World Food Policy WFP Volume 4, No. 2, Spring 2018 | Page 30

World Food Policy
gies until the 1990s was reverse engi-
neering of foreign active ingredients
and the development of local produc-
tion methods for their production by
government laboratories in China (Shi
and Pray 2012) and a combination of
government and private labs in India
(Pray and Nagarajan 2014). Since the
late 1990s, stronger patents have in-
duced more technology transfer of new
pesticides through FDI in both coun-
tries. In addition, Indian private com-
panies such as UPL have purchased
lines of business from DuPont and
ChemChina purchased Makhteshim
and Syngenta.
tractors (Pray and Nagarajan 2014)
Seed prices from MNCs were higher
than from local firms due in part to
higher quality seed.
As a result, India got access to
more technology in the seed industry
than China. Maize hybrids from MNCs
account for 60 percent of the maize
planted in India (Pray and Nagarajan
2014) compared to about 10 percent in
China (Personal communication, Du-
Pont officials, Beijing 2016). The major
biotech traits that have been commer-
cialized are the same in both countries
—Bt for cotton—but an important dif-
ference is that China is still has Bt traits
Early tractor designs in both
from the 1990s while India second gen-
countries were built with foreign col-
eral stacked Bt traits.
laboration with government corpora-
All the active ingredients of pes- tions or private companies contracting
ticides in both countries were devel- for designs and expertise from the So-
oped in the US, EU or Japan. The basic viet Union, Europe, the US and Japan.
method of accessing these technolo- Some of these collaborations evolved
Table 2: Value and Share of Global Imports and Exports of Fertilizers, Pesticides and Trac-
tors in global trade, China and India
Fertilizers (2015)
Imports
(US $s
Millions)
Exports
(US $s
Millions)
Pesticides (2014)
Tractors (2015)
China India China India China India
3,929
(5.9%) 7,459
(11.1%) 771
(2.2%) 990
(2.8%) 303
(0.65%) 34
(0.04%)
10,878
(18.8%) 97
(0.17%) 4,147
(11.9%) 1,940
(5.6%) 1,582
(3.02%) 10,002
(19.1%)
Sources: Fertilizer and Ag Machinery UN-COMTRADE: Pesticides; FAOSTAT. Figures in paren-
thesis indicates % of imports and exports in global trade
26