92 Book reviews

individuals’ adult labor productivity-to the long-runprevention of famine is somewhat underemphasized.This underemphasis may feed economists’ unfortu-nate propensity to treat nutritional status solely as anoutcome, not as a state variable influencing futureproductivity and welfare. Chapter 7, on individualhouseholds’ natural preventive and responsive behav-iors in the face of varying degrees of food insecurity,drawing heavily on the authors’ own field experi-ences in Ethiopia, Sudan and Zimbabwe, offers agood synthesis of the literature on coping strategiesavailable. The authors do an excellent job of captur-ing the dynamism of the food insecure’s endogenousresponses to threat without overstating the limitedcapacity of the poor to resolve fully these problemsthemselves.

Although the authors indicate they wish to “en-hanc[e] the theoretical basis of the debate [on famine]. . . and [enrich] the theory through empirical factfinding”, it is apparent that neither sophisticated the-orizing nor methodologically advanced empirical in-quiry were their priority. One can easily pick holesin the relatively simplistic and dated empirical meth-ods employed in the chapters on agricultural produc-tion and food marketing, where typographical errorsin several equations may also frustrate readers whowant to learn the models for the first time. And thevast majority of the empirical findings have been pre-viously reported elsewhere. This book is not a mapto the formal, methodological or theoretical researchfrontier on famine. But the authors usefully identifykey areas in need of further advanced research, notablyimproved understanding of the functioning of rural la-bor and food markets, effective targeting strategies, thecost-effectiveness of relief operations, and capacity topredict the onset of complex humanitarian emergen-cies that increasingly absorb the human and financialresources of development agencies.

The strength of this volume lies in its compactand clear presentation of a mass of useful conceptsand findings scattered across the disciplines and oftenburied in an inaccessible grey literature. The authorsfocus heavily on policy and program issues. The chap-ter on that subject is as long as the book’s first fivechapters combined, underscoring the intended audi-ence. von Braun, Teklu and Webb’s volume deservesto be widely read by activists, policymakers, practi-tioners and students looking for a lucid synthesis of

the complex and disturbingly current reality of faminein Africa.

Chris Barrett∗Agricultural Resource, and Managerial Economics

351 Warren HallCornell University

Ithaca, NY 14853-7801, USA∗Tel: +1-607-255-4489; fax:+1-607-255-9984.E-mail address:cbb2@cornell.edu (C. Barrett)

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Agricultural Biotechnology and the EnvironmentSheldon Krimsky and Roger Wrubel, University ofIllinois Press, Urbana-Champaign, IL, 1996, 294 pp.,US$ 18.95, ISBN 0-2520-6524-7

Over the past decade biotechnology has evolvedfrom a research area to an industry. Applications ofbiotechnology in agriculture are second only to usesrelated to human health, and the rate of innovation issuch that even an attentive bystander easily becomesconfused. This book responds to an obvious need fora wide ongoing survey of biotechnology used in agri-culture.

The scope of the subject matter is very broad,comprising herbicide tolerant crops, insect resistantplants, disease resistant crops, transgenic plant prod-ucts, microbial pesticides, frost-inhibiting bacteria,animal growth hormones (especially Bovine Soma-totropin), and transgenic animals. Economic andcultural aspects are also addressed.

The diverse topics are linked in this book by a ques-tion that pervades the whole discussion: will biotech-nology fulfill its early promise of ameliorating the en-vironment by providing substitutes for artificial chem-icals as herbicides and insecticides, and by reducingthe burden of harmful wastes by increasing feed con-version efficiency? Given the infancy of the indus-try, any conclusion on this score must be premature.But the early promise of unambiguous reduction inchemical use has not been fulfilled in the evolution ofthe industry to date, as described in this book. Herbi-cide tolerance genes in crops directly increase use ofthe relevant herbicide; whether this is more than fully

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compensated by a reduction in other, more harmful,herbicide applications is the crucial question. In thelong run, the answer may hinge partly on the rate oftransfer of herbicide-tolerance to weeds, which couldresult in greater use of more harmful herbicide in thefuture. Similarly, plant pest resistance due to Bt genesmight reduce current pesticide use, but might hastenthe onset of resistance in insects and thus the use ofmore dangerous pesticides in the future. Bt resistancewill also pose problems for pest control programs oforganic farmers who rely on Bt applications for pestcontrol. Bovine growth hormone (BST) reduces feeduse and production of animal waste, but some fear thatit will induce greater incidence of mastitis and increasethe contamination of milk by illegal antibiotics.

