17/02/2026 - 12:45 - Doyen 22

Ricardo Guzman

(AMSE)

will give a presentation on 

The Arrival of Patented Agricultural Technologies

Abstract

Low-income countries are increasingly establishing intellectual property rights (IPR) for plant varieties as a means to encourage innovation in crop technologies. Whether such policies spur agricultural development is unclear: On one hand, IP protection can bring new crop technologies to markets, expanding the set of plant varieties with agronomic traits that benefit farms. On the other hand, the policy can raise input prices and reshape informal markets for traditional seed. This paper studies these tradeoffs in a context of a landmark reform that strengthened IP protection for plant varieties in Tanzania. I first combine the universe of registered plant varieties released in the national market with an event study to establish that IP protection brought in new plant varieties. I then estimate the effect of the arrival of these patented technologies on agricultural outcomes using rich farm-level data and a shift-share design that leverages the staggered release of new varieties and agro-climatic variation in crop suitability across regions. I find that the policy lifted supply-side constraints: a 1SD increase in exposure to patented technologies boosted adoption of improved varieties by 6.7 percentage points. However, the resulting productivity gains were unevenly distributed: the policy delivered higher yields, crop revenues, and profits for larger and better-connected farms, while small and remote farmers experienced little to no benefit. Supporting evidence points to two channels that explain the unequal gains from adoption: rising seed prices in local markets and small farmers’ inability to adjust use of land, labour, and material inputs that complement new technologies.

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