SLOW MAGIC: AGRICULTURAL R&D A CENTURY AFTER MENDEL

Abstract

tanding on the brink of a biotechnology revolution in agriculture, it is timely to take stock of the investments and institutional trends regarding agricultural R&D worldwide.In this report we assemble and assess new and updated evidence regarding investments in agricultural R&D by public and private agencies, contrasting developments in rich and poor countries.The payoffs to investments in agricultural research are considerable, and appear to remain so, but there are new policy concerns about the roles of the public and private sectors in funding and carrying out the research, especially in light of the revolutionary changes in the underlying sciences and the incentives facing research (as intellectual property regimes become stronger and international trade in science and technologies grows).This report tracks trends in agricultural R&D over the past several decades.We also put research policies in a much longer timeframe, highlighting the critical importance that the accumulated stock of scientific knowledge has on today's productivity performance and its effect on innovation and economic growth in the future.SLOW MAGIC 1 T o Thomas Malthus, the math was compelling: exponential population growth outrunning linear growth in food supplies-the latter dependent on land area, a resource that must inevitably reach a physical limit-with catastrophic consequences.Writing in 1798, Malthus had no way of anticipating how different the future path of food supply would be from the past.Yet his vision of the future is surprisingly resilient, persisting in the minds of many despite two centuries of evidence to the contrary.Predictions of the inevitability of world famine have been proven wrong by the dramatic increases in agricultural productivity, especially in the later half of the 20th century (Box 1).The growth in productivity has enabled world food supplies to outpace the unprecedented increase in food demand caused by jumps in the growth rate of world income, and the doubling and redoubling of the human population.