THE FUTURE OF AGRICULTURAL BIOTECHNOLOGY:
Creative Destruction, Adoption, or Irrelevance?

12th ICABR Conference, in Honor of Vittorio Santaniello

June 12 to June 14, 2008
Ravello, Italy

Organized by International Consortium on Agricultural Biotechnology Research (ICABR) in collaboration with: CEIS - University of Rome "Tor Vergata"; Rutgers University; Yale University; University of California, Berkeley; Leibniz University of Hannover; University of Missouri; University of Saskatchewan; Wageningen University

The conference theme this year is "What does the future hold for agricultural biotechnology?" Based on that theme, ICABR has issued a Call for Papers in four general areas that will contribute to assessing the future of biotechnology:

· Measuring the impacts on farmers in developed countries.

· Have past studies exaggerated the economic impacts in LDCs?

· Who gained and lost from trade in biotech products?

· What are the rates of return to government or private investments in biotech research?

· Assessing the environmental, health and ethical impacts of biotech.

2. Future demand for agricultural products produced by biotechnology:

· Biofuels.

· Grain.

· Consumer attitudes.

· Demand for food quality and safety, labeling, environmental quality.

· Ethics, income distribution.

3. Farmers' demand for biotechnology:

· Global climate change - the need for technologically sustainable crop systems - new and growing demand for biotech due to drought and flooding, pests and diseases and a generalized increase in environmental uncertainty.

· $100/barrel for oil and increasingly expensive modern inputs.

· Increasing needs for capability building to adapt to climate change on the part of farmers and rural communities, also through expansion and improvement of local agricultural research.

4. Impact of government investments, policies and regulations on future demand for technology:

· Government investments in research

· Food and Biosafety Regulations

· Intellectual Property Rights.

· The political economy of biotechnology.

· Industrial policies - state enterprises, anti-trust policies.

· Tax policies, liability laws, incubators, research parks.

· Role of Foundations and foreign aid donors in biotechnology investment and policies.

For more information:
Contact: Anna Santaniello
Email: anna.santaniello@tiscali.it; santaniello@economia.uniroma2.it
Telephone: +39 06 7259 5928
Website: http://www.economia.uniroma2.it/icabr/index.php?p=2