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Contact:
Leonard Gianessi October 20, 2000
202-328-5036
Janet Carpenter
202-328-5044
Press Release
Bt CROP BENEFITS EVEN GREATER THAN REPORTED, EXPERT SAYS
Actual Annual Savings Could Exceed $500 Million Says Gianessi
WASHINGTON, October 20, 2000 . Benefits from Bt crops protected against insects are likely to in fact be much greater than the $100 million reported by federal regulators earlier this year, a Washington think tank said today.
Leonard Gianessi, senior research associate at the National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy, offered this assessment to an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Science Advisory Panel reviewing EPA. s analysis for re-registration of crops protected against insect pests. Gianessi. s 1999 analysis of benefits was one of the sources used by EPA.
"Both EPA. s and our analysis have been selling the value of Bt corn short," Gianessi said. "In fact, because the EPA estimate is based solely on 1999 data, a year that featured both low corn prices and low insect pressure, actual aggregate savings could easily exceed $500 million in other years."
"One benefit measure that EPA does not include in its report is a measure of the increase in production that has occurred as a result of planting Bt crops," he said.
"We estimated that the U.S. produced an extra 60 million bushels (or 4 billion pounds) of corn in 1998 by planting Bt corn and preventing damage from the European corn borer," he said. "And this took place in year with relatively light infestation.
"Cotton growers produced an extra 85 million pounds of cotton as a result of planting Bt cotton to control insect pests," Gianessi said.
Gianessi said he agreed with EPA. s favorable assessment of insect-protected corn on it. s key points:
- There has been a measurable reduction in the use of insecticides in field corn and cotton following the widespread planting of the Bt crops.
- The economic benefits to corn farmers of planting Bt corn has been depressed because of low corn
prices and because corn borer populations have been low the past few years.
- Cotton farmers consistently have benefited economically from planting Bt cotton because of higher yields and lower insecticide costs.
"My assessment is that a more refined methodology is likely to produce higher values for the yield advantage of Bt corn," Gianessi said.
"My hypothesis is that growers are planting Bt corn in areas where the European corn borer presence is higher and they are planting the highest-yielding hybrids. The use of averages across all varieties and across all regions pulls down the aggregate values," he said.
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The National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy is a private non-profit research group located in Washington, DC.
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