Suchergebnisse

What is the future of food? Everyone agrees that feeding the world in the decades ahead will require substantial increases in crop yields. But how we get there has become a remarkably contentious question because of biotechnology. What should be biotechnology's role in assuring affordable and sustainably grown food for all? How we answer this question now will have profound ramifications for decades to come. The chapters in this book confront the controversy over biotechnology with new analyses and insights from economists and technologists. The topics covered include the differences in perceptions about biotechnology among rich and poor countries; the effects of rich-country restrictions on international trade in genetically modified crops on the welfare of poorer countries; the effects of intellectual property rights on the bioscience done by public agencies the world over; and the economic impacts of biotechnology. ; PR ; IFPRI2

This book documents the evolving path of U.S. agriculture in the 20th Century and the role of public RD in that evolution. The work begins with a detailed quantitative assessment of the shifting patterns of production among the states and over time and of the public institutions and investments in agricultural RD. Then, based on newly constructed sets of panel data, some of which span the entire 20th Century and more, the authors present new econometric evidence linking state-specific agricultural productivity measures to federal and state government investments in agricultural research and extension. The results show that the time lags between RD spending and its effects on productivity are longer than commonly found or assumed in the prior published work. Also, the spillover effects of RD among states are important, such that the national net benefits from a state`s agricultural research investments are much greater than own-state net benefits. The main findings are consistent across a wide range of reasonable model specifications. In sum, the benefits from past public investments in agricultural research have been worth many times more than the costs, a significant share of the benefits accrue as spillovers, and the research lags are very long. An accelerated investment in public agricultural RD is warranted by the high returns to the nation, and may be necessary to revitalize U.S. agricultural productivity growth even though the benefits may not be visible for many years. TOC:Introduction.- The Changing Structure of U.S. Agriculture.- Agricultural Inputs.- Agriculture Outputs.- Agricultural Productivity Patterns.- Agricultural RD.- Agricultural RD and Technology Spillovers.- Models of Research and Productivity.- Econometric Estimation and Results.- Past and Prospective Productivity Patterns and Research Benefits.- Interpretation and Assessment of Benefit-Cost Findings.- Synthesis.

Has the golden age of U.S. agricultural productivity growth ended? We analyze the detailed patterns of productivity growth spanning a century of profound changes in American agriculture. We document a substantial slowing of U.S. farm productivity growth, following a late mid-century surge—20 years after the surge and slowdown in U.S. industrial productivity growth. We posit and empirically probe three related explanations for this farm productivity surge-slowdown: the time path of agricultural R&D-driven knowledge stocks; a big wave of technological progress associated with great clusters of inventions; and dynamic aspects of the structural transformation of agriculture, largely completed by 1980.

U.S corn output increased from 1.8 billion bushels in 1879 to 12.7 billion bushels in 2007. Concurrently, the footprint of production changed substantially. Failure to take proper account of movements means that productivity assessments likely misattribute sources of growth and climate change studies likely overestimate impacts. Our new spatial output indexes show that 16 to 21 percent of the increase in U.S. corn output over the 128 years beginning in 1879 was attributable to spatial movement in production. This long-run perspective provides historical precedent for how much agriculture might adjust to future changes in climate and technology.

This chapter provides a conceptual and empirical context for the case studies in Chapters 3 through 12. First, we briefly discuss the nature of market failures in agricultural research—both among firms within a country, and among nations—and the roles for government intervention in general. Next, we consider the distinguishing features of less-developed countries and what they might imply for R&D policy. We also discuss the important role of agricultural R&D and technology spillovers among nations, and the past dependence of the world's poorest countries on their richer neighbors. Next, we document the longer-term global story of institutions and investments in agricultural R&D, emphasizing the great importance of past achievements in agriculture and recent changes that leave grounds for concern about the prospects for the next 20 years and beyond. In the light of these facts, we contemplate the prospects for the future and the implied need to reinvent international collective action in agricultural R&D and reinvest in the associated global public goods institutions. ; PR ; IFPRI1; Pro-poor science and technology policies; Public Policy and Investment ; ISNAR

Many believe that agricultural productivity growth, driven by research-induced technical change, is essential to long-run economic development. Consequently, a strategy of agriculture-led development has been a critical element in aid and economic-development policy around the world since World War II. An important component of this strategy has been the progressive development of the system of international agricultural research centers (IARCs) known as the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR, or CG for short), in conjunction with and as a complement to the national agricultural research systems (NARSs) in developing countries. ; PR ; IFPRI1; Pro-poor science and technology policies; Public Policy and Investment ; ISNAR

Following two decades of increasing investments, growth in public agricultural research spending in Latin America stalled during the 1980s, reflecting shrinking government contributions and declining donor support in the midst of general economic crises. Data for more recent years show some signs of recovery with an average rate of growth for an 11-country sample of 4 percent per year during the first half of the 1990s (compared with 1 percent during the 1980s). Nonetheless, this regional trend masks significant variation among the various countries. The regional averages are also heavenly influenced by developments in Mexico and Brazil; two countries that accounted for almost two-thirds of total Latin American agricultural research investment in the mid-1990s. Over the past few decades the organization of agricultural research in Latin America has changed considerably, becoming institutionally more complex and fragmented in many countries. In addition, some shifts in the sources of funding have occurred as well as changes in the way funds are dispersed."-- Authors' Abstract ; Non-PR ; IFPRI1; GRP31; Theme 10; Subtheme 10.2; Pro-poor science and technology policies; ASTI ; ISNAR