Labor-savings of HT Maize in South Africa

A study was conducted by Kansas State University researchers about the labor-savings of herbicide tolerant (HT) maize in South Africa. Data was collected during the 2009-2010 maize production season from 184 households with a total of 212 maize plots in two regions of South Africa. The researchers used an unrestricted cost function approach to assess the differences in cost between maize varieties, assuming that households use different input allocations to minimize expenditure while producing the same output. A treatment effects model used to control for selection bias showed that the entire cost advantage and more can be attributed to the herbicide tolerance technology. The model further revealed that HT maize producers have US$102.44 (30%) lower costs per maize plot. Therefore, the entire cost advantage and more can be attributed to HT maize, after isolating the effect of HT maize on total cost, by removing the lower costs attributed to HT maize from those associated with farm and farmer characteristics.

Read the research paper at http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/160521/2/Gregory%20K.%20Regier,%20Timothy%20J.%20Dalton.pdf