38 CHAPTER 1


increase–induced injection into the economy of ZAR3.67 billion over 9 years. To put this amount into context, over the past 10 years the South African Government has, through the platforms and initiatives created under the National Biotechnology Strategy (Republic of South Africa, Department of Science and Technology 2001), invested about ZAR900 million (Hanekom 2010) in biotechnology research and development.


Conclusion


Benefiting from a strong research background, South Africa was able to pro- actively develop guidelines and later legislation and regulations on the devel- opment and use of modern biotechnology and its applications such as GM crops. Development and implementation of a relatively dynamic GMO legisla- tion and underlying regulations have enabled South African farmers—and, to a lesser extent, consumers, through maize meal prices and health aspects (see Chapter 2)—to benefit from the first wave of GM crops. Solely based on the high adoption levels of especially Bt cotton and maize


by large-scale farmers, in the presence of available and less-expensive conven- tional seed varieties (including near isolines), it is possible to conclude that farmers benefited. Some peer-reviewed studies have shown that like large- scale farmers, smallholder cotton and maize farmers have also benefited, mainly through savings on insecticide applications and limitation of the dam- age caused by bollworms and stem borers. Whereas Bt cotton saw a near 100 percent smallholder adoption rate in only


a couple of years, adoption of Bt maize has been limited. There are a number of reasons for this: in a vertically integrated production system where the input supplier also ensures an output market, adoption of a (early season) more expen- sive but productivity-increasing technology makes sense. However, smallholder maize farmers have to fund production inputs, and as many only produce on a subsistence level (in many cases surplus production depends on the season’s rain- fall), farmers are unable to directly recover their input expenditures. Contrary to cotton, for which bollworm pressure and damage seems to be more constant and severe, stem borer infestation levels (especially on dryland maize) vary signifi- cantly from season to season and across areas, and the damage level is generally lower than with cotton. Though very few smallholder maize farmers apply an insecticide to control stem borers on maize, the amount of labor and chemicals required to control borers is far less than what is required to control bollworms on cotton. Another factor that is sometimes not taken into consideration, espe- cially in the South African context, is that smallholder maize farmers’ reasons


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