Food-feed-biofuel trilemma: Biotechnological innovation policy for sustainable development

Abstract

With climate change endangering environmental sustainability, and food-biofuel competition still looming large, the pursuit of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) requires balancing this trade-off. By highlighting the role of current-vintage agro-fuel technology in combating twin crisis, we calibrate a 23 regions-24 sectors Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model to enumerate the impacts of: [i] 10% biotechnological invention in maize grains, rice and wheat; [ii] productivity growth in new agro-chemical inputs; [iii] impact of next generation biofuel technology (5% productivity shock). The results confirm that investing in factors for adoption of third-generation biofuels could be significant policy response for mitigating the adverse impacts. (C) 2017 The Society for Policy Modeling. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.