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Lowell S. Hardin1/H1>
Lowell S. Hardin1
Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics, Assistant Director of International Programs in Agriculture, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907, USA
International agricultural research, which flourished in the 1970s and early 1980s, faces an uncertain future. This paper identifies some of the apparent reasons why support for such research increased rapidly, then declined. It argues that if the downward trend in investment in international agricultural research is not reversed, global prices of basic foods may again rise as they did in 1973-74; and that by then the momentum of essential research programs will have been seriously disrupted.
Keywords: international agricultural research
During the latter third of the 20th century, international agricultural research has come of age. Its many contributions to human well-being include its major role in making the 'Green Revolution' in Asia possible. Nevertheless, as we approach the 21st century, the future of international agricultural research is an uncertain one. This discussion speaks to that uncertainty. It draws upon my involvement with international agricultural research centres and University-based international research and development progty-based international research and development programs over the last 30 years. The analysis is in three parts: first, I identify some of the apparent reasons why support for international agricultural research increased rapidly in the 1970s and early 1980s; second, I address the question of why support for such work has since declined; and, third, I speculate about what may be ahead.
From 1973-1981, official assistance to agriculture in developing countries rose by more than three times. Support for the International Agricultural Research Centres (IARCs) in the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) increased even more rapidly, going up over four times.
Why did this growth in agricultural development assistance occur? More specifically, what prompted the sharp rise in commitments to research?
In my view, the following are among the factors that contributed to making this a 'Golden Era' for international agricultural research.
In the 1970s and 1980s, national security was a major continuing political concern. The potential spread of communism in developing countries was seen by western nations as an ever-present threat. Development assistance, including agricultural rest. Development assistance, including agricultural research support, was viewed as an important means of confronting that threat. The presence of this security issue helped make increased expenditure for multilateral and bilateral aid, seldom popular with the public, politically acceptable.
In 1973-1974, a combination of events brought about a tightening of the world food situation. Parts of Asia suffered a drought. The Soviet Union decided to expand livestock production so that the consumption of meat, milk and eggs would increase. To implement that policy change, the USSR sharply increased grain and soybean imports. World grain stocks were greatly reduced. Grain prices doubled. In the US and other industrial countries, consumers demonstrated against the sharp, unwelcome increases in food prices. In response, the US Government placed an embargo on the export of certain commodities. Globally, concerns rose to such levels that a World Food Conference was called by the Food and Agricultural Organization. In the ensuing meeting in Rome, the case for increased international agricultural research was widely supported.
An increasing number of people came to believe that, after all, Malthus was right. In fact, unchecked population growth could, they reasoned, outrun the food supply. The Club of reasoned, outrun the food supply. The Club of Rome projected strict limits to growth. In their widely publicized book, the Paddock brothers forecast famine in 1975 (Paddock and Paddock, 1967). It was time, some held, to apply the practice of triage to food aid. On the battlefield, the use of triage meant that doctors attended first to those wounded deemed most likely to survive. In a like manner, the proponents of triage held that those populations or nations most likely to survive should be the first to receive food aid. The analogy of the over-loaded lifeboat was also expounded. As people climb into a lifeboat, there comes a time when one more passenger will submerge it. So also, argued neo-malthusians, the time was coming soon when planet earth could carry no more people.
Farmers and traders in exporting countries saw sales to hungry nations as virtually unlimited. Prices were strong and rising. Export agriculture prospered. With market prospects so favorable, most farmers and their organizations in exporting countries saw no major problems in supporting international agricultural research. Under these circumstances, few viewed such public expenditures as a threat to their then expanding markets.
Traditional approaches to development assistance were being questioned. The simplistic concept thare being questioned. The simplistic concept that technology transfer was the avenue to enhanced agricultural productivity was under increased scrutiny. It was now demonstrated that to be effective, most technologies had to be locally adapted. We learned that major extension efforts (e.g. the Ford Foundation-sponsored Intensive Agricultural District Program in India) rarely enabled farmers to 'pull themselves up by their own bootstraps'. New, improved technologies and policies were required. Extension educators needed more than pre-existing local practices and materials to extend. For such technologies and policies to be invented, adapted and tested, research was required.
