Slow magic

This report assembles and assesses new evidence regarding investments in agricultural R&D, tracking global trends over the past several decades, and highlighting the critical importance that the accumulated stock of scientific knowledge has for today's productivity and for future innovations and economic growth.Agricultural research Economic aspects. ,Agricultural development. ,Agriculture Research. ,

Slow magic

Standing on the brink of a biotechnology revolution in agriculture, it is timely to take stock of the investments and institutional trends regarding agricultural R&D worldwide. In this report we assemble and assess new and updated evidence regarding investments in agricultural R&D by public and private agencies, contrasting developments in rich and poor countries.The payoffs to investments in agricultural research are considerable, and appear to remain so, but there are new policy concerns about the roles of the public and private sectors in funding and carrying out the research, especially in light of the revolutionary changes in the underlying sciences and the incentives facing research (as intellectual property regimes become stronger and international trade in science and technologies grows). This report tracks trends in agricultural R&D over the past several decades.We also put research policies in a much longer timeframe, highlighting the critical importance that the accumulated stock of scientific knowledge has on today's productivity performance and its effect on innovation and economic growth in the future.

Public Funding for Research into Specialty Crops

Replaced with revised version of paper 08/14/07.Crop Production/Industries,

The Shifting Global Patterns of Agricultural Productivity

Productivity Analysis,

Mendel versus Malthus: Research, Productivity and Food Prices in the Long Run

Over the past 50 years and longer, the supply of food commodities has grown faster than the effective market demand, in spite of increasing population and per capita incomes. Consequently, the real (deflated) prices of food commodities have steadily trended down. The past increases in agricultural productivity and production, and the resulting real price trends, are attributable in large part to technological changes enabled by investments in agricultural R&D. Evidence is beginning to emerge of a slowdown in the long-term path of agricultural productivity growth. These productivity patterns mirror a progressive slowing down in the growth rate of total spending on agricultural R&D and a redirection of the funds away from farm productivity that began 20-30 years ago.Demand and Price Analysis, Productivity Analysis, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Investments in African agricultural research:

Over the past three decades the development of agricultural research staff in sub-Saharan Africa has been impressive. Developments in agricultural research expenditures were less positive. Many of the developments of the past decade in personnel, expenditures, and sources of support for public-sector R&D in Africa are not sustainable. The rapid buildup of research staff is not paralleled by an equal growth in financial resources. Spending per scientist has continuously declined during the past 30 years, but most dramatically during the 1980s. Resources are spread increasingly thin over a growing group of researchers, which has negative effects on the efficiency and effectiveness of agricultural research.Agriculture Research., Research Economic aspects Africa, Sub-Saharan.,

Long Gone Lake Wobegon? The State of Investments in University of Minnesota Research

Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

The changing organizational basis of African agricultural research:

National agricultural research systems in Africa increased markedly in size throughout the past three decades, but from an especially small base. In 1961, public systems in 33 of 48 African countries employed fewer than 25 full-time equivalent (fte) researchers, by 1991 there were only 8 such systems (and 23 countries employed more than 100 fte researchers, compared with only 4 countries in 1961). Despite this overall growth, and the efforts that began in the late 1980s to consolidate the conduct of agricultural research, most African agencies are still very small and fragmented by international standards, making it difficult to realize the scale and scope economies that seem increasingly evident in agricultural R&D conducted elsewhere. This study reports a range of institutional indicators for 341 agricultural research agencies located in 39 African countries. In 1991, 236 agencies (nearly 70 percent of our sample total) employed less than 20 fte researchers. Most public research in Africa is still done by government agencies; they employed 87 percent of the total number of researchers in 1991. University research has grown the most rapidly, but still accounted for only 10 percent of the total number of African researchers in 1991. Partly in response to the small, fragmented, and comparatively isolated structure of agricultural R&D agencies, but partly from local political and, especially, donor pressure too, there has been a proliferation of research networks in recent years. We identified 86 networks, of which 72 involved Africans linked to Africans, a rather parochial strategy in an increasingly interdependent world. Regional approaches to the conduct and funding of agricultural R&D have been revived in more recent years, a feature of much of the regions's research in earlier, colonial times, as we describe here. However, the political and economic realities of today bear little relationship to those of colonial times, and it remains unclear how these regional approaches will prosper and effect meaningful research given the organizational uncertainties that still abound.Research Economic aspects., Research institutes., Africa., Agriculture Research.,

STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT IN OECD AGRICULTURE: GOVERNMENT POLICIES AND TECHNICAL CHANGE

Agricultural and Food Policy, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Financing agricultural research and development in rich countries: what's happening and why

Governments around the globe are trimming their support for agricultural R&D, giving greater scrutiny to the support that they do provide, and reforming the public agencies that fund, oversee, and carry out the research. These contemporary developments represent a break from previous patterns, which, since WWII, had seen a significant and steady expansion in the public funds provided for agricultural R&D. The growth rate of private-sector spending on agricultural research has slowed along with the growth of public spending in recent years, but the balance continues to shift toward the private sector. This paper presents a quantitative review of these funding trends and the considerable institutional changes that have accompanied them. We present and discuss new data for 22 OECD countries, provide additional data and institutional details for five of these countries, namely Australia, Netherlands, New Zealand, United Kingdom, and the United States, and conclude the paper with an assessment of these policy developments.Agricultural research., Government spending policy., OECD countries., Australia., Netherlands., New Zealand., United Kingdom., United States., Assessment,