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New Publications
Books and Monographs
A Sustainability Challenge: Food Security for All: Report of Two Workshops Committee on Food Security for All as a Sustainability Challenge; National Research Council The National Research Council's Science and Technology for Sustainability Program hosted two workshops in 2011 addressing the sustainability challenges associated with food security for all. The first workshop, Measuring Food Insecurity and Assessing the Sustainability of Global Food Systems, explored the availability and quality of commonly used indicators for food security and malnutrition; poverty; and natural resources and agricultural productivity. It was organized around the three broad dimensions of sustainable food security: (1) availability, (2) access, and (3) utilization. The workshop reviewed the existing data to encourage action and identify knowledge gaps. The second workshop, Exploring Sustainable Solutions for Increasing Global Food Supplies, focused specifically on assuring the availability of adequate food supplies. How can food production be increased to meet the needs of a population expected to reach over 9 billion by 2050? Workshop objectives included identifying the major challenges and opportunities associated with achieving sustainable food security and identifying needed policy, science, and governance interventions. Workshop participants discussed long term natural resource constraints, specifically water, land and forests, soils, biodiversity and fisheries. They also examined the role of knowledge, technology, modern production practices, and infrastructure in supporting expanded agricultural production and the significant risks to future productivity posed by climate change. This is a report of two workshops. Agricultural Productivity and Natural Resource Endowments Philip Pardey view abstract | agenda/presentation link | publication web link |
Agricultural Technologies to Feed Future Generations: Reasons to Revitalise in G20: The Cannes Summit: A New Way Forward Pardey, Philip G. The leaders of the world's main economies met in Cannes on 3 and 4 November 2011, hoping to agree measures to head off the spectre of a global downturn. The main focus of the sixth G20 summit centred around the need to strengthen and sustain the still fragile global economic recovery, assaulted by financial crises and austerity in Europe, budget difficulties in the US, natural disasters in Japan, political unrest in the Middle East, and food price volatility and shortages around the world. Above all, the Cannes Summit was called on to deliver the bold new initiatives outlined by the French chair as the defining themes of the summit: regulating commodities markets, initiating a new international monetary system and modernising global governance for both the old multilateral organizations and the new G20 itself. Featuring articles from leaders including Mexican President Felipe Calderón and President of Korea Lee Myung-bak, plus submissions from respected commentators such as Juan Somavía of the International Labour Organization and Donald Kaberuka of the African Development Bank, the G20 Cannes publication provides an essential overview of the main topics under discussion. view abstract | view PDF | web link |
For Want of a Nail: The Case for Increased Agricultural R&D Spending Pardey, Philip G. & Alston, Julian M. A failure to increase publicly funded agricultural research and development (R&D) will likely have long-term consequences for the sustainability of US agriculture in a competitive global environment and for the natural resources on which it depends. This paper examines the benefits of such increases. view abstract | view PDF | web link |
Research Futures: Projecting Agricultural R&D Potentials for Latin America and the Caribbean Editors: Philip G. Pardey, Stanley Wood, and Reed Hertford This volume offers substantive clarification of the proper roles for public agricultural research and development (R&D) throughout Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and introduces an analytical framework for assessing cross-country collective action in funding and carrying out research. To inform research policy decisions, the book provides a wealth of newly digested information about trends in agricultural production, productivity, consumption, and trade for the region, placing those trends in a comparative international context. It also provides new information about the spatial patterns of agricultural production and productivity in LAC. especially critical information for making informed research priority decisions given the inherent agroecological specificity of many agricultural technologies. A major contribution of this volume is the provision of a new agroecological framework for analyzing local and spillover consequences of agricultural R&D in economic terms. The spatial spillover of technologies has been an important aspect of agricultural advances in the past and is likely to be even more important in the future. This is especially so as the critical size and scale for doing some of the important parts of agricultural R&D continue to increase, and as liberalizing trade regimes and other regulatory, market, and technological changes affect the prospects for cross-country research spillovers. The reconciliation of national, regional, and international interests in funding and conducting agricultural R&D will be greatly enhanced by meaningful information on the incidence of the benefits from the research. The new, ex ante assessment methods applied here provide a structured sense of these local and spillover consequences in ways that illustrate the efficiency gains (or losses) of collectively conceived and funded (or at least harmonized) agricultural R&D among countries and regions within and beyond LAC. Like all decisions to deploy public funds, politics plays a role in funding agricultural R&D. By improving our understanding of the potential incidence of the benefits of research, and better matching those benefits to the costs involved, we provide a basis for movement toward socially optimal amounts and mixes of research funding and effort. The result will be sizable and sustained long-term economic gains for LAC and other world regions.
