Reduced Funding for Agricultural Research Endangers Food Security
Growth in investment in agricultural research is slowing at an alarming rate. How does this impact crop yields that need to increase to feed a still growing global population? An interview.
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Global Food Journal: Over the past 40 years the growth rate of global funding for scientific research in agriculture and food has dropped. How serious is the situation?
Philip Pardey: At first glance, the situation actually looks pretty healthy. Collectively countries spent $38 billion (in 2020 international dollars) on total (public and private) agricultural and food research and development (agrifood R&D) in 1980. This increased to $110 billion in 2021. During this period, the world’s population grew by almost 80% (3.5 billion people), but thanks to agricultural science, aggregate food production more than kept pace with this growth. Most people have benefitted from this, but not all.
Philip Pardey is a Professor in the Department of Applied Economics and Director of the GEMS Informatics Center at the University of Minnesota, Saint Paul, USA.
However, a closer look reveals an alarming situation. In aggregate, the rate of inflation-adjusted growth in global spending on agrifood R&D has slowed substantially, falling from a long-term (1980-2015) average of 2.57% per year to 1.91% per year for the 2015-2021 period. Looking at the country-level there is a widespread pattern of spending slowdowns and cutbacks. Worryingly, almost one-third of the 150 countries for which data are available have cut back their real spending (negative growth) on public and private agri-food R&D after 2015. Without sufficient funding for scientific research, we risk failing to meet the increased demand for food caused by a growing world population and rising incomes, which could lead to higher food prices and a resurgence of hunger and malnutrition.
Why have funding growth rates in agrifood R&D slowed down over the past years?
There are multiple reasons for this. For example, some of the larger middle-income countries have sustained sizable increases in agrifood R&D investments because they have large populations and experienced widespread hunger in the past. However, particularly in the post-COVID era, many governments of both rich and poor countries alike, have run up large public spending deficits. This is putting renewed pressure on public spending for R&D. Furthermore, it typically takes decades for the economic and other benefits of agricultural R&D to be realised on a large scale. Given that most people and their governments are impatient, agrifood R&D thus tends to receive less political support than farm subsidies or other programmes that have more immediate impacts on farmers and consumers.
We are already seeing higher food prices because the pace of investment in, and thus the number of innovations available for the agri-food sectors, is slowing.
Prof. Philip PardeyWhich are the countries or regions that are spending most on agrifood R&D?
Over the past four decades, seismic shifts have occurred in the geographical landscape of agrifood R&D. In the 1980s, for example, high-income countries accounted for almost two thirds of the world’s agrifood R&D spending. Today, approximately half of all public and private agrifood R&D spending occurs in middle-income countries, with the share of high-income countries dropping to 43% in 2021. This reflects parallel shifts in the global distribution of economic activity in the agri-food sectors. China, India and Brazil are among the top five agrifood R&D spenders, alongside the United States and Japan. Half of the world’s agrifood R&D now takes place in the Asia-Pacific region.
Unfortunately, the gap between the scientific haves and have nots is widening. The spending share of the bottom 50 ranked R&D spending countries fell from 1.1% in 1980 to just 0.5% in 2021.
What about the role of private funding?
For at least the past 40 years, there has been a steady increase in the proportion of global agri-food R&D spending coming from the private sector. It rose from 32% in 1980 to 50% in 2021. The flip side is that the public sector’s share declined from around two-thirds to one half of the total. However, growth in private R&D has been uneven, mainly concentrated in the high- and upper-middle income countries.
That said, the role of the private sector is also growing in the lower-income countries because their agri-food value chains are beginning to transform. This transformation partly reflects farmers increasingly buying inputs like seeds and fertilizer from off-farm sources. In addition, food processing, food safety, logistics and retailing are expanding, and people are increasingly eating out in restaurants and fast-food chains. Technological developments in seed, machinery (including digital and informatics) and chemicals (fertilizers, crop and animal pest control, veterinary medicine), and food manufacturing, distribution and merchandising are spurring these growing and ever more complex food value chains. All these areas will continue to require significant private sector investments.
What role should the public sector play in future?
