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Insect-Resistant GM Rice in Farmers' Fields: Assessing Productivity and Health Effects in China
Jikun Huang,1*Ruifa Hu,1Scott Rozelle,2Carl Pray3
Although no country to date has released a major geneticallymodified (GM) food grain crop, China is on the threshold ofcommercializing GM rice. This paper studies two of the fourGM varieties that are now in farm-level preproduction trials,the last step before commercialization. Farm surveys of randomlyselected farm households that are cultivating the insect-resistantGM rice varieties, without the aid of experimental station technicians,demonstrate that when compared with households cultivating non-GMrice, small and poor farm households benefit from adopting GMrice by both higher crop yields and reduced use of pesticides,which also contribute to improved health.
1 Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy, Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resource Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Jia 11, Datun Road, Beijing 100101, China. 2 Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California, 1 Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA. 3 Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics, Rutgers University, 55 Dudley Road, New Brunswick, NJ 08901–8520, USA.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: jkhuang.ccap{at}igsnrr.ac.cn
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