Supplementary Tables and Figures
view abstract | view PDF | view Supplement PDF | web link |
The Shifting Patterns of Agricultural Production and Productivity Worldwide Edited by Julian Alston, Bruce Babcock, and Philip Pardey Included in this publication:
Introduction and overview. Alston, Julian M.; Babcock, Bruce A.; Pardey, Philip G. pp. 1-4. view abstract | view PDF | web link |
The economics of innovation and technical change in agriculture. Philip G. Pardey, Julian M. Alston, and Vernon W. Ruttan "Innovation in agriculture differs from innovation elsewhere in the economy in several important ways. In this chapter we highlight differences arising from (a) the atomistic nature of agricultural production, (b) the spatial specificity of agricultural technologies and the implications for spatial spillovers and the demand for adaptive research, and (c) the role of coevolving pests and diseases and changing weather and climate giving rise to demands for maintenance research, and other innovations that reduce the susceptibility of agricultural production to these uncontrolled factors. These features of agriculture mean that the nature and extent of market failures in the provision of agricultural research and innovation differ from their counterparts in other parts of the economy. Consequently, different government policies are implied, including different types of intellectual property protection and different roles of the government in funding and performing research. Informal innovation and technical discovery processes characterized agriculture from its beginnings some 10,000 years ago, providing a foundation for the organized science and innovation activities that have become increasingly important over the past century or two. This chapter reviews innovation and technical change in agriculture in this more]recent period, paying attention to research institutions, investments, and intellectual property. Special attention is given to issues of R&D attribution, the nature and length of the lags between research spending and its impacts on productivity, and various dimensions of innovation outcomes, including rates of return to agricultural research and the distribution of benefits." (p.940) view description and contents | web link |
Persistence Pays: U.S. Agricultural Productivity Growth and the Benefits from Public R&D Spending (Natural Resource Management and Policy) Julian M. Alston, Matthew A. Andersen, Jennifer S. James, and Philip G. Pardey This book documents the evolving path of U.S. agriculture in the 20th Century and the role of public R&D 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 R&D. 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 R&D spending and its effects on productivity are longer than commonly found or assumed in the prior published work. Also, the spillover effects of R&D 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 R&D 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.
Natural Resource Management and Policy (Series Editors) view abstract | view table of contents | view sample pages | web link
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Reassessing public-private roles in agricultural R&D for economic development. Philip G. Pardey As we move into the 21st Century, there are seismic shifts in the funding, structure and conduct of agricultural R&D worldwide that will affect the public and private performance of agricultural R&D for decades to come. Some selected science indicators--including new agricultural-specific and general R&D trends plus some intellectual property indicators related to crop varieties and global agricultural productivity trends will be presented to frame the discussion of these changing public and private sector research roles. view conference abstracts | view paper PDF | view complete proceedings PDF
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GCARD Background Paper Parallel Session: Capacity Development Philip G. Pardey and Prabhu L. Pingali Report prepared for the Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD), Montpellier, France, 28-31 March 2010. Philip Pardey is a professor in the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota, and Director of the University’s International Science and Technology Practice and Policy (InSTePP) Center. Prabhu Pingali is a Deputy Director of the Global Development Program of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Parts of this paper draw from Pardey and Alston (2010), although that paper has an explicit U.S. focus whereas the present paper is oriented to international research. The authors thank Connie Chan-Kang, Jason Beddow, Jenni James, Steve Dehmer and Stan Wood for especially valuable input into the preparation of this paper. Funding to support the preparation of this paper was provided by the Global Forum on Agricultural Research, drawing on research funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation by way of the HarvestChoice project (see www.HarvestChoice.org), and the University of Minnesota. view abstract | view PDF | web link |
U.S. Agricultural Research in a Global Food Security Setting Philip G. Pardey and Julian M. Alston Agricultural research and development are at a crossroads. The close of the twentieth century marked changes in policy contexts, fundamental shifts in the scientific basis for agricultural R&D, and shifting funding patterns for agricultural R&D in developed countries. Even though rates of return to agricultural research are demonstrably very high, we have seen a slowdown in spending growth and a diversion of funds away from farm productivity enhancement. Together these trends will contribute to a slowdown in farm productivity growth at a time when the market has, perhaps, begun to signal the beginning of the end of a half-century and more of global agricultural abundance. It is a crucial time for rethinking national policies and revitalizing multinational approaches for financing and conducting agricultural research. The authors present and evaluate practical policy actions for revitalizing agricultural R&D in the United States and globally to meet global food demand in the face of climate change and other challenges in the decades ahead.
