As part of the Brown Bag Lunch series, the International Economics Department at the Graduate Institute is pleased to invite you to a public talk given by Nicholas Brown Tyack, PhD student in Development Economics. He will present his research work titled:

An experimental approach to farmer valuation of African rice genetic resources

Abstract: Genebanks serve as both providers of valuable traits to breeding programs as well as repositories of diverse crop genetic material representing society’s agricultural heritage. Using a field experiment, we investigate how smallholder rice farmers in Côte d’Ivoire value both new, advanced rice varieties containing genebank materials as well as landraces or farmers’ varieties of African rice (Oryza glaberrima) maintained by the Rice Biodiversity Center for Africa. We use a Becker-Degroot-Marschak (BDM) mechanism to elicit farmer willingness-to-pay for small amounts of seed of advanced rice varieties developed by AfricaRice as well as African rice landraces conserved in the AfricaRice genebank. In addition, the experiment more broadly explores whether facilitating farmer experimentation with diverse crop genetic material can help to promote the diffusion of both newly developed and heritage rice varieties, contributing to productivity growth as well as on-farm conservation of African rice landraces.