Adoption and Impacts of GM Crops

Abstract

While in chapter 3, potentials and risks of GM crops were discussed, this chapter takes a closer look at what we know about actual impacts in different situations. As GM crops have already been used commercially for 20 years, a large number of impact studies exist, looking at GM crop effects on farmers’ yields, pesticide use, income, poverty, and wider implications for sustainable development. I will first provide an overview of the adoption of GM crops in different parts of the world, before reviewing the evidence about impacts. Impacts can be analyzed ex post, based on actual observations, or ex ante, based on expert assumptions and simulations of likely future scenarios. In this chapter, I review ex post impact studies of already commercialized GM crops. A few ex ante studies for future GM crop applications are discussed in chapter 5.