The research and writings of T.W. Schultz (1964), his colleagues and students, achieved wide acceptance. This work, for which he was later named a Nobel Laureate, dealt with many aspects of the development process. What I single out here is his thesis that for rural farm people in the developing countries to advance, the traditional agriculture needs to be disrupted. That is precisely what genuinely improved technology does when it becomes available. Introduction of a new high-yielding variety of wheat, for example, disrupts the traditional, low-level equilibrium that previously existed. It is difficult to make such equilibrium-disrupting innovations (in the biological, chemical, managerial or p (in the biological, chemical, managerial or public policy areas) available without strategic and adaptive research.
My sense is that in both donor and developing country communities, it came to be understood that, contrary to earlier views, agriculture could be an important engine of growth. Many also accepted the thesis that a promising route to agricultural development involved: (1) investment in people (human capital formation); (2) the simultaneous or sequential creation and strengthening of institutions (schools, universities, research and education systems) so that trained people have adequate organizations in which to apply their skills; and (3) the generation by the people in these strengthened institutions of the new technologies, policies and programmes which help disrupt the traditional, low-level equilibrium.
The concept of developing a mission-oriented research institute that focused on a single commodity was not new. Colonial powers had used such centres with considerable success for research on crops such as rubber, cocoa and sugar cane. However, the use of this model for food crop research was new when the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, in cooperation with the government of the Philippines, launched the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in 1960. This innovative institution proved to be a spec This innovative institution proved to be a spectacular success. Within six years, a short period in plant breeding work, IRRI developed a new stiff, short stemmed rice (IR8), capable of more than doubling the yields of conventional varieties.
IRRI owed part of its early success to the use of strategies employed by Norman Borlaug and colleagues in the pioneering Rockefeller Foundation wheat program in Mexico. That unconventional collaborative program, which was started in 1943, was on its way toward creating new, high yielding, semi-dwarf wheats well before IRRI was founded. Several scientists in the Rockefeller/Mexico program transferred to the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) when it was established in 1965. The success of CIMMYT's semi-dwarf wheat, improved agronomic practices and research strategies (especially in Mexico, India and Pakistan) catapulted the centre's work into international prominence.
Other non-conventional research modes were also showing promise. In the USA, these included the commodity-centred Collaborative Research Support Program (CRSP), developed and supported (as were the CGIAR centres) by USAID. This institutional innovation has generally worked quite well; CRSP's constitute a partnership involving developing countries and US Land Grant Colleges and Universities. Most of the CRSPs also collaborate wversities. Most of the CRSPs also collaborate with the relevant IARCs.
International multidisciplinary research teams have been mobilized. They focus on means of reducing the constraints to sustained production and use of each of the major basic foods, on improving the management of natural resources, and on enhancing the well being of the less advantaged. As new innovative institutions, the IARCs and CRSPs demonstrated that well organized mission-oriented research could make a difference. In fact, impact studies showed estimated internal rates of return to such research endeavours of 50 to as much as 90 per cent (Evanson, 1991). Such relatively unprecedented rates of return proved to be persuasive to many policymakers and administrators in major donor organizations.
Proponents of increased international support for agricultural research found strong allies in the leadership of key development organizations. Senior officers in the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations2 already heavily committed through the IARCs they had created, were persuasive in both word and deed. Heads of relevant United Nations organizations3 and administrators of major bilateral aid agencies4 provided personal and institutional backing. This was especially noteworthy in the case of the World Bank and the members of the CGIAR, m of the World Bank and the members of the CGIAR, most of whom supported research outside of, as well as within, the IARCs.
External assistance to agriculture in low-income countries levelled off, then declined in the 1980s from about US$12 billion to $10 billion (in constant 1985 dollars) (von Braun et al., 1993). From 1980-1990 agriculture's share of total development assistance declined from 20-14 per cent. US assistance to agriculture fell even more sharply. By 1990, USAID's agricultural commitments were about one quarter of those of 1980.
