The Adoption and Impact of Agricultural Biotechnology in South Africa

Abstract

Various biotechnology innovations have partly been responsible for the changes in much of the input industry in South Africa just like it happened in Europe and the US. South Africa is one of the few developing countries and probably the only one in Africa that has adopted some new biotechnology inputs - largely maize and cotton seeds. South Africa also has a number of active biotechnology research programmes and the chapter will also highlight those briefly. This chapter starts with an overview of the structure of the South African agricultural input industry and shows the changes in the industry in response to some of the innovations in the agricultural input industry more specifically that of biotechnology. It then discusses the adoption of the new biotech cultivars of maize and cotton amongst farmers in South Africa. The chapter concludes with one of the first preliminary analyses of the economic and environmental impact emanating from the adoption of these two biotechnology inputs.