The impact of climate change, coupled with a drop-off in investment in research and development, is leading to a slowdown in productivity in the US agriculture sector, a new Cornell University study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal has suggested.
The study suggests that public sector investment needs to ‘reverse course’ in order to ensure that the sector can maintain agricultural productivity through to 2050, with a 5% to 8% per year growth in research investment needed – an investment comparable to that made following the two world wars.
The researchers also state that a fixed annual investment of $2.2 billion to $3.8 billion would help to offset the climate-induced slowdown.
‘Not unprecedented’
“What we find is that we need a very steep growth rate – but it’s not unprecedented,” commented senior author Ariel Ortiz-Bobea, associate professor at Cornell. “We’ve seen the US step up in the past. We can do this, but the time is now.”
Ortiz-Bobea, an applied economist with expertise in agricultural, environmental and energy policy, added that urgency is needed given that publicly-funded research generally takes time to impact productivity.
“It’s not like an iPhone that can be designed in California, manufactured in China and used in Ithaca,” he said. “The research has to be done in close proximity to the people using it, and then it needs to be adopted by farmers. So, it takes time, and the longer we wait, the longer we stay on a path where we’re less productive, while other nations like China and Brazil are investing heavily in R&D.”
Current investment
Current public sector investment in agricultural R&D is about $5 billion, with growth of only 0.5% per year from 1970 to 2000, followed by a period of stagnation. Ortiz-Bobea is calling for a scenario that would add 5% to 8% worth of funding every year, for a total investment of $208 billion to $434 billion by 2050.
“The current environment is one where any public spending is seen as a waste, and obviously any use of taxpayer dollars should be assessed in a systematic way,” Ortiz-Bobea said. “But decades of research shows that agricultural research has a very high return on investment for the country.” Read more here.
