TY  - JOUR
AU  - Sexton, Steven
AU  - Zilberman, David
TI  - How Agricultural Biotechnology Boosts Food Supply and Accomodates Biofuels
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 16699
PY  - 2011
Y2  - January 2011
DO  - 10.3386/w16699
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w16699
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w16699.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Steven E. Sexton
Sanford School of Public Policy
201 Science Drive, 184 Rubinstein Hall
Duke University
Durham, NC 27708
E-Mail: steven.sexton@duke.edu

David Zilberman
Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics
207 Giannini Hall, #3310
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720-3310
Tel: 510-642-6570
Fax: 510-643-8911
E-Mail: zilber11@berkeley.edu
M1  - published as Steven Sexton, David Zilberman. "Land for Food and Fuel Production: The Role of Agricultural Biotechnology," in Joshua S. Graff Zivin and Jeffrey M. Perloff, editors, "The Intended and Unintended Effects of U.S. Agricultural and Biotechnology Policies" University of Chicago Press (2012)

M3  - presented at "Agricultural Economics Conference", March 4-5, 2010
AB  - Increased global demand for biofuels is placing increased pressure on agricultural systems at a time when traditional sources of yield improvements have been mostly exhausted, generating concerns about the future of food prices.  This paper estimates the impact of global adoption of genetically engineered (GE) seeds on food supply by exploiting the spatial and temporal variation in the adoption of GE crops to identify the average yield effect due to GE technologies among adopters. The yield gains range from 65% for GE cotton to 12.4% for soybeans and appear to be higher in the developing world than in developed countries. The authors simulate food prices during the 2008 food crisis without GE-seed-induced yield gains. Genetically engineered crops appear to play an important role in arbitrating tensions between energy production, environmental protection, and global food supplies.
ER  -