PG Economics: Ukraine Will Benefit from Crop Biotech

PG Economics released a report about the assessment of potential impacts of existing commercialized crop biotechnology in Ukraine. "Crop biotechnology would provide important economic and production gains, improved incomes and reduced risk for farmers in Ukraine if they were allowed to use the technology" said Graham Brookes, director of PG Economics, co-author of the report. "The environment would also improve from farmers using more benign herbicides or replacing insecticide use with insect resistant maize."

Among the key findings of the study are:

• The total potential farm level benefit of using GM technology in Ukraine is approximately $525 million per year.
• More intensive farmers may gain from the technology by reducing production costs as well as increase in yields.
• There will be a ~4-8% decrease in herbicide use which is equivalent to 0.24 million to 0.42 million kg. This will lead to a decrease in environmental impact linked to herbicide use on the area planted to GM herbicide tolerant crops between 15 and 24 percent.
• Insecticides will no longer be needed which is currently used in 100,000 ha of maize. This will further lead to reduction in pesticide application of ~23,000kg of active ingredient.