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ence spending while in the other regions in the developing world these shares were considerably lower 9 to 12. In
the industrialized world spending in agricultural RD was only 4 of the total ST investments.
8.1.1.3 Intensity of research
In order to place a country’s agricultural RD efforts in an internationally comparable context, measures other than
absolute levels of expenditures and numbers of researchers are needed, e.g., the intensity of investments in agricultural
research. The most common research intensity indicator is a measure of total public agricultural RD spending as a
percentage of agricultural output AgGDP.
5
The industrial- ized countries as a group spent 2.36 on public agricultural
RD for every 100 of agricultural output in 2000, a large increase over the 1.41 they spent per 100 of output two
decades earlier, but slightly down from the 1991 estimate of 2.38 Figure 8-4. This longer-run increase in research
intensity is in stark contrast to the group of developing countries; this group has seen no measurable growth in the
intensity of agricultural research since 1981. In 2000, the developing world spent just 53 cents on agricultural RD
for every 100 of agricultural output. Agricultural output grew much faster in the developing countries as a group
than in the industrialized countries. As a result, intensity ratios remained fairly stable for the developing regions as
a group despite overall higher growth rates in agricultural RD spending in the developing countries, and the inten-
sity gap between rich and poor countries has widened over the years. More than half of the industrialized countries for
5
Some exclude for-proit private agricultural research expen- ditures when forming this ratio, presuming that such spending
is directed toward input and postharvest activities that are not relected in AgGDP. For reasons of consistency with these other
studies, we excluded national and multinational private compa- nies but not nonproit institutions from the calculated intensity
ratios.
ment-owned, commercial irms was by multinational irms in the mid-1990s while in Malaysia only 10 of private
sector investment from multinationals. Foreign irms were concentrated in the agricultural chemical and livestock sub-
sectors; i.e., those with the highest growth rates Pray and Fuglie, 2001.
In SSA, only 2 of total agricultural RD is conducted by the private sector.
3
Almost two-thirds of the region’s pri- vate research was done in South Africa. Most irms in SSA
have few research staff with low total spending and they focus on crop improvement research, often export crops
Beintema and Stads, 2006.
4
Similarly as in the Asian re- gion, multinationals and locally owned companies play a
similarly important role. Given the tenuous market reali- ties facing much of African agriculture, it is unrealistic to
expect marked and rapid development of locally conducted private RD. Yet there may be substantial potential for tap-
ping into private agricultural RD done elsewhere through creative public-private joint venture arrangements Osgood,
2006. In 2000, total investments in all sciences conducted by
the public and private sectors combined were over 700 billion in 2000 international prices Table 8-4. The re-
gional shares in the global total differ substantially from the shares in agricultural RD spending. Industrialized coun-
tries combined accounted for about 80 of total science and technology ST spending while SSA’s share was less
than one percent. There are also considerable differences in the shares of public and private agricultural RD spending
in total ST spending. Agricultural RD spending in SSA accounted for more than one-third of the region’s total sci-
3
The private sector does, however, play a stronger role in funding agricultural research, as opposed to performing research itself.
Many private companies contract government and higher-educa- tion agencies to perform research on their behalf.
4
Examples are cotton in Zambia and Madagascar and sugar cane in Sudan and Uganda.
Table 8-3.
Estimated public and private agricultural RD investments, 2000. Expenditures
Shares
Public Private
Total Public
Private millions 2000 international dollars
percent Asia Pacific
7,523 663
8,186 91.9
8.1 Latin America
Caribbean 2,454
124 2,578
95.2 4.8
sub-Saharan Africa 1,461
26 1,486
98.3 1.7
West Asia North Africa 1,382
50 1,432
96.5 3.5
Developing countries, subtotal
12,819 862
13,682 93.7
6.3 Higher-income countries,
subtotal 10,191
12,086 22,277
45.7 54.3
Total 23,010
12,948 35,958
64.0 36.0
Source: Pardey et al., 2006b based on ASTI data.
