Measuring the contribution of Bt cotton adoption to India's cotton yields leap

Guillaume Gruère and Yan Sun

No 1170, IFPRI discussion papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Abstract: While a number of empirical studies have demonstrated the role of Bt cotton adoption in increasing Indian cotton productivity at the farm level, there has been questioning around the overall contribution of Bt cotton to the average cotton yield increase observed these last ten years in India. This study examines the contribution of Bt cotton adoption to long- term average cotton yields in India using a panel data analysis of production variables in nine Indian cotton-producing states from 1975 to 2009. The results show that Bt cotton contributed 19 percent of total yield growth over time, or between 0.3 percent and 0.4 percent per percentage adoption every year since its introduction. Besides Bt cotton, the use of fertilizer and the increased adoption of hybrid seeds appear to have contributed to the yield increase over time. However, if official Bt cotton adoption contributed to increased yield after 2005, unofficial Bt cotton might also have been part of the observed increase of yields starting in 2002, the year of its official introduction in India.

Keywords: Bt-cotton; Panel data; multiple imputation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-eff
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/ifpridp01170.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fpr:ifprid:1170

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IFPRI discussion papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().