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Effects of biotechnology on corn yields estimated to be 17% after allowing for confounding factors

Tuesday, June 4, 2019 18:44

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Jason Lusk and colleagues on biotechnology and corn crop yield:

Concern about declining growth in crop yields has renewed debates about the ability of biotechnology to promote food security. While numerous experimental and farm-level studies have found that adoption of genetically engineered crops has been associated with yield gains, aggregate and cross-country comparisons often seem to show little effect, raising questions about the size and generalizability of the effect.

This paper attempts to resolve this conundrum using a panel of United States county-level corn yields from 1980 to 2015 in conjunction with data on adoption of genetically engineered crops, weather, and soil characteristics. Our panel data contain just over 28,000 observations spanning roughly 800 counties.

We show that changing weather patterns confound simple analyses of trend yield, and only after controlling for weather do we find that genetically engineered crops have increased yields above trend.

There is marked heterogeneity in the effect of adoption of genetically engineered crops across location partially explained by differential soil characteristics which may be related to insect pressure. While adoption of genetically engineered crops has the potential to mitigate downside risks from weeds and insects, we find no effects of adoption on yield variability nor do we find that adoption of presently available genetically engineered crops has led to increased resilience to heat or water stress. On average, across all counties, we find adoption of GE corn was associated with a 17 percent increase in corn yield.

Source at https://www.nber.org/chapters/c13940

Heterogeneous Yield Impacts from Adoption of Genetically Engineered Corn and the Importance of Controlling for WeatherJayson L. Lusk, Jesse Tack, Nathan P. Hendricks

This chapter is a preliminary draft unless otherwise noted. It may not have been subjected to the formal review process of the NBER. This page will be updated as the chapter is revised.

Chapter in forthcoming NBER book Agricultural Productivity and Producer Behavior, Wolfram Schlenker, editor
Conference held May 11-12, 2017
Forthcoming from University of Chicago Press

Source: http://gmopundit.blogspot.com/2019/06/effects-of-biotechnlogy-on-corn-yields.html

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