Only part of the external assistance to agriculture is for research support. However, funding for research has followed a similar pattern with the downward trend now extending through 1994 (e.g. US support for the IARCs is 26 per cent less in 1994 than it was in 1993). To what can this retrenchment be attributed? Is more involved than the flip side of the forces that propelled support upwards a decade or so earlier? Probably so. In my judgment, there are a number of contributing factors.
Concern about the degradation of natural resources has moved to center stage as a global issue. Fundamentally, environmentalists and agriculturalists share many common goals (Ruttan, 1994)5. Development and e many common goals (Ruttan, 1994)5. Development and use of sustainable systems have been and continue to be high priority objectives of agricultural researchers. To-date, however, the initiatives of the environmentalists, needed as they are, appear to be more competitive than complementary in their impact on agricultural research support.
Uncertainty exists about the environmental and social influences of technical developments (e.g. atomic power, biotechnology, mechanization, herbicide and insecticide use, etc.). Thus, some see science more nearly as part of the problem than part of the solution. Such scepticism about science is a generic issue that touches all sectors-including public attitudes toward support for agricultural production research.
The real prices of basic foods continue their long-term downward slope. This decline is due primarily to the widespread development and use of unit cost reducing technologies. The principal beneficiaries are consumers.
So long as food prices are relatively
low and are not increasing in real terms, it is difficult to argue
that a food shortage exists or is imminent. Hunger and malnutrition,
still widespread in several societies, are due primarily to poverty,
not to failure of global production.
That food supplies are large enough
to hold prices down is in no small measure attributable to prior
investments in agricultural research. The policies in the industrial
countries of providing subsidies to agricultural producers are
also contributing factors. As governments reduce their subsidies
to producers and consumers; as populations and incomes rise; and
as research support declines; odds are that basic food prices
will again strengthen.
Contrary to the situation that existed
when agricultural research was expanding rapidly, aid budgets
in industrial countries are generally under great pressure due
to stagnation and recession in their economies. Developing countries,
too, are facing major financial problems with their high levels
of indebtedness, slow economic growth and low prices of export
commodities. Further, agricultural interests in food exporting
countries are less tolerant now than formerly about their governments
providing technical assistance to 'potential competitors'. The
flourishing export markets they once envisioned have not been
sustained. With this decline in export demand, farmers and farm
organizations in industrial countries have become more sensitive
to supporting international agricultural research, even when it
is targeted on poor countries.en when it
is targeted on poor countries.Economic reversals
Some donors concluded, quite accurately, that in the absence of changes in public policies in recipient countries, otherwise sound development programmes were unlikely to succeed. Thus, they turned their energies more to macroeconomic reforms. For example, USAID and the World Bank shifted part of their assistance from government projects to support of private activity. Aid tied to policy changes (e.g. devaluation, trade liberalization) helps speed reform. But investment in the public sector to produce public goods declines. In developing countries, agricultural research is one of those public goods as a very small portion of their research has been privatized.
With the disappearance of the cold war threat to national security, one of the reasons for development assistance to the poorer countries no longer exists. Food security in the Third World, important though it is, is no match for national security at home as a politically mobilizing issue.
In my view, future levels of support for international agricultural research hinge heavily on the answers to two questions:
With respect to question one, my sense is that projections of world population increases of almost 100 million a year for the next two decades are quite solid. More than 90 per cent of the increase will occur in developing countries, much of it in the cities. Because needed additional food supplies must come from intensification of production on land already under cultivation, pressures on the natural resource base will inevitably rise. As carrying capacity is stretched to feed about a billion more people (almost the equivalent of a new China) each decade, there will be upward pressure on food prices, especially so if investment in international agricultural research does not increase. At best, it appears that such increases are unlikely to come until after the momentum of needed research programmes has been seriously disrupted, and key scientists have redirected their energies to better supported endeavors.
