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GM Crops: A Farmer's Dream?

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Conferring Resistance

Disease

Pest/Herbicide

Stress

Ramifications

Increased Profit Margin

Land Use

Monoculture

Poor Farmers vs.  Rich Farmers

Cultural Backlash

Conclusions

Works Cited

 

Increased Profit Margin

For farmers, the primary advantage of GM crops is the potential for increased profit.  Since most crop losses are caused by some combination of diseases, pests, herbicides, and abiotic stresses, farmers can reduce crop losses and increase yields by planting crops engineered to be resistant to those factors.  Resistance to even one cause of crop loss could allow farmers to increase annual revenue by millions of dollars.  In addition to increasing yields, some GM crops reduce the cost of production.  Pest-resistant crops, for example, greatly reduce a farmer's need for pesticide, while drought-resistant crops reduce the need for irrigation. 

Effects of GM crops on farmers' profits:

  • Diseases account for $90 billion in crop losses annually in the United States (Africa News Service, 2003). 

  • Bt cotton reduced insecticide use in India by 70% and saved farmers about $30 per hectare (Qaim and Zilberman, 2003).

  • Yearly, $32 billion is spent on traditional pesticides.  In 1997, farmers who planted Bt cotton used 300,000 fewer gallons of insecticides.  U.S. farmers planting Bt cotton realized a $40 per acre benefit; Chinese farmers have seen up to $140 an acre (Mackey and Santerre, 2000).

  • Bt cotton in the U.S. caused a reduction in average pesticide costs for farmers in 11 of 13 states studied; the pesticide cost savings ranged from $1.20 per acre to more than $32 per acre (Marra et al., 2003).

  • A recent Industry, Science, and Technology Canada report estimated that a solution to the cold-hardiness problem in winter wheat alone would generate $100 million annually in increased revenue for Canadian farmers (Functional Genomics, 2004).

  • Cotton farmers in Georgia would save an estimated $2 million a year if the water efficiency of cotton increased by a mere 10% ("Altered Genes," 2004).

  • In 2002, India exported 5,053,242 metric tons of rice worth $1,212,481,000 (FAOSTAT data, 2004).  It is estimated that 55% of India's rice-growing land is dependent on rain--over half of the land periodically loses crops to drought because farmers cannot afford to pay for irrigation (Raj, 2002).  Drought-resistant rice, then, would greatly reduce crop losses, increasing both farmers' profits and the value of India's rice trade by millions of dollars annually.


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Last modified April 2004