By: Chandler Brotak, Isabel Arjmand, and Uri Bram
Norman Borlaug, the “father of the green revolution,” transformed agriculture (and won a Nobel Peace Prize) for developing new wheat varietals that resisted diseases and greatly increased yields.
You might well wonder: if it’s possible for wheat, is it possible for other crops? Consider the eggplant: a popular purple fruit/vegetable that can be made into everything from hongshao qiezi to baba ghanoush. It’s beloved by many people worldwide, and also by a cute but destructive moth larva:
An eggplant fruit and shoot borer larva inside an eggplant fruit. Photo credit: Chirag85 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The “eggplant fruit and shoot borer,” as the name suggests, bores into the shoots and fruit of eggplants, damaging the crops. A new varietal, Bt eggplants, was developed by the Maharashtra Hybrid Seed Company (Mahyco), and later supported by partnerships with USAID, Cornell University, and local partners.1Shelton et al. 2019, pp. 4-5. jQuery(‘#footnote_plugin_tooltip_14850_2_1’).tooltip({ tip: ‘#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_14850_2_1’, tipClass: ‘footnote_tooltip’, effect: ‘fade’, predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: ‘top right’, relative: true, offset: [10, 10], }); This varietal is genetically modified to create proteins which are toxic to these little menaces, but safe for humans and the environment.
So: could encouraging the adoption of Bt eggplants create a purple revolution that meets GiveWell’s bar for outstanding programs?
Based on preliminary research, we don’t believe so.
Two of the major considerations in our evaluation framework are whether the intervention is cost-effective and whether we believe it has room for more funding.
For cost-effectiveness, we attempt to quantify the costs and benefits of each intervention we investigate. In the case of Bt eggplants, the main effects of the program that we consider are increased yields and decreased costs for eggplant farmers. A randomized controlled trial conducted in Bangladesh from 2017-2018 found that Bt eggplants increased yields by about 50% and reduced pesticide costs by about 40%,2GiveWell, Bt eggplant adoption short note jQuery(‘#footnote_plugin_tooltip_14850_2_2’).tooltip({ tip: ‘#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_14850_2_2’, tipClass: ‘footnote_tooltip’, effect: ‘fade’, predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: ‘top right’, relative: true, offset: [10, 10], }); increasing their total profits by about 60%.3GiveWell, Genetically modified eggplants BOTEC jQuery(‘#footnote_plugin_tooltip_14850_2_3’).tooltip({ tip: ‘#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_14850_2_3’, tipClass: ‘footnote_tooltip’, effect: ‘fade’, predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: ‘top right’, relative: true, offset: [10, 10], });
At GiveWell,