Why must it be "publicly funded" research?

There are hundreds of companies, including the big multinationals, which would gladly fund research leading to increased agricultural productivity. But they are vilified and hounded by those who think the poor of the world should live on scraps and handouts.

DavidL makes an excellent point.. high prices should result in additional spending and effort by companies and farmers who want to take advantage of those higher prices. Government investment should really be confined to areas where there has been a market failure. Has there been a market failure, if so in what areas?

For that matter how much has government investment contributed to the increase in yields the writer noted, and why the slowdown? This slowdown has been noted before but I don't think its been linked to any reduction in government spending in the area.

Lot of questions but no answers in the article.

DavidL,

It's all very well to espouse the validity of increased yields riding on the back of multinational involvement in agriculture. But what of the unsustainable nature of such practice? Take a peek at India where multinationals have profited for over 40 years from the Green Revolution. You will be confronted with massively degraded soil, polluted and depleted groundwater, loss of biodiversity, huge debt carried by peasant farmers and a steadily decreasing yield, as the soil, devoid of its organic base, can no longer support this model.

I would think this article screams private research rather than public as its an area where entrepreneurs are needed. Increasing yields is important but we also need more focus on why some governments (Russia, many of the old soviet states and some developed SE Asian nations) drive up the price of foods during times of low output.

Never forget that greed is a significant factor in global food prices.

Poirot
Look - how do you make the connection between multinational involvement in agriculture and pollution and all the bad things you say has happened in India? You could also point to multinational involvement in Australian agriculture which has not had the same effects, or Canada, or New Zealand for that matter. If you look closely you will realise that any of the effects you are complaining about, if they exist, has more to do with the social system and government regulation. In any case, you do realise that yields have increased in India as well in recent decades, quite dramatically..

Cheryl
this business about the ex-soviet bloc countries driving up food prices.. um, is there any source for that.. food prices had been declining in real terms for decades until the recent spike. Wasn't aware that those countries were able to drive up prices. I've been through some analysis which doesn't mention that.. The big story has always been heavey EU subsidisation of its farmers. So any source??

Curmudgeon
Market failure provides a good framework to consider this issue. There are some genuine and significant ones: for example subsidies for biofuels, export bans and import tariffs, and the massive regulatory and political barriers that GM foods have to overcome before they are adopted. Of course, the solution to these is to address the distortion, not to introduce subsidies.

I think there is also a case for government investment in agricultural research, where there are genuine knowledge spill-overs – especially in improving yields in developing countries, where the need is greatest and the barriers to profitable commercialisation of innovation can be largest (the green revolution was not finance by agribusiness but governments and the Rockerfeller Foundation).

By and large you are right, though – high prices will encourage farmers and agribusiness to find more productive ways of doing things. In the long term, agricultural productivity growth has tended to outstrip productivity growth more broadly, and government is only a small part of that story.