These two characteristics create a positive value for the option to delay an application of agrobiotechnology at each level, which means that the overall benefits do not have to simply exceed the costs, but they have to exceed them by a certain factor greater than one. It can be expected that this decision rule will be most significant at the production and consumption level, where several studies have pointed out environmental and health risks related to the release of transgenic crops. This may, e.g., explain that the decision of the EU to delay the release of transgenic crops not only makes sense from the point of view of pressure groups, but also from an economic point of view. In order to shed more light on these issues, the scientific community should spend more resources on the evaluation of costs and benefits of agrobiotechnology and specifically on methodologies to evaluate the environmental and health risks. The second point I want to focus on is whether developing countries should invest in public sector research capacity in agricultural biotechnology.
Many scientists see agrobiotechnology as the solution to an upcoming food crisis.
There are two reasons to doubt whether this will become a successful strategy. The first reason lies in the need for benefits to be higher than the costs by a certain factor, as explained above. The second reason lies in the reluctance of the private sector to invest in agrobiotechnology research for developing countries. Given the situation of public and parastatal research institutions in developing countries, it is doubtful that they will produce research results more efficiently than the private sector and hence create a positive rate of return to their investment, taking into account the related social costs. In conclusion, the evaluation of agrobiotechnology has to be improved at the methodological level as well as the empirical level.