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Measuring the value of varietal technology in Brazilian agriculture

Christopher Timmins

[2002]

Abstract: This paper illustrates a methodology for valuing the varietal attributes of seeds while controlling for the adoption decisions of heterogeneous farmers. These decisions can bias estimates of value obtained with yield-hedonic techniques. We avoid this problem by recovering values not from conditional variation in yields, but from farmers’ underlying preferences for crops and varieties, simulating their decisions with and without particular attributes present in the varietal pool. Applying our model to southern Brazil, we find values for enhanced disease resistance that are much higher on average than those predicted by yield-hedonic techniques, and which have a highly skewed spatial distribution.