The participation of nongovernmental agencies in agricultural RD is increasing.

Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology: Investment and Economic Returns | 503 which data exists have higher research intensity ratios in 2000 than they did in 1981 and the majority of them spent in excess of 2.50 on public agricultural RD for every 100 of AgGDP. Most countries in our Asian and Latin American sample 9 out 11 Asian countries and 8 out of 11 Latin American countries increased their intensity ratios over the 1981-2000. Only six of the 26 countries in SSA had higher intensity in 2000 compared to two decades earlier. The large and growing gap between developing and in- dustrialized countries as groups is even larger in terms of total, i.e., public and private, agricultural research spending Figure 8-5. In 2000, the intensity of total spending was nine times higher in rich countries than in poor ones; and four times higher than when only public research spending is used as the basis of the intensity calculation. Other research intensity ratios can be calculated as well. The industrialized countries as a group spent 692 on public Table 8-4 Total ST spending by region and shares agriculture in total, 2000. ST spending Shares in global total ST spending Agricultural RD as a share of total ST spending millions 2000 international dollars percent Asia Pacific 26 94,950 13.4 8.6 Latin America Caribbean 32 21,244 3.0 12.1 sub-Saharan Africa 44 3,992 0.6 37.2 West Asia North Africa 18 14,893 2.1 9.6 Developing countries, subtotal 120 135,079 19.1 10.1 Higher-income countries 23 573,964 80.9 3.9 Total 143 709,043 100 5.1 Note: These estimates exclude East Europe and former Soviet Union countries. The number of countries included in regional totals is shown in parentheses. Regional sample sizes are slightly different from those in Table 8-1. Source: Pardey et al., 2006b. Figure 8-4. Intensity of public agricultural RD investments over agricultural output. Source: Pardey et al., 2006b based on ASTI data. Note: The intensity ratios measure total public agricultural RD spending as a percentage of agricultural GDP. agricultural research per agricultural worker in 2000, more than double the corresponding 1981 ratio Table 8-5. The developing countries as a group spent just 10 per agricul- tural worker in 2000, substantially less than double the 1981 igure. These differences are not too surprising considering that a much smaller share of the workforce in industrialized countries is employed in agriculture, and the absolute num- ber of agricultural workers declined more rapidly in these countries than it did in the developing countries. Expressing agricultural RD spending per capita gives a different trend than the other two intensity calculations. Spending per capita for the industrialized countries as a group increased substantially from 1981 to 1991, but has declined since then. About half of the rich countries expe- rienced declining levels of spending per capita; Japan most severely due to the sharp decline in agricultural RD spend- ing in that country during the 1990s. Spending per capita