Transgenic Cotton Development: Agro-economic Analysis and Comparative Study

Abstract

The development of transgenic crop since its first launched to the public in 1995 results in high expectation in order to boost the agricultural productivity, particularly in cotton. Higher yield and higher return are the expectation of cotton growers especially for poor-resource farmers due to low income household. This study provides the evidence of implementing Genetically Modified (GM) cotton based on the meta-data which derived from indvidual studies more than one decade in China, India, USA and Australia as the comparative study. Economic performance is the analysis of economic indicators such as yield gain, seed cost, pesticide cost, management and labor cost, and net return in which the comparison between GM cotton and its counterpart worldwide overtime. Study findings that it is clear that this technology is not superior and still need to be suitable for the given production situation, and also depending on the specific pest pressure and other relevant local condition to optimize per hectare returns. This study results that this merit technology can vary in different ecological environments.