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Agricultural Research, Productivity, and Food Prices in the Long Run Julian M. Alston, Jason M. Beddow, and Philip G. Pardey A reinvestment in agricultural R&D is critical to ensuring suffi cient food for the world in the coming decades. view abstract | view PDF | web link |
Investigaciones a futuro: proyeccion del potencial agropecuario en America Latina y el Caribe Philip G. Pardey, Stanley Wood and Reed Hertford, eds. Publication Includes:
Consecuencias de la innovacion. Pardey, Philip G.; Wood, Stanley; Hertford, Reed, pp.328-333. view abstract | view PDF | web link |
The Economics of Agricultural R&D Julian M. Alston, Philip G. Pardey, Jennifer S. James, and Matthew A. Andersen Agricultural research has transformed agriculture and in doing so contributed to the transformation of economies. Economic issues arise because agricultural research is subject to various market failures, because the resulting innovations and technological changes have important economic consequences for net income and its distribution, and because the consequences are difficult to discern and attribute. Economists have developed models and measures of the economic consequences of agricultural R&D and related policies in contributions that relate to a very broad literature ranging across production economics, development economics, industrial organization, economic history, welfare economics, political economy, econometrics, and so on. A key general finding is that the social rate of return to investments in agricultural R&D has been generally high. Specific findings differ depending on methods and modeling assumptions, particularly assumptions concerning the research lag distribution, the nature of the research-induced technological change, and the nature of the markets for the affected commodities. view abstract | view PDF | web link |
Should Governments Subsidize Tuition At Public Universities?: Amy Damon and Paul Glewwe In 2005, the state of Minnesota provided $1.29 billion for operating expenses at higher education institutions in Minnesota. The University of Minnesota received $591 million, while the seven state universities operated by the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) system received about $241 million (most of the remaining $460 million was allocated to community and technical colleges operated by MnSCU). These subsidies clearly benefit the students who enroll in these universities, but what benefits are received by Minnesota taxpayers who never attend a public university in their state? In this report we address this question by estimating the private and public benefits that accrue to Minnesotans from the additional education activities (but not the research activities) of these institutions that are generated by State Government subsidies to higher education. view abstract | view PDF | web link |
Science, Technology and Skills Pardey, Philip G., Julian Alston, Jenni James, Paul Glewwe, Eran Binenbaum, Terry Hurley, and Stanley Wood Prepared as a background paper for the "World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development," of which the full report and all associated background papers are available at the links below. view abstract | view paper | view full report | web link |
Long Gone Lake Wobegon?: The State of Investments in University of Minnesota Research Philip G. Pardey, Steven Dehmer, and Jason Beddow Getting a handle on the changing amount and structure of R&D expenditures by the University of Minnesota is a crucial and informative first step in any cost-benefit assessment of the University's impact and is the primary focus of this report. Following the executive summary, the second in this series of four briefs places academic research done at the University of Minnesota in the context of the other activities of the University and identifies shifts in the sources of support and the composition of the research. Companion briefs put changes in academic research spending in Minnesota and at the University of Minnesota in a state-by-state and comparative institutional setting. The evidence reveals a significant structural slowdown in the growth of spending in academic R&D in Minnesota, beginning in the early 1990s. Moreover, the amount and intensity of spending on academic R&D in the State of Minnesota is no longer "above average," and the University of Minnesota has lost considerable ground on a range of research spending metrics and is now lagging behind many of its peer groups of universities in other states. view abstract | view PDF | web link | Additional information on the impact of the University of Minnesota can be obtained from the recently released Alumni Survey available at http://www1.umn.edu/urelate/survey/.
Regulating Agricultural Biotechnology Economics and Policy Just, R.E., J.M. Alston, and D. Zilberman (eds) This book presents the first thorough economic analysis of current agricultural biotechnology regulation. The contributors, most of whom are agricultural economists working either in universities or NGOs, address issues such as commercial pesticides, the costs of approving new products, liability, benefits, consumer acceptance, regulation and its impacts, transgenic crops, social welfare implications, and biosafety.
Contributors view abstract | view PDF | web link
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Agricultural R&D in the Developing World: Too Little, Too Late? Philip G. Pardey, Julian M. Alston, and Roley R. Piggott (eds) Washington D.C.: International Food Policy Research Institute, 2006 This book was conceived as a companion to the 1999 volume, Paying for Agigultural Productivity, published by Johns Hopkins University Press in conjunction with IFPRI. That volume dealt with investments, institutions and policy processes regarding agricultural R&D in developed countries. This book addresses that same set of issues for the developing countries, and their relationship to the richer parts of the world where the preponderance of agricultural innovation still takes place. The book combines new evidence with economic theory and an economic way of thinking about science policy—highlighting the developing country aspects—as well as a set of in-depth, comparative country studies. These country studies take us well beyond generalities, providing insights into the important and potentially profound changes taking place within these countries and others they represent. The countries covered include the largest developing countries—China and India—as well as a range of richer and poorer and more- and less-developed countries, representing most parts of the globe. The information assembled here and the lessons learned in this volume argue
for refocusing attention on agricultural R&D as an instrument for long-run
economic development; as something that can help avert a continuation of the chronic
hunger and malnutrition that afflicts all too many people around the world. These
lessons can be made to pay off if they help revitalize multinational engagement
and investment in the global public goods of international agricultural research.
