Food Policy Report No. 17Sustained, well-targeted, and effectively used investments in R&D have reaped handsome rewards from improved agricultural productivity and cheaper, higher quality foods and fibers. As we begin a new millennium, the global patterns of investments in agricultural R&D are changing in ways that may have profound consequences for the structure of agriculture worldwide and the ability of poor people in poor counties to feed themselves.
This report documents and discusses these changing investment patterns, highlighting developments in the public and private sectors. It revises and carries forward to 2000 data that were previously reported in the 2001 IFPRI Food Policy Report Slow Magic: Agricultural R&D a Century After Mendel (PDF 300K). Some past trends are continuing or have come into sharper focus, while others are moving in new directions not apparent in the previous series. In addition, this report illustrates the use of spatial data to analyze spillover prospects among countries or agroecologies and the targeting of R&D to address specific production problems like drought-induced production risks. More detailed data on the agricultural research investment trends summarized here can be accessed at www.asti.cgiar.org.
Philip G. Pardey is a professor in the Department of Applied Economics and director of the International Science and Technology Practice and Policy (InSTePP) center at the University of Minnesota, St. Paul.
Nienke Beintema is head of the Agricultural Science and Technology Indicators (ASTI) initiative within the International Service for National Agricultural Research Division of the International Food Policy Research Institute.
Steven Dehmer is a graduate research assistant in the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota, St. Paul.
Stanley Wood is a senior scientist in the Environment and Production Technology Division of the International Food Policy Research Institute.
- Full Report
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