Mexico. It is shown that biotechnology holds great potentials for poor agricultural producers and consumers. Yet appropriate institutional adjustments are required to capitalize on these potentials. Implications for national and international biotechnology policies are discussed.

This book deals with the technologies that make the commodification of the genetic ("fourth") resource possible and it discusses how these technologies affect agriculture, especially in developing countries

Assuring food security for the next 25 years requires meeting a number of political, social, economic, and technical challenges. One of these is the successful use of new biotechnologies in agriculture. Research in recombinant genetics and biotechnology aims to develop plant varieties that provide reliable high yields at the same or lower costs by breeding in qualities such as resistance to disease, pests, and stress factors such as aridity. Realization of these goals could lead to tremendous gains in food production. However, biotechnology is now evoking the same objections that have been raised against the Green Revolution—that its benefits are distributed inequitably in favor of the large, rich farmers and that it is potentially environmentally destructive. In this brief, Leisinger discusses the need for biotechnology and its sociopolitical ramifications and he looks at the roles played by the public and private sectors. In conclusion, the author states that biotechnology offers no silver bullet for food security — there are no silver bullets—but biotechnology is an important instrument in the difficult fight against hunger. The sociopolitical obstacles must be removed not only for the successful implementation of biotechnology, but also for an equitable and sustainable tomorrow for the world.

There are currently many controversial socioeconomic issues concerned with the development and implementation of agricultural biotechnology. This book presents selected revised and edited papers from the fourth and fifth meetings of the International Consortium on Agricultural Biotechnology Research, held in Italy in 2000 and 2001.