Which Farmers Benefit the Most from Bt Corn Adoption in the Philippines? Estimating Heterogeneity Effects

The potential contributions of new biotechnologies to sustainable food and income security have been the subject of widespread discussions around the turn of the twenty-first century. But distributional issues of which segments of GMO adopters benefit the most have not been given ample attention. Using propensity scores, we apply the (a) stratification-multilevel method of estimating heterogeneous treatment effects (SM-HTE); and the (b) matching-smoothing method of estimating heterogeneous treatment effects (MS-HTE) proposed by Xi, Brand, and Jann (2011). We find that the incidence of higher yields, lower insecticide use and reduced seed utilization in the Philippines diminishes progressively as a farmer’s propensity to adopt Bt corn increases. Farmers with a low propensity to adopt Bt are those who farm smaller, non-irrigated farms located farther from seed suppliers and farmers without previous training on pest identification. In most cases, while these farmers are typically poorer farmers in smaller parcels, cannot afford irrigation and are situated in remote areas away from easily accessible seed suppliers, there is no evidence, however, that profits differ across farmers with varying propensities to adopt the Bt variety.