As to question
As to question two, I am convinced
that well managed investments in agricultural research are essential
to our future well-being. The evidence is conclusive in the area
of food and fibre production (Plucknett, 1993), and shows promise
of becoming so with respect to the environment.
Although I view strong support of
research as necessary, in itself research is not sufficient.
Incentives, dissemination, proper policies, reliable supplies
of inputs and growth of non-farm employment opportunities are
as essential as are the improved technologies and systems the
research generates.
The lag between the time when the
investment is made in research and the time when sustainable productivity
gains are realized is relatively long. This fact gives rise to
my greatest concern about the decline in research support. One
cannot successfully run a research enterprise on a 'stop and go'
basis. Continuity of effort is required not only to sustain previous
gains (maintenance research) but also to make further advances.
Whence international agricultural
research? In time I feel confident that the level of public support
will of necessity increase. So also will the investment in proprietary
research by international suppliers. This is unlikely to occur
quickly. The world is generally complacent cur
quickly. The world is generally complacent about food security
issues at present. So the short run outlook for expanded support
is not favourable. Commendable efforts are being made to increase
public understanding8. We are challenged to initiate
and contribute to more of these important analytical and educational
efforts. Such efforts notwithstanding, however, real prices of
food may have to rise before we see a political climate that is
favourable to increased public support of international agricultural
research.
Brown, LR et al. (1994) State
of the World 1994 Worldwatch Institute. WW Norton & Co.,
New York
Evanson. R (1991) 'Measuring the
economic consequences of agricultural research investments', in
Assessing the Impact of International Agricultural Research
for Sustainable Development, Cornell University. Ithaca,
NY
Paddock, W and Paddock, P (1967)
Famine 1975! America's Decision: Who Will Survive?, Little,
Brown & Co., Boston, MA
Pinstrup-Anderson, P (1994) 'World
food trends and future food security', The International Food
Policy Research Institute, Washington, DC
Plucknett. D L (1993) 'Science and
agricultural transformation', Internat93) 'Science and
agricultural transformation', International Food Policy Research
Institute, Lectures Series No. 1, Washington, DC
Ruttan, VW (ed.) (1994) Agriculture
Environment and Health, Sustainable Development in the 21st Century,
University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
Schultz, TW (1964) Transforming
Traditional Agriculture, Yale University Press, New Haven,
CT
von Braun, J, Hopkins, RF, Puetz,
D and Pandya-Lorch, R (1993) 'Aid to agriculture, reversing the
decline', International Food Policy Research Institute,
Washington, DC
1Formerly
Senior Agricultural Officer, International Division, Ford Foundation,
1965-1981.
2Prime
actors were George Harrar, President, and Sterling Wortman, Director
of Agricultural Science, Rockefeller Foundation; F.F. Hill and
David Bell, Ford Foundation, International Program Vice Presidents.
3Essential
and imaginative support was provided by Robert McNamara, President
of the World Bank; Adekke Boerma, Director General, FAO; and Paul
Hoffman, Head, UNDP.
4John
Hannah, Administrator of the US Agency for International Development,
committed the US Government to bear 25 per cent of the cost of
the expanded CGIAR system of centres.
5Ruttan
(1994) calls for a bridging of the 'island empires' of agriculture,
health and environmental sciences.
6Brown
et al. (1994) make the case that on a global basis, per
capita food production has been declining since 1984.
7Pinstrup-Anderson
(1994) holds that the mass starvation predicted for Asia in the
1970s and 1980s did not occur because science was effectively
put to work to expand crop yields. He believes that failure to
invest in agricultural research now will show up in production
shortfalls 10-20 years hence, and that the problems associated
with environmental degradation will present themselves sooner.
8Among
these are initiatives underway in the World Bank ('Feeding 10
Billion People in 2050' by its Action Group on Food Security;
loans for strengthening NARS); the Rockefeller, Ford and McKnight
Founing NARS); the Rockefeller, Ford and McKnight
Foundations in the US; the Crawford Fund in Australia; the US
Association of Land Grant Colleges and Universities: the IARCs;
PVOs and NGOs; the UN Conference on Population and Development,
etc. References