Several trends in the agricultural research and development landscape are causing consternation for U.S. and international economists, with public investment cratering just as productivity headwinds pick up.
“We're seeing a basic and widespread slowing down and cutting back” in investments, Philip Pardey, a professor in science and technology policy at the University of Minnesota, said during an event hosted by the American Enterprise Institute on Thursday. “I've been tracking these data for 40 years, and I'm more worried about what I see in these trends than I've seen in decades.”
Pardey pointed out that over 60% of economies worldwide have slowed the growth of their investments in agricultural R&D in recent decades, and almost a third of those countries are now actively cutting back on R&D spending.
The global innovation landscape has endured periods of slowed investment from high-income countries before, he argued, but such a widespread retreat is a new phenomenon.
Institutions that have been at the forefront of lifting agricultural productivity worldwide are feeling the pinch. Across the CGIAR system, funding fell around 25% in the last 12 months following the withdrawal of $180 million of support that came from the U.S. Agency for International Development, Pardey said.
The U.S. has slashed its public investment in real terms by around a third since 2002, according to Agriculture Department data, putting investment around where it was in the mid-1980s.
The situation is particularly challenging when considering the mounting threats to agricultural productivity. A changing climate continues to eat into agricultural productivity, bringing increased risk of crop and livestock pests and diseases, and many economies continue to impose strict limits on which productivity-boosting technologies will not be permitted.
“We've got these increasing headwinds,” Pardey said. Between 40% and 60% of U.S. research is just to keep current productivity levels, he added.
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It isn’t just that the U.S. is deprioritizing agricultural research, it’s that key strategic competitors are among the few stepping into the gap left behind. China has emerged as a major R&D player and now spends about double the U.S. in its public and private investments. China, India and Brazil alone now spend the equivalent of all of the high-income countries combined, Pardey said.
Beijing is also upping its efforts in the regions that advanced economies will have to rely on for long-term economic growth as populations begin to fall, argued Christopher Barrett, a professor of applied economics at Cornell University.
The African continent will be where much of the global food demand growth come from in the coming decades, Barrett argued.
“We have to invest much more in Africa,” he added. “China trains roughly three times as many young Africans as graduate students as the United States.”
The U.S. will need bright young immigrants to work on food productivity issues in the coming years. But instead of forging partnerships and strengthening ties with institutions in countries with expanding populations, the U.S. has “withdrawn from investment in young scientific talent, both domestically and around the world,” Barrett said.
Analysts have expressed concern that Africa-focused research could be sidelined as the Trump administration revives research under the Feed the Future initiative.
During Thursday’s event, Anna Nelson, executive director of the Food Security Leadership Council, also reiterated that she hopes Africa will continue to be an important area of research for the labs, “for reasons of need and also impact.”
“So many challenges that are emerging in Africa are ones that matter for the rest of the world as well,” she added.
Congressional command
Part of the challenge, AEI’s Director of Agricultural Policy Studies Vincent Smith argued, is congressional reliance on agricultural industry groups’ input in crafting the farm bill and other key legislation.
“The farm lobby has a long history of saying R&D is important and then putting it at a very low priority in their asks for Congress,” Smith said.
Framing the problem in terms that engage the private sector outside of the farming industries, Barrett argued, could spur more lawmakers to take the issue of U.S. agricultural R&D more seriously.
The issue has health and environmental implications, he said, with productivity gains reducing air and water contaminants and less agricultural expansion into wild terrain slashing the opportunities for zoonotic diseases to spread to humans.
“I think as people start to appreciate the public health case for investments in sustainable productivity growth in healthy foods, we can start to change the coalitions a little bit and change the audience,” he argued.
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