Public Agriculture Research Spending and Future U.S. Agricultural Productivity Growth: Scenarios for 2010-2050
by
Paul Heisey,
Sun Ling Wang, and
Keith FuglieEconomic Brief No. (EB-17) 6 pp, July 2011
By 2050, global agricultural demand is projected to grow by 70-100 percent due to population growth, energy demands, and higher incomes in developing countries. Meeting this demand from existing agricultural resources will require raising global agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) by a similar level. The rate of TFP growth of U.S. agriculture has averaged about 1.5 percent annually over the past 50 years, but stagnant (inflation-adjusted) funding for public agricultural research since the 1980s may be causing agricultural TFP growth to slow down. ERS simulations indicate that if U.S. public agricultural R&D spending remains constant (in nominal terms) until 2050, the annual rate of agricultural TFP growth will fall to under 0.75 percent and U.S. agricultural output will increase by only 40 percent by 2050. Under this scenario, raising output beyond this level would require bringing more land, labor, capital, materials, and other resources into production.
Keywords: Agricultural research, public research, economic benefit analysis, productivity, total factor productivity
In this publication...
Charts and graphs (in .png format) from this report are available in the .zip file listed below. The .zip file also contains a document (readme.txt) that lists the name and title of each chart or graph file.
Need help with PDFs?
Order this Publication