Contributors view abstract | view PDF | web link |
Agricultural Research: A Growing Global Divide? Philip G. Pardey, Nienke Beintema, Steven Dehmer, and Stanley Wood IFPRI, Food Policy Report No. 17, August 2006 Sustained, well-targeted, and effectively used investments in R&D have reaped handsome rewards from improved agricultural productivity and cheaper, higher quality foods and fibers. As we begin a new millennium, the global patterns of investments in agricultural R&D are changing in ways that may have profound consequences for the structure of agriculture worldwide and the ability of poor people in poor counties to feed themselves. This report documents and discusses these changing investment patterns, highlighting developments in the public and private sectors. It revises and carries forward to 2000 data that were previously reported in the 2001 IFPRI Food Policy Report Slow Magic: Agricultural R&D a Century After Mendel. Some past trends are continuing or have come into sharper focus, while others are moving in new directions not apparent in the previous series. In addition, this report illustrates the use of spatial data to analyze spillover prospects among countries or agroecologies and the targeting of R&D to address specific production problems like drought-induced production risks. More detailed data on the agricultural research investment trends summarized here can be accessed at www.asti.cgiar.org. view abstract | view PDF | web link |
Is War Necessary for Economic Growth? Military Procurement and Technology Development Vernon W. Ruttan New York: Oxford University Press, 2006 Military and defense-related procurement has been an important source of technology development across a broad spectrum of industries that account for an important share of United States industrial production. In this book, the author focuses on six general-purpose technologies: interchangeable parts and mass production; military and commercial aircraft; nuclear energy and electric power; computers and semiconductors; the INTERNET; and the space industries. In each of these industries, technology development would have occurred more slowly, and in some case much more slowly or not at all, in the absence of military and defense-related procurement. The book addresses three questions that have significant implications for the future growth of the United States economy. One is whether changes in the structure of the United States economy and of the defense-industrial base preclude military and defense-related procurement from playing the role in the development of advanced technology in the future, comparable to the role it has played in the past. A second question is whether public support for commercially oriented research and development will become an important source of new general-purpose technologies. A third and more disturbing question is whether a major war, or the threat of major war, will be necessary to mobilize the scientific, technical, and financial resources necessary to induce the development of new general-purpose technologies. When the history of United States technology development in the next half century is written, it will focus on incremental rather than revolutionary changes in both military and commercial technology. It will also be written within the context of slower productivity growth than of the relatively high rates that prevailed in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s or during the information technology bubble that began in the early 1990s. These will impose severe constraints on the capacity of the United States to sustain a global-class military posture and a position of leadership in the global economy. view abstract | view PDF | web link | Articles, etc.
Philip G. Pardey, Bonwoo Koo, Jennifer Drew, and Carol Nottenburg view abstract | view PDF | web link |
Julian M. Alston, Matt A. Andersen, Jennifer S. James, and Philip G. Pardey view abstract | view PDF | web link |
Matt A. Andersen, Julian M. Alston and Philip G. Pardey view abstract | view PDF | web link |
Matt A. Andersen, Julian M. Alston and Philip G. Pardey view abstract | view PDF | web link |
Frikkie Liebenberg, Philip G. Pardey and Michael Kahn view abstract | view PDF | web link |
J.M. Alston, J.M. Beddow and P.G. Pardey view abstract | view PDF | web link |
M.A. Andersen, J.M. Alston and P.G. Pardey view abstract | view PDF | web link |
A.O. Krueger view forward | view PDF | web link |
J.M. Alston, P.G. Pardey, and V.W. Ruttan view abstract | view PDF | web link |
P.G. Pardey, P.G., J.M. Alston and J.S. James view abstract | view PDF | web link |
Alston, J.M., and P.G. Pardey view abstract | view PDF | web link |
Andersen M.A., J.M. Alston, and P.G. Pardey view abstract | view PDF | web link |
R.R. Nelson view abstract | view PDF | web link |
Pardey, P.G., J.M. Alston, C. Chan-Kang, E. Magalhães, and S. Vosti view abstract | view PDF | web link |
Wright, B.D. and P.G. Pardey view abstract | view PDF | web link |
Wright, B.D. and P.G. Pardey view abstract | view PDF | web link |
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