ASTI global assessment of agricultural R&D spending

The first Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD) in 2010 catalyzed a plan to transform agricultural research and development (R&D) around the world. The resulting GCARD Roadmap states that such transformation can only be achieved by greatly increasing institutional, human, and financial resources; moreover, it recommends a regularized process of monitoring these resources on behalf of all stakeholders (CGIAR and GFAR 2011). The Agricultural Science and Technology Indicators initiative (ASTI), facilitated by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), is the only international initiative dedicated to fulfilling this need. ASTI, with contributions from the US Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service (USDA-ERS), has prepared this global assessment of agricultural R&D spending as an input into GCARD 2012. The findings are of particular value because they incorporate new primary data for 2000–2008.