Robert Paarlberg

Harvard University | Harvard · Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

Achieving the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will require additional innovation investments and increased adoption of resulting technologies. This will be particularly important for improving food security, crop nutrient availability, and sustainability. This article presents some of the global costs of not adopting geneti...

With its new Farm to Fork (F2F) strategy, the EU plans to expand organic farming, an approach that rules out both synthetic chemicals and modern biotechnology, and it intends to use trade and assistance policies to pursue this strategy not just at home but also through Green Alliances abroad. The United States, by contrast, is emphasizing agricultu...

Objectives: To estimate the health impact and cost-effectiveness of a national penny-per-ounce sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) tax, overall and with stratified costs and benefits for 9 distinct stakeholder groups. Methods: We used a validated microsimulation model (CVD PREDICT) to estimate cardiovascular disease reductions, quality-adjusted life...

Participants in SNAP have always been allowed to use their taxpayer-funded benefit to purchase Sugar Sweetened Beverages (SSBs). Despite an acute public health crisis surrounding the consumption of unhealthy products including SSBs, especially among the low-income citizens who also qualify for SNAP benefits, this policy has yet to be changed. Inter...

Introduction: Taxes on sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) purchases have emerged as a policy tool to lower obesity, diabetes and CVD risks. Prior cost-effectiveness analyses included SSB tax administration costs yet ignored tax payments as mere transfers from a societal perspective. Yet, tax payments could count as revenues for the government and as co...

Taxes to reduce the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) such as soda drinks have been endorsed by the World Health Organization and are now in place in France, Hungary, and Mexico, and scheduled for Portugal, South Africa, and Great Britain. Such taxes have so far been impossible to enact in the United States at the state or federal lev...

The political economy of agricultural biotechnology is addressed in this review through three puzzles. First, why were new crop technologies of the Green Revolution readily accepted, versus today's considerable blockage of genetically engineered crops? Second, why has genetic engineering in medicine and pharmaceuticals been normalized, whereas reco...

Genetically engineered agricultural crops are widely grown for animal feed (yellow corn, soybean meal) and for industrial purposes (such as cotton for fabric, or yellow corn for ethanol), but almost nobody grows GMO food staple crops. The only GMO food staple crop planted anywhere is white maize, and only in one country - the Republic of South Afri...

The International Consortium on Applied Bioeconomy Research (ICABR) held its 15th annual conference near Rome, Italy in June 2011. The theme of the conference was sustainability, and this topic was addressed through numerous presentations from academia, government, and industry. Numerous presentations from developing countries highlighted the adopt...

There is a scientific consensus, even in Europe, that the GMO foods and crops currently on the market have brought no documented new risks either to human health or to the environment. Europe has decided to stifle the use of this new technology, not because of the presence of risks, but because of the absence so far of direct benefits to most Europ...

The International Consortium on Agricultural Biotechnology Research held its 13th annual conference in Ravello, Italy in June 2009. The theme of the conference was the bioeconomy,and this topic was addressed through research presentations from academia, government, and industry. Numerous presentations from developing countries highlighted the benef...

Market failure for nutritional attributes of foods leads to underinvestment in crop breeding to enhance nutritional content of foods. As awareness of the importance of micronutrient deficiencies in the diets of poor people has grown, public investments in research to create biofortified staple crops have increased. The potential for this new approa...

This article first examines the political response to two crops that were nutritionally enhanced through conventional breeding - Quality Protein Maize (QPM) and orange-fleshed sweet potatoes. In the next section, the political response to food crops - maize, potato, and papaya - which have improved agronomic traits through genetic engineering is de...

The introduction of novel foods and crops into the developing world triggers different reactions from different political actors. Quite often, the patterns of response in developing countries run parallel to policy debates in rich countries, reflecting the close relationships that still can be found between government ministries, companies, and NGO...

A hypothetical scheme is offered for predicting which biofortified food technologies will enjoy greatest political support or opposition and from which actors on the political landscape. Beyond political support, benefits to nutrition from biofortified crops will also require acceptance by both farmers and consumers, as well as adequate nutrient up...

What risks might Africa face if it decided to plant genetically modified (GM) agricultural crops? A rough calculation based on current export profiles for one sampling of eastern and southern African countries suggests that the commercial export risks incurred outside of Africa would be quite small. Most of Africa's exports of goods that might be c...

It was fashionable during the 1972 to 1975 period of global food scarcity to describe food as an invaluable instrument of diplomacy, particularly for the United States. The US Secretary of Agriculture argued that food had become one of the most useful tools in our diplomatic kit. The case has been weakened by the return of the world food market, af...

"IFPRI, traditionally a centralized development organization, is now embracing networks as one institutional strategy to achieve “regional decentralization.” Since 1999 IFPRI has developed and operated two formal regional networks, in East Africa and South Asia, and additional regional networks have been envisioned for Southern Africa and Central A...

