[PDF] Biosafety Of Gm Crops In Kenya Uganda And Tanzania eBook

Author : Judith A. Chambers
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 41 pages
File Size : 32,53 MB
Release : 2013-12-11
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1442228067

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This report outlines the status of biotechnology regulatory structures in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, with a focus on regulation of genetically modified (GM) crops. Effective regulatory structures are important for the approval and use of agricultural technology. As technologies become more sophisticated, so too must regulatory structures and risk assessment frameworks. This paper provides a detailed analysis of the biotechnology regulatory structures in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda; outlines the current status of each country’s biotechnology regulatory structures; and evaluates to what extent the status of each of these countries’ regulatory structures permit and/or impede GM adoption. Finally, the paper examines potential areas for regulatory harmonization between these countries at a regional level.

Author : Kristin Wedding
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 40 pages
File Size : 46,48 MB
Release : 2013-10-16
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1442227885

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This report provides an overview of the debate in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda over genetically modified (GM) crops and their potential role in improving food security among smallholder farmers. Specifically, in each country, it examines regulatory structures, science and research capacity, communication and public opinion, the views of smallholder farmers, and the forecast for adoption of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Additionally, it examines regional regulatory efforts and potential trade impacts. Finally, the report provides a set of policy recommendations targeted toward the U.S. government, focus country governments, the donor community, and nongovernmental organizations.

Author : John Komen
Publisher : Center For Strategic & International Studies
Page : 38 pages
File Size : 25,63 MB
Release : 2013-05-03
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1442224762

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Agricultural biotechnology holds great promise in contributing to Africa’s socioeconomic development. This is confirmed by a growing body of literature analyzing the positive economic effects at the farm level, and also for a growing number of farmers in Africa. However, with the exception of Burkina Faso, Egypt, and South Africa, the African countries have been slow adopters of biotechnology crops for cultivation. Trade concerns are often cited in sub-Saharan Africa as a reason for taking a precautionary approach to genetically modified (GM) crop adoption, which may result in forgone benefits for farmers and society at large and have a negative impact on a country’s food security situation. This study aims to evaluate the barriers that the adoption of GM crops by the East African countries poses for their trade with neighboring countries, with their other trade partners in Africa, and with their international trade partners. It is based on a literature review of recent studies analyzing the actual and potential trade implications of adopting GM crops, with a particular focus on the East African countries. This literature review is complemented by an analysis of recent agricultural trade statistics. In addition, the perspectives of key stakeholders and policymakers in East Africa have been included vis-à-vis the trade implications of adopting GM crops.

Author : Falck-Zepeda, José Benjamin
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Page : 266 pages
File Size : 28,18 MB
Release : 2013-10-02
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0896297950

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A variable climate, political instability, and other constraints have limited agricultural development in African countries south of the Sahara. Genetically modified (GM) crops are one tool for enhancing agricultural productivity and food security despite such constraints. Genetically Modified Crops in Africa: Economic and Policy Lessons from Countries South of the Sahara investigates how this tool might be effectively used by evaluating the benefits, costs, and risks for African countries of adopting GM crops. The authors gather together studies on GM crops’ economic effects and impact on trade, how consumers view such crops, and other issues. They find that GM crops have had, on average, a positive economic effect in the nations where they were used and identify future steps for enhancing GM crop adoption’s positive effects. Promising policy initiatives include making biosafety regulations that do not make GM crop development prohibitively expensive, fostering intraregional trade in GM crops, and providing more and better information about GM crops to consumers who might currently be skeptical of them. These and other findings in Genetically Modified Crops in Africa indicate ways biotechnology can contribute to economic development in Africa south of the Sahara.

Author : Chambers, Judith A.
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Page : 146 pages
File Size : 33,14 MB
Release : 2014-09-29
Category : Social Science
ISBN :

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The African Development Bank (AfDB), in commissioning this report to be prepared by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), highlighted the need for a comprehensive, evidenced-based review of agricultural biotechnology in order to better understand its current status, issues, constraints, and opportunities for Africa. Agricultural biotechnology comprises several scientific techniques (genetic engineering, molecular marker-assisted breeding, the use of molecular diagnostics and vaccines, and tissue cul­ture) that are used to improve plants, animals, and microorganisms. However, in prepar­ing this desktop analysis, IFPRI has focused on genetic modification (GM) technologies in particular and on the agricultural context in which they are being applied, because GM technologies are at the center of the controversy about biotechnology’s role in Africa. In addition, because we have attempted to focus our review on peer-reviewed evidence and documented examples, the preponderance of data presented in the report is focused on genetically modified (also abbreviated GM) crops in use and under development, although we recognize the potential of the technology for livestock, fisheries, and forestry.

