U.S. agricultural R&D in an era of falling public funding

By Matthew Clancy,

Keith Fuglie

& Paul Heisey

WASHINGTON — Unlike in many other parts of the U.S. economy, the public sector rather than the private sector has historically been the dominant player in the conduct of research and development (R&D) directly used by agriculture. The U.S. public sector has also been the largest performer of agricultural R&D worldwide.

In recent years, however, this status quo changed substantially. Between 1970 and 2008, the share of total food and agricultural R&D conducted in the United States by the. . .