Issue Brief No. 46Throughout the 20th century, improvements in agricultural productivity have lifted millions from poverty and starvation and primed the pump of economic progress.
These productivity improvements have been closely linked to investments in agricultural research and development (R&D). In the past quarter century, many countries have made major changes in the way they fund and organize public agricultural R&D and in the incentives affecting private R&D. These changes raise questions about the prospects for sustaining productivity over the next 25 years and beyond. Early indicators suggest a global slowdown in agricultural productivity may have already begun.
The authors of the 1999 book Paying for Agricultural Productivity (Alston, Pardey, and Smith, eds., Johns Hopkins University Press) documented the changing institutions and investments in agricultural R&D in a selection of rich countries, and the policy shifts that affected such changes. Toward the end of the 20th century, public and private roles shifted in many countries and support for public agricultural research slowed—especially for nearmarket, applied, productivity-enhancing research.
Today, a slower growing, stagnant, or shrinking public agricultural research pot is increasingly being diverted away from the traditional agenda toward environmental objectives, food quality and safety, and so on. Who, then, will do the research required to generate sustenance for a growing world population when—at least for another quarter century—virtually all the population growth will occur in the poorer parts of the world? These questions and others are raised in a new book, Agricultural R&D in the Developing World: Too Little, Too Late?, edited by Philip G. Pardey, Julian M. Alston, and Roley R. Piggott.
- 2006. Philip G. Pardey, Julian M. Alston, and Roley R. Piggott, eds.
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