Author : Horna, Daniela
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Page : 234 pages
File Size : 44,85 MB
Release : 2013-09-23
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 089629207X

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Despite the ongoing controversy over their use, genetically modified (GM) crops have progressively grown in popularity and are now planted in approximately 160 million hectares in 29 countries. In the discussions of biosafety regulations for GM crops and whether to approve such crops for commercialization, many countries, including some African nations, have gone beyond environmental assessments and are now introducing socioeconomic considerations as part of their decisionmaking process. There are, however, very few guidelines on how to ensure that this inclusion of socioeconomic considerations results in a robust and efficient decisionmaking process. Socioeconomic Considerations in Biosafety Decisionmaking: Methods and Implementation provides guidance to professionals involved in assessing the ex ante impact of a GM crop in the context of an approval process. Using the case of GM cotton in Uganda, the authors illustrate the evaluation of socioeconomic impact on farmers, the national economy, and trade. The authors identify three crucial steps in making socioeconomic assessment part of a biosafety regulatory process, decisionmaking process, or both. First, select appropriate research tools and methods that yield robust results but that also take into account time and budget constraints. Second, evaluate the institutional setting of GM technology deployment. Third, allow for the uncertainties inherent in the assessment by using ranges of values for the parameters under evaluation, including yield, technology efficiency, and prices. These and other conclusions should provide useful guidance to policymakers and development researchers in countries that opt to incorporate socioeconomic considerations into their biosafety regulations, as well as their decisionmaking process for GM crop approval.

Author : Matthew A. Schnurr
Publisher : McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Page : 277 pages
File Size : 43,87 MB
Release : 2019-11-07
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0228000459

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As development donors invest hundreds of millions of dollars into improved crops designed to alleviate poverty and hunger, Africa has emerged as the final frontier in the global debate over agricultural biotechnology. The first data-driven assessment of the ecological, social, and political factors that shape our understanding of genetic modification, Africa's Gene Revolution surveys twenty years of efforts to use genomics-based breeding to enhance yields and livelihoods for African farmers. Matthew Schnurr considers the full range of biotechnologies currently in commercial use and those in development - including hybrids, marker-assisted breeding, tissue culture, and genetic engineering. Drawing on interviews with biotechnology experts alongside research conducted with more than two hundred farmers across eastern, western, and southern Africa, Schnurr reveals a profound incongruity between the optimistic rhetoric that accompanies genetic modification technology and the realities of the smallholder farmers who are its intended beneficiaries. Through the lens of political ecology, this book demonstrates that the current emphasis on improved seeds discounts the geographic, social, ecological, and economic contexts in which the producers of these crops operate. Bringing the voices of farmers to the foreground of this polarizing debate, Africa's Gene Revolution contends that meaningful change will come from a reconfiguration not only of the plant's genome, but of the entire agricultural system.

Author : Florence Wambugu
Publisher : Springer
Page : 285 pages
File Size : 37,7 MB
Release : 2014-05-10
Category : Science
ISBN : 3319040014

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In this book, Florence Wambugu and Daniel Kamanga of Africa Harvest Biotech Foundation International bring together expert African authorities to critique various biotechnology initiatives and project future developments in the field in Africa. For the first time, African voices from multidisciplinary fields as diverse as economics, agriculture, biotechnology, law, politics and academia, demand to be allowed to set the continent’s biotech development agenda. This book argues that there is a great future for biotechnology in Africa which sidesteps western interests that do not match those of the local populace. In these diverse chapters, Africa’s political and scientific leaders demand a greater say in how research and development funds are allocated and spent. They argue that Africa’s political leaders must see both clear benefits and have elbow-room to drive the change required. This is the way that African governments can employ workable policies, suitable biosafety legislation and regulation and respond effectively to public-private partnerships. Wambugu and Kamanga show that biotechnology has the potential to improve food security and standard of living as well as mitigate the detrimental effects of climate change on the African continent.