Disputes continue to flare over acceptable safety standards for biotechnology products, and the potential for these technologies to address agricultural needs. Benefits have been documented for a limited number of genetically modified (GM) crops, however, official permission to plant GM seeds in developing countries has not been granted in most cou...

International Security 29.1 (2004) 122-151 Can the United States maintain its global lead in science, the new key to its recently unparalleled military dominance? U.S. scientific prowess has become the deep foundation of U.S. military hegemony. U.S. weapons systems currently dominate the conventional battlefield because they incorporate powerful te...

Domestic agricultural subsidy policies in the United States and in the European Union (EU) underwent substantial liberal reforms between 1990 and 1996. In the United States in 1990, Congress reduced acreage on which farmers could receive income-support payments (deficiency payments) by 15 percent under a budget reconciliation act. In the EU in 1991...

Agricultural food and feed crops improved through recombinant DNA are grown widely on farms in wealthy countries such as the USA and Canada, but are scarcely grown anywhere in the poor developing world. The reasons often given for this slow uptake of genetically modified (GM) crops in developing countries include weak scientific capacity, intellect...

In most poor countries today, farmers still plant no GM food or feed crops at all. Some are now planting GM cotton, but GM food and feed crops have not yet been grown commercially anywhere in developing Asia or the Middle East, and in only one African country (South Africa). Government authorities in most of these countries have not yet given farme...

Whose responsibility is it to assure food security in an age of globalization? Is improved governance at the international level our greatest need, or are governance deficits most severe at the national level? When national governments lag in assuring food security for their own citizens, can outsiders help make up the resulting governance deficit?...

Two large issues face American agriculture in the 21st century. Commodity policy has erred by placing excessive regulations on prices and production levels, creating rent-seeking opportunities for some farm producers. Escaping the lingering adverse consequences of these market regulations remains a challenge, both at home and abroad. A new challeng...

This paper suggests that changing conditions in world grain markets are not directly linked to transitory food insecurity in poor countries. The explanation advanced for this disconnection is that the reliance of genuinely poor developing countries on grain imports is usually low, and generally lower today than it was several decades ago, even when...

New technologies often provoke strong resistance--even when, as with genetically modified crops, their benefits vastly outweigh their potential harms. The fact is that transgenic food has no proven downside. Nevertheless, scare-mongering consumer groups in Europe have led a global backlash against this new technology. The battle has thus far pitted...

Will developing countries adopt policies that promote the planting of genetically modified (GM) crops, or will they select policies that slow the spread of the GM crop revolution? The evidence so far is mixed. In some prominent countries such as China, policies are in place that encourage the independent development and planting of GM crops. Yet in...

Today's agrobiotechnology revolution - especially the move toward transgenic or genetically modified (GM) crops - is being researched, commercialised, and (hotly) debated mostly in Europe, the USA, and elsewhere within the rich industrial world. Yet it is in the developing countries where the greatest human and environmental promise - or peril - of...

Food security circumstances are improving in every region of the world except in Africa, where they have been progressively worsening. One food security challenge for analysts in the twenty-first century may be to stop thinking globally and spend more time thinking about Africa, where the largest problems will lie. The discovery that Africa's weak...

Contact for this paper: Laura Bipes, Department of Applied Economics, University of Minnesota, 1994 Buford Avenue, 232 ClaOff, St. Paul, MN 55108. This volume contains the main papers that were presented at an IATRC symposium which focused on Policy Reform, Market Stability, and Food Security. It was held June 26-27, 1998 in Alexandria, Virginia an...

The 2020 Vision initiative of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) was launched late in 1993, at a time of growing global complacency regarding international food security questions. The first phase of the 2020 Vision initiative (1993–96) featured the development of an innovative forward-looking partial equilibrium model of the...

This book explores alternative strategies for attaining policy reform in American agriculture. We trace the evolution of agriculture in the United States from the depression-era origins of modern policy to final emergence of a mostly competitive and wealthy commercial farm sector at eh turn of the twenty-first century. Throughout our analysis, we c...

Between 1990 and 1996 domestic agricultural policies in the United States and the European Union (EU) underwent significant reforms To what extent did these reforms derive from an international negotiation, specifically the 198993 Uruguay Round of GAIT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) negotiations, where agricultural reform had been a major...

This paper presents a chronology of the 1995-96 farm bill debate, which was historic in several dimensions. Victories in the 1994 mid-term elections gave Republican majorities control of Congress for the first time in forty years. An omnibus budget reconciliation bill became the principal vehicle around which the Republicans organized their politic...

What alternative strategies are available to the USA in its farm trade conflict with the European Community? Five strategies are examined here - adjudication, negotiation, retaliation, collusion and competition. Both adjudication and negotiation within GATT are described as unlikely to succeed as a first step. Retaliation and collusion are seen as...

Transitory food insecurity in poor countries is not directly or significantly linked to changing conditions in world grain markets. Per capita grain consumption in the developing countries did not generally worsen when grain export prices increased in 1973–74, or when they increased again briefly in 1995–96, and consumption generally grew more rapi...