Private companies are accountable to their shareholders, who expect a return on their investment. Consequently, they overtly focus on developing farming and food manufacturing technologies that help their bottom line. This limits their incentives to invest heavily in pre-commercial research that lacks an evident and more immediate payoff. In contrast, universities and other public research institutions, which are largely funded by taxpayers, are better suited to undertaking riskier, more basic areas of research with longer-term and often less obvious types of payoffs, that benefit society as a whole. This includes research into the effects of climate change on agriculture (and vice versa), as well as research designed to avoid or mitigate the negative environmental impacts of agricultural production, such as water pollution from the overuse of fertilizers and other farm chemicals. In view of the growing role of the private sector we need to reconsider how scarce public investments are prioritized and deployed, in order to establish productive public-private partnerships.
How does lower financing for agrifood R&D affect global food production?
A large body of economic evidence shows that the payoffs to agrifood R&D are large. However, it often takes decades, for spending on agrifood R&D to realise benefits for farmers and consumers, such as lower production costs, improved productivity, lower food prices and better food safety and quality. The stalled and shrinking investments in agrifood R&D over the past few decades are already evident in the form of faltering growth in agricultural productivity. Shrinking investments in agrifood R&D are more than likely to undermine the productivity potential of agri-food sectors in the years ahead. This will be a great risk for our agrifood supplies and the natural resources (soil, water) used extensively in farming.
The simple case of crop yields shows the magnitude of the productivity slowdown. While it took only 12 years to increase the global average yield of wheat by 50% in the 1960s, it now takes around 30 years. Similarly, comparing the two periods (one starting in 1960, the other ending in 2022) the time taken to increase global rice yields by 50% doubled from 20 to 40 years, and almost doubled for maize from 16 to 27 years. It is also becoming increasingly difficult to sustain yield growth in the face of accelerating climate change, depleted natural resources, and the ever-present and ever-evolving threats posed by crop pests and diseases.
It will take many years to undo the damage caused by the recent decline in R&D financing. We are already seeing higher food prices because the pace of investment in, and thus the number of innovations available for the agri-food sectors, is slowing. This relates to water management, soil health, pest control, developing new crop varieties and animal breeds, and storing, processing and transporting food. The situation is serious and urgent, and I don't believe most politicians, nor the general public, understand this.
How is agrifood R&D spending on smallholder farming in poor countries faring?
The national research agencies of many poor countries have comparatively small and often moribund budgets. Some have hiring freezes, and most lack the resources to pay scientists adequately or provide them with timely access to the resources required for their research. Overall, public budgets are very tight, and agri-food R&D, with its substantial but often distant payoffs, often struggles to be prioritized in political processes where more immediate infrastructure, education and healthcare needs are also fighting for the same public support.
Moreover, over the past decades, many of these R&D systems in low-income countries have relied on substantial financial and technical support from richer countries. But the same political forces that are undermining public agri-food R&D spending in poor countries also seem to be undermining rich countries’ support for agricultural development efforts (including R&D) in poorer countries. This constitutes a double funding blow for the public agrifood R&D in these poorer parts of the world.
How are the UN agrifood research institutions affected by funding fatigue and cuts?
Investment in the CGIAR, the collective name for international agricultural R&D institutions, has declined dramatically by 27% between 2014 and 2024. This situation is exacerbated by the fact that this figure does not include the large financial cuts resulting from the demise of USAID in 2025. USAID was one of the largest single sources of support for the CGIAR system. In the face of these immediate cutbacks, the CGIAR system - or any new arrangements for international collective action in agri-food R&D - will need to radically adjust its business and operational models to remain effective.
How can we turn around the negative trends in agrifood R&D?
The business case for funding scientific research in food and agriculture is compelling. Hundreds of studies and thousands of Return on Investment estimates show that on average, each dollar invested in agrifood R&D yields a total social return of $10 - by way of improved productivity and profits for farmers, and lower prices for consumers. There is plenty of innovative promise on the horizon by way of new genetic, AI and digital technologies, among others, that can build on past R&D gains. But those prospective gains will be unrealized if we fail to invest in the R&D required to unlock this technological potential. The inevitable consequences of this will be a riskier and more fragile global food system for consumers and producers, especially in poorer regions where livelihoods are often more closely linked to agriculture.
The best collective bet for a more secure and sustainable global food system is to revitalize and sustain investments in (public) agri-food R&D, while reimagining and realigning innovation partnerships between the public and private sectors.
The interview was conducted by Erwin Northoff
Reference:
Philip G. Pardey, Connie Chan-Kang, Gert-Jan Stads, Yuan Chai, Julian M. Alston, Jan Greyling, Hernan Muñoz: Food will be more affordable – if we double funds for agriculture research now, Nature 648, 271-274 (2025)
