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Cover ImageAgricultural R&D in the Developing World
Too Little, Too Late?
Philip G. Pardey, Julian M. Alston, and Roley R. Piggott, eds.
2006
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2499/089629756XAGRD


Quality of Communication Award
Receiver of the 2006 Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society (AARES) Quality of Communication Award.
Foreword

This book was conceived as a companion to the 1999 volume Paying for Agricultural Productivity, published by Johns Hopkins University Press in conjunction with IFPRI. That volume dealt with investments, institutions, and policy processes regarding agricultural R&D in developed countries. This book addresses the same set of issues for the developing countries, and the relationship of those countries to the richer parts of the world where the preponderance of agricultural innovation still takes place. It also reviews developments within the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), along with the changing roles of international research generally, in light of the substantial shifts in science funding and policy (as well as in the science itself ) that are taking place throughout the world.

The book combines new evidence with economic theory and an economic way of thinking about science policy--highlighting the developing-country aspects--as well as a set of in-depth, comparative country studies. These country studies take us well beyond generalities, providing insights into the important changes taking place within these countries and others they represent. The countries covered include the largest developing countries--China and India--as well as a range of richer and poorer, and more- and less-developed countries, representing most parts of the globe.

The evidence and ideas presented in the book are disquieting. Over the past several decades, at least, spillovers of agricultural technology from rich countries to poor countries demonstrably increased productivity and food security for many parts of the developing world. As the authors document, however, recent developments in both the developed and developing worlds mean that poor countries may no longer be able to depend as they have in the past on spillovers of new agricultural technologies and knowledge from richer countries, especially advances related to enhanced productivity of staple foods.

As a consequence of these changes, simply maintaining their current agricultural R&D policies may leave many developing countries as agricultural technology orphans in the decades ahead. Developing countries may have to become more self-reliant and perhaps more dependent on one another for the collective benefits of agricultural R&D and technology. Some of the more advanced developing countries like South Korea, Brazil, China, and India seem to be gaining ground, with productive and self-sustaining local research sectors taking hold. However, other parts of the developing world, as illustrated in this book by reviews of agricultural R&D in Zambia, Bangladesh, and Indonesia, are merely regaining lost ground or slipping further behind. Aside from a handful of larger countries, many developing countries, especially in Africa, are facing serious funding and institutional constraints that inhibit the effectiveness of local R&D. Together, these factors may lead to serious food deficits.

The information assembled here and the lessons learned in this volume argue for refocusing attention on agricultural R&D as an instrument for long-run economic development to help avert a continuation of the chronic hunger and malnutrition that afflict all too many people around the world. These lessons will pay off if they help revitalize multinational engagement and investment in the global public benefits of international agricultural research.

Joachim von Braun
Director General, IFPRI

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