Abstract
This paper empirically investigates how the productivity of pesticide differs in Bt versus non-Bt technology for South African cotton smallholders, and what the implications for pesticide use levels are in the two technologies. This is accomplished by applying a damage control framework to farm-level data from Makhathini flats, KwaZulu-Natal. Contrary to findings elsewhere, notably China, that farmers over-use pesticides and that transgenic technology benefits farmers by enabling large reductions in pesticide use, the econometric evidence here indicates that non-Bt smallholders in South Africa under-use pesticide. Thus, the main potential contribution of the new technology is to enable them to realise lost productivity resulting from under-use. By providing a natural substitute for pesticide, the Bt technology enables the smallholders to circumvent credit and labour constraints associated with pesticide application. Thus, the same technology that greatly reduces pesticide applications but only mildly affects yields, when used by large-scale farmers in China and elsewhere, benefits South-African smallholder farmers primarily via a yield-enhancing effect.
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The text the model read, with the source record’s inline markup (italics, sub- and superscripts) rendered and its character entities decoded; quote offsets refer to the raw text.
Claims 3
Claim · model-written summary
Non-Bt South African cotton smallholders underuse pesticide.
- Taxon
- Cotton
Gossypium hirsutumt0 - Material
- non-Bte0
- Outcome
- under-use pesticidee0
- Setting
- South Africae0
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“the econometric evidence here indicates that non-Bt smallholders in South Africa under-use pesticide”
t0“Transgenic Cotton Technology”
Claim · model-written summary
Bt technology can substitute for pesticide and help smallholders avoid credit and labour constraints of pesticide use.
- Taxon
- CottonGossypium hirsutumt0
- Treatment
- Bt technologye0
- Outcome
- circumvent credit and labour constraintse0
- Qualifier
- natural substitute for pesticidee0
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“By providing a natural substitute for pesticide, the Bt technology enables the smallholders to circumvent credit and labour constraints associated with pesticide application”
t0“Transgenic Cotton Technology”
Claim · model-written summary
Bt technology primarily benefits South African smallholder cotton farmers by enhancing yield.
- Taxon
- CottonGossypium hirsutumt0
- Treatment
- Bt technologyt0
- Outcome
- yield-enhancing effecte0
- Direction
- yield-enhancinge0
- Setting
- South-Africane0
Not reportedComparator
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“benefits South-African smallholder farmers primarily via a yield-enhancing effect”
t0“Bt versus non-Bt technology for South African cotton smallholders”
The same questions in other papers
transgenic · yield · Gossypium hirsutum (cotton)Positive and negative results
73 papers in the same direction as this paper · 4 in the opposite direction
- no effect
- positive
- positive
74 papers more in this group
See all 78 papers →Claims are grouped by organism, treatment and what was measured or targeted. A paper counts as positive when any of its claims in the group is positive.