Technological advances developed through R&D have supplied the world with not only more food, but better food. This report looks at issues raised by this changing environment for agricultural productivity, agricultural R&D, and natural resource management.Agriculture and state ,

Alston, Julian M.

Pardey, Philip G.

Taylor, Michael J.

English

Research Papers in Economics

IFPRI
FOOD
POLICY
STATEMENT
NUMBER  32,   MAY  2001
INTERNATIONAL
FOOD POLICY
RESEARCH
INSTITUTE
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I
n the second half of the 20th century, agricultural research and development (R&D)
generated astounding increases in food production. Technological advances devel-
oped through R&D have supplied the world with not only more food, but better food.
Since the 1980s, however, the growth of public spending on agricultural R&D has
slowed dramatically in both developed and developing countries, while the need to pro-
duce enough food to feed burgeoning populations grows more pressing with every pass-
ing day. About 800 million people are undernourished today. Over the next 25 years,
demand for cereals is expected to grow by over 40 percent; for meat, 70 percent. To
achieve the necessary yield growth without harming the environment is an enormous chal-
lenge. This challenge will have to be met largely through agricultural research, under the
shadow of ever-tighter public research budgets.
In conjunction with budgetary pressures, the emphasis of spending is shifting away
from research on farm inputs and outputs toward new concerns such as the environment,
genetic diversity, food safety, and human health. Research and technology policy is also
being made more complicated by the changing public and private roles in funding and
conducting agricultural R&D, changing intellectual property rights regimes, and changes
to the general environment for products and trade in agricultural products. Agricultural
Science Policy: Changing Global Agendas, edited by Julian M. Alston, Philip G. Pardey,
and Michael J. Taylor, and published by Johns Hopkins University Press, looks at issues
raised by this changing environment for agricultural productivity, agricultural R&D, and
natural resource management.
CHANGING CONTEXTS AND AGENDAS
T
oday, private entities are paying for and conducting a larger share of research, while
many governments are scaling back the growth in or reducing their spending on agri-
cultural R&D. Spending on private agricultural R&D in the rich countries alone totaled
US$7 billion in 1993, compared with US$4 billion in 1981. Changes in the world econo-
my and in agriculture and science are having important implications for the funding,
organization, and management of R&D. In many countries the emergence of modern
biotechnology and a strengthening of intellectual property rights are giving rise to pro-
found changes in both public and private agricultural R&D. Only a small part (12 percent)
of private research concerns farm-level technologies for improving crop and livestock
production. Much research relates to technologies embodied in purchased inputs as well
as post-farm food processing and product development. Specialization has become the
name of the game: in one country, firms may emphasize postharvest research; in another,
pesticides and herbicides. Research results tend to be rapidly transferred around the world.
In this changing research environment, a number of important policy questions must
be addressed. How should resources for agricultural research be distributed among local,
national, and international research? How much agricultural research should be publicly
funded? What role should multinational firms play? How should scarce research dollars
be distributed among sectors such as agriculture, forestry, fisheries, and livestock? Should
a large part of agricultural research be directed toward environmental issues such as cli-
mate change, loss of biodiversity, and water pollution? Should research concentrate on
short-term or long-term results? On improving the environment or increasing yields?
This book lays out this new agenda for agricultural science policy and provides new
evidence and new ideas as a basis for beginning to study and formulate policies to deal
with the emerging issues.
AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE POLICY
CHANGING GLOBAL AGENDAS
JULIAN M. ALSTON, PHILIP G. PARDEY, AND MICHAEL J. TAYLOR, EDITORSORDER FORM
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PRODUCTIVITY MEASURES AND
MEASUREMENT CHALLENGES
S
etting research priorities requires
accurately measuring the effects
of alternative courses of action, a task
that raises conceptual and measure-
ment issues. One chapter in this book
assesses the current methodology for
measuring productivity growth and
documents the many conceptual and
statistical problems that remain to be
resolved; other chapters provide quan-
titative evidence on productivity pat-
terns. One, for example, emphasizes
the effects of adjusting for changes in
the quality of outputs and inputs (like
aging but better educated farmers or
bigger tractors and combine har-
vesters) in measures of state-level
productivity patterns in the United
States. Another chapter looks at past
trends and future prospects for cereal
crop productivity as growth in rice
and wheat yields slows in developing
countries. Yield is still the most com-
monly used indicator of productivity,
but proper assessment of productiv-
ity growth also requires that attention
be paid to trends in the use of other
factors of production such as fertilizer.
Empirical studies of total factor pro-
ductivity—measuring the output not
attributable to the inputs used in agri-
culture—in developing-country agri-
culture are becoming increasingly
important in providing a complete
picture of technological change.
RESEARCH, PRODUCTIVITY,
AND NATURAL RESOURCES
C
an research and technology solve
environmental problems of water,
soil, and air degradation, without
adversely affecting economic develop-
ment and agricultural productivity?
What are the implications of agricul-
tural R&D for sustainability? Chapters
in this volume challenge the very
notion of sustainability, as well as
other popular ideas about the nature
and extent of resource scarcity, includ-
ing the effects of agriculture on natural
resource stocks and the implications
for science and related policy. Reg-
ulated industries based on nonrenew-
able or common property resources
raise new issues in the measurement of
productivity, as illustrated by an analy-
sis of technical change and productivi-
ty in the North Pacific halibut fishery
during 1935–78. Getting the facts right
is important as well. New data on soil
degradation in China and Indonesia
show that, on balance, over very long
time periods the contributions to soil
fertility associated with urban devel-
opment and intensification can more
than offset the losses from land degra-
dation in the hinterlands.
RESEARCH FOR GENETIC
IMPROVEMENT
S
tudies of genetic improvements in
crops have dominated the large
body of work on the economics of
agricultural R&D. This research is
evolving to address new types of
issues. For instance, one chapter found
that international wheat and maize
research and Indian wheat research
have generated significant spillovers
(in which research conducted in one
location affects a different location)
and that agricultural research has large
economies of size, scale, and scope.
Policies related to the conservation of
agricultural plant biodiversity are
addressed in a chapter that discusses
methods for valuing genetic resources
and the implications of property rights
regimes for plant breeding programs.
Another area of concern today is food
safety, particularly in transgenic crops,
but genetically modified crops can also
promote human health. For instance, the
health benefits from consuming canola
oil are reported to be as large as the
gross value of the crop, much greater
than the benefits to producers and con-
sumers measured conventionally.
Contributors to the book are Julian M.
Alston, Walter J. Armbruster, Peter J.
Barry, Wilfred Beckerman, Derek Byerlee,
Barbara J. Craig, Robert Evenson,
Richard Gray, Zvi Griliches, Paul W.
Heisey, Frances Homans, Peter Lindert,
Stavroula Malla, Philip G. Pardey,
Prabhu L. Pingali, Ismail Serageldin,
Michael J. Taylor, Greg Traxler, James E.
Wilen, and Brian D. Wright.

Agricultural science policy

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Agricultural science policy

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