Everyone is concerned with return on investment, and agricultural research continues to be an example of the positive impact well-placed funding can have. Agriculture is a key to the nation's economy, and research not only boosts that industry, it also promotes solutions for many of the country's pressing problems in the areas of health, energy, environment, rural development, trade, and food safety. This Commentary is directed to the Congress (for funding), the Administration (for initiatives), and the public (for insight). Recognized scholars provide an assessment of the high "rate of return" agricultural research has delivered to the American and global public and why funding is truly in the public interest. As the authors point out, "Plans for a better future start today."

gricultural science policy in the United States has profoundly affected the growth and development of agriculture worldwide, not just in the A United States. Over the past 150 years, and especially over the second th half of the 20 Century, public investments in agricultural R&D in the United States grew faster than the value of agricultural production. Public spending on agricultural science grew similarly in other more-developed countries, and c- lectively these efforts, along with private spending, spurred agricultural prod- tivity growth in rich and poor nations alike. The value of this investment is seldom fully appreciated. The resulting p- ductivity improvements have released labor and other resources for alternative uses—in 1900, 29. 2 million Americans (39 percent of the population) were - rectly engaged in farming compared with just 2. 9 million (1. 1 percent) today— while making food and fiber more abundant and cheaper. The benefits are not confined to Americans. U. S. agricultural science has contributed with others to growth in agricultural productivity in many other countries as well as the Un- ed States. The world’s population more than doubled from around 3 billion in 1961 to 6. 54 billion in 2006 (U. S. Census Bureau 2009). Over the same period, production of important grain crops (including maize, wheat and rice) almost trebled, such that global per capita grain production was 18 percent higher in 2006.

The astounding success of agricultural research has enabled farmers to produce increasingly more—and more kinds—of food throughout the world. But with a projected 9 billion people to feed by 2050, veteran researcher Gale Buchanan fears that human confidence in this ample supply, especially in the US, has created unrealistic expectations for the future. Without a working knowledge of what types and amounts of research produced the bounty we enjoy today, we will not be prepared to support the research necessary to face the challenges ahead, including population growth, climate change, and water and energy scarcity. In this book, Buchanan describes the historical commitment to research and the phenomenal changes it brought to our ability to feed ourselves. He also prescribes a path for the future, pointing the way toward an adequately funded, more creative agricultural research system that involves scientists, administrators, educators, farmers, politicians, and consumers; resides in one “stand alone” agency; enjoys a consistent funding stream; and operates internationally.

This book—prepared by Agricultural Science and Technology Indicators (ASTI), which is led by IFPRI—offers a comprehensive perspective on the evolution, current status, and future goals of agricultural research and development in Africa, including analyses of the complex underlying issues and challenges involved, as well as insights into how they might be overcome. Agriculture in Africa south of the Sahara is at a prospective tipping point. Growth has accelerated in the past decade, but is unsustainable given increasing use of finite resources. The yield gap in African agriculture is significant, and scenarios on feeding the world’s population into the future highlight the need for Africa to expand its agricultural production. Agricultural Research in Africa: Investing in Future Harvests discusses the need to shift to a growth path based on increased productivity—as in the rest of the developing world— which is essential if Africa is to increase rural incomes and compete in both domestic and international markets. Such a shift ultimately requires building on evolving improvements that collectively translate to deepening rural innovation capacity.

Well-funded agricultural research and development (R&D) systems play an important role in transforming agrifood systems and helping countries to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. The advantages of investing in agricultural R&D are also clear from looking at the past, where a wide range of studies have clearly demonstrated the substantial benefits that resulted from investments in agricultural R&D. The importance of investing in R&D has also been highlighted by governments on numerous occasions in intergovernmental settings. Gathering, compiling and analysing multi-year, multi-country datasets on investments in agricultural R&D are complicated tasks that require a lot of meticulous work and dedication. Only a small number of groups have worked actively in this specialized area. In some cases, they have used different procedures for gathering data on public and private sector investments in agricultural research. This report reviews the current situation and trends regarding investments in agricultural R&D in the world and presents some clear results that emerge from recent studies.

In response to the significant changes that have occurred in the 1990s in the financing and organization of agricultural and natural resources research, The World Bank, in collaboration with the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, the UK Department for International Development, the International Food Policy Research Institute and Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit, initiated a series of regional and country case studies. The aim of these is to examine the impact of the changes. This book brings together the findings of these studies. It covers the changing nature of public sector research in industrialized and developing countries, including the effects of the investment stimulus created by the advent of biotechnology and intellectual property rights, and the collaborations which have resulted. The lessons learned from the different strategies adopted to organize and manage agricultural research are emphasized, along with their effectiveness in terms of the use of human and financial resources to achieve the research goals. The findings are summarized and a series of recommendations are made in terms of future food needs and environmentally sustainable development. Research managers, policy makers in national governments and funding agencies and agricultural economists will find this book an essential reference tool.

"The world's agricultural economy was transformed remarkably during the 20th century. The agricultural productivity growth that fueled this change was generated primarily by agricultural R&D financed and conducted by a small group of rich countries-especially the United States, but also Japan, Germany, and France. In an increasingly interdependent world, both rich and poor countries have depended on agricultural research conducted in the private and public laboratories of these few countries, even if they have not contributed to financing the activity. But now the rich-country research agendas are shifting. In particular, they are no longer as interested in simple productivity enhancement. Dietary patterns and other priorities change as incomes increase. Food-security concerns are still pervasive among poor people, predominantly in poor countries. In rich countries we see a declining emphasis on enhancing the production of staple foods and an increasing emphasis on enhancing certain attributes of food (such as growing demand for processed and so-called functional foods) and on food production systems (such as organic farming, humane livestock production systems, localized food sources, and "fair trade" coffee). In addition to growing differences between rich and poor countries in consumer demand for innovation, research agendas may diverge because of differences in producer and processor demands. Farmers in rich countries are demanding high-technology inputs that often are not as relevant for subsistence agriculture (such as precision farming technology or other capital-intensive methods). As well as differences in value-adding processes to serve consumer demands, differences in farm production technologies are emerging to serve the evolving agribusiness demands for farm products with specific attributes for particular food, feed, energy, medical, or industrial applications.The purpose of this volume is to document the changing institutions and investments in agricultural R&D in less-developed countries, in part to form a companion volume to Paying for Agricultural Productivity by providing a more complete global picture of the issues."