Revisiting multi-stage models for upstream technology adoption: Evidence from rapid generation advance in rice breeding

Adoption of new plant varieties has played a significant role in eradicating global hunger. Previous research has mainly focused on farmer adoption and impact of new crop varieties, although upstream adoption of technologies in plant breeding can generate substantial multiplier effects on downstream impacts. This study moves upstream in the innovation system to generate policy advice on adoption and transfer of accelerated rice breeding technologies. More specifically, we assess the determinants of global adoption of rapid generation advance (RGA) through a sample of 158 rice breeders operating in various research institutes worldwide. Moving upstream in the innovation system has important theoretical and empirical implications due to the smaller number of decision-making units in the adoption process and the increasing role of institutional and managerial factors that may overrule individual adoption motivations. We revisit multi-stage models and devise the most robust estimation method that can be used in this situation. To generate insights on the impact of individual versus institutional adopter characteristics on upstream technology adoption, we juxtapose the response curves of the determinants of RGA adoption in rice breeding among alternative adoption stages, levels of conditionality and model specifications. Our findings confirm the importance of institutional and managerial factors and suggest that adoption and transfer of breeding technologies require breeding institutes to provide an enabling environment in which breeders are encouraged to take risks and are given sufficient freedom to experiment with and implement new technologies.

Global survey data on rice breeders' characteristics and willingness to adopt alternative breeding methods

The data presented in this article contains information on 189 rice breeders from 51 rice-growing countries around the world. Firstly, this unique dataset permits to lay down a baseline of currently used breeding methods. Secondly, the data allow to make an assessment of the adoption behavior of rice breeders towards alternative breeding methods, and in specific rapid generation advance. A global online survey in Google Forms was conducted to obtain information about the different aspects of the adoption process. Both the raw and cleaned data are made available, along with Stata code to promote further research into adoption of breeding methods by public and private breeding institutes.

Response to a selection index including environmental costs and risk preferences of producers

Genetic improvement of animals plays an important role in improving the economic and environmental sustainability of livestock production systems. This paper proposes a method to incorporate mitigation of environmental impacts and risk preferences of producers into a breeding objective via economic values (EVs). The paper assesses the effects of using these alternative EVs of breeding goal traits on discounted economic response to selection and on environmental impacts at commercial farm level. The application focuses on a Brazilian pig production system. Separate dam- and sire-line breeding programs that supply parents in a 3-tier production system for producing crossbreds (fattening pigs) at commercial level were assumed. Using EVs that are derived from utility functions by incorporating risk aversion increases the cumulative discounted economic response to selection in sire-line selection (6%) while reducing response in dam-line selection (12%) compared with the use of traditional EVs. The use of EVs that include environmental costs increases the cumulative discounted social response to selection in both dam-line (5%) and sire-line (10%) selections. Emission of greenhouse gases, and excretion of nitrogen and phosphorus can be reduced more with genetic improvements of production traits than reproduction traits for the typical Brazilian farrow-to-finish pig farm. Reductions in environmental impacts do not, however, depend on the use of the different EVs (i.e., with and without taking into account environmental costs and risk). Both environmental costs and risk preferences of producers need to be considered in sire-line selection, and only environmental costs in dam-line selection to improve, at the same time, the economic and environmental sustainability of the Brazilian pig production system.

Global impact of accelerated plant breeding: Evidence from a meta-analysis on rice breeding

Rice breeders in Asia and elsewhere in the world have long overlooked trying to shorten the time it takes to develop new varieties. Plant breeders have proposed a technique called Rapid Generation Advance (RGA) as a way to accelerate the results of public rice breeding programs. However, little is known about RGA's potential impact. Here, we present the first results of a global impact study of RGA. More specifically, we calculated the multiplicator effects of RGA on the research benefits generated by conventional rice breeding programs and applied them to a meta-analysis of selected impact studies in the literature. These insights are a first crucial step in developing a targeted approach for disseminating RGA technology among rice breeders to accelerate the impact of their public rice breeding programs around the world. We show that the additional benefits due to time savings are considerable and offer some insights into the economics of breeding. Our results confirm that the adoption of accelerated breeding would lead to substantial advantages to rice breeding programs and the earlier variety release leads to significant economic benefits to society. This can be important to policy makers when reshaping their public breeding methods and optimising their return on research investments in breeding.

Measuring and explaining multi-directional inefficiency in the Malaysian dairy industry

PURPOSE

The purpose of this paper is to measure the technical inefficiency of dairy farms and subsequently investigate the factors affecting technical inefficiency in the Malaysian dairy industry.

DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH

This study uses multi-directional efficiency analysis to measure the technical inefficiency scores on a sample of 200 farm observations and single-bootstrap truncated regression model to define factors affecting technical inefficiency.

FINDINGS

Managerial and program inefficiency scores are presented for intensive and semi-intensive production systems. The results reveal marked differences in the inefficiency scores across inputs and between production systems.

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

Intensive systems generally have lowest managerial and program inefficiency scores in the Malaysian dairy farming sector. Policy makers could use this information to advise dairy farmers to convert their farming system to the intensive system.

SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS

The results suggest that the Malaysian Government should redefine its policy for providing farm finance and should target young farmers when designing training and extension programs in order to improve the performance of the dairy sector.

ORIGINALITY/VALUE

The existing literature on Southeast Asian dairy farming has neither focused on investigating input-specific efficiency nor on comparing managerial and program efficiency. This paper aims to fill this gap.