Andres A. Gallo University of North Florida, United States.
Email: agallo@unf.edu
Jay P. Kesan University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States.
Email: kesan@illinois.edu

Abstract:

In recent decades, China has had strongly influence the demand for agricultural commodities in global markets. Argentina is one of the main suppliers of soybeans in the world, and a key trading partner with China. Accordingly, it is in the best interest for both countries to continue to maintain high productivity levels. One of the most important issues in agriculture is the impact of biotechnology, and specifically, the impact of new seed varieties on yield. This paper uses data from seed varieties and yields in corn, soybean and wheat for the last forty years in Argentina. Then, we applied different times series techniques, including structural breaks, and vector autoregressive models to analyze the statistical causality between yields and new varieties. We demonstrate how introducing new varieties in Argentina positively affects yields, especially for soybeans and wheat. These results are important as Argentina has struggled to reach a political consensus on the implementation of property rights to create the right incentives to produce new varieties. Given the importance of these new varieties in yields, there are significant economic gains from the implementation of more secure property rights. These empirical results are essential to inform the discussion and the efforts to implement legislative changes in countries like Argentina, which could benefit from such reforms. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of property rights in Agriculture in emerging economies participating in international markets.

Keywords:Argentina, Property Rights, Seed Varieties, Biotechnology and Agriculture, International Agricultural Markets, China, Brazil, United States.