The great strength of the book is its comprehensivecoverage of the issues. In this fast-moving field I knowof no other similarly comprehensive survey. But itsvery scope means that achieving accuracy on all thefacts and issues must stretch the competence of eventwo authors. As an economist, I found that the cover-age was weak and superficial on economics issues. Forexample, arguments that various forms of biotechnol-ogy will hasten the trend towards fewer, larger farmsare too casually accepted. Most biotechnologies fromBST to organic pesticides require more high-qualitymanagerial attention by farmers to individual animalsand fields. In the past, consolidation into large-scaleor plantation-style agriculture has proceeded farthestin crops where the production technology is simplestand the managerial demands are low. If the past is agood guide, managerial complexity will favor familyfarming.

On the other hand the recent intensification ofcontract production of poultry, and the current dra-matic changes in pork production are being drivenby economies of coordination in processing and mar-keting and perhaps by the gains from internalizingthe benefits from productivity enhancing research.The implications of biotechnology for these types ofproduction system merit more attention than is givenhere.

As is too common in discussions of biotechnologyin agriculture, benefits of production efficiency toconsumers are all but ignored in this book. Price, pro-ductivity, yield and consumption do not appear in theindex. In the text, a possible drop in price of milk dueto BST is viewed negatively, as a threat to farmers,

with no mention of benefits to families and childrenvia lower food costs and possibly better nutritiondue to higher consumption. The issue is not whetherthese benefits would outweigh possible negative im-plications for consumer welfare, such as increasedexposure to growth hormones or antibiotics in milk, oreven increased cholesterol intake due to higher con-sumption levels. The key point is that the possibilityof positive effects on consumers does not even get ahearing.

This bias in favor of the interests of producers (farm-ers) is commonplace and ‘politically correct’ in the lit-erature on agriculture, but contrasts sharply with workon the pharmaceutical industry. Consider the reactionto a book on the effects of biotechnology on the phar-maceutical industry that evaluated innovations solelywith respect to their effects on drug producers’ welfareand on possible harmful side-effects on users, whileignoring their positive effects on consumers’ healthand health costs. Such a work would be rejected bymost political activists as unacceptably biased, andby economists as missing the main positive elementsof the net social value of pharmaceutical innovations.Yet in studies of agricultural biotechnology, lingeringagrarian sentiment, and justifiable respect for the in-tegrity and independence of farmers, allow a similarblindness to the existence, let alone the possible pri-macy, of positive consumer interests to go generallyunremarked by the guardians of ‘political correctness,’even though consumers with most at stake are in thepoorer and less privileged part of the population.

Given the range of disciplines covered in this book,it would be unfair to judge its accuracy and balancesolely on the basis of its economic content. As a spotcheck on the quality of its treatment of other scien-tific areas, I asked my colleague Steve Lindow, a pi-oneer in the area of frost-inhibiting bacteria, to scanthe chapter devoted to this subject. Unfortunately, hefound that the authors appear to have made numerouserrors in the details of their coverage. They confusea hundred field trials of naturally occurring bacteriawith two or three trials of genetically altered bacteria,they miss by years the timing of initial discoveries,and they confuse scientific and procedural issues incovering the regulatory delays. This lack of reliabil-ity on the details is a pity, as such a comprehensivemonograph could, if accurate, be a wonderful refer-ence to the state of agricultural biotechnology in all

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its applications. In fairness, it is good to keep in mindthe enormous challenge faced by authors who attemptto piece together, from primary sources with varyingdegrees of objectivity, an account of all aspects ofagricultural biotechnology and its environmental ef-fects.

Despite the above shortcomings, the book de-serves serious consideration by economists interestedin agricultural biotechnology. It offers an informa-tive and wide-ranging, if slightly blurred, view of afast-moving and exciting field. It is highly readable

and well-organized. I will value it as a permanent ad-dition to my professional bookshelf.

Professor B. Wright∗Department of Agricultural and Resource

Economics, 207 Giannini Hall, University ofCalifornia, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA

∗Tel.: +1-510-642-9213; fax:+1-510-643-8911.E-mail address:wright@are.berkeley.edu (B. Wright)

Received 2 February 2000

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