Agrosecurity: The Role of the Agricultural Experiment Stations

Abstracts of Nippon Dojo-Hiryogaku Zasshi

Technical change is one of the critical elements that determine the pace of agricultural growth in developing countries. International agricultural research centers currently initiate much of the scientific work necessary for technical change, but individual countries also need to be able to identify what is relevant in the existing stock of international knowledge, to conduct adaptive research and farm-level tests, and thus to tailor techniques discovered in the laboratory to the specific requirements of different farming locations.1 These functions require investments in national scientific and technical institutions. The public sector is heavily involved in this enterprise because agricultural research requires lumpy investments, involves externalities, gives rise to public goods, and is subject to long gestation lags. As a measure of the scale of the effort of multilateral and bilateral official donors in supporting farm technology development at the national and international levels, the Consultative Group on International Agriculture Research (CGIAR) spent $163 million worldwide in 1985.2 Despite these expenditures, the process by which countries develop their own agricultural research capacity is little understood, as are the links in the long chain of research, experimentation, adaptation, and dissemination of technology. The theory of induced innovation, for instance, which explains technical change and institutional innovation as the result of relative factor scarcities, tends to treat as a "black box" the process of national capacity-building.3 Others have postulated that the demand for technical change reflects pressures from interest groups, but this approach has limited value as an explanation

The new agricultural research and technology transfer policy agenda

THE Union of Myanmar experienced its first highly pathogenic avian influenza (hpai) outbreaks from March to April 2006. These occurred in the Mandalay and Sagain divisions, in the central part...

The public sector agricultural research system in the United States is currently the subject of intense critical review. In spite of its documented record of success, measured in terms of discovering, developing, and extending new technology over the past century, indications are that public financial support for the system will be sufficient only to maintain research programs at present levels for the next several years.1 Support for the system expressed as a fraction of the value of agricultural product has been declining for the past fifteen years or so, and further declines appear likely. In addition to the decline in its support base, the system has become the subject of a critical debate over its effectiveness. Many of its critics betray little understanding of the distinctive characteristics of the system that have made agricultural research programs among the most successful public research programs in the United States or of the body of economic studies that have documented this success.2 It would not be wise, however, for this writer or for the managers and administrators of the system itself to dwell on the ignorance of the critics. Much of their criticism is valid, and the decline in the funding base for the system is real. The process of criticism and reform is vital to the maintenance of effectiveness of any public sector program not directly subject to the discipline of the market place. Agricultural research institutions in the United States have experienced major reform at least once in the past. In the early part of this century, an intense struggle between the practical researchers and the more researchers ultimately produced reform in favor of the scientific interests. By the 1930s, modem agricultural science departments and experiment station organizations emerged from this process as the scientific forces won most of the battles. The outcome of this reform process was the development of genuine agricultural sciences. That is, each agricultural science drew on one or more basic general mother sciences for methodology and scientific principles. At the same time, most of the agricultural sciences developed a scientific knowledge cumulation process internal to their own disciplines.3 Some contemporary critics would argue that a similar reform process is required today. They note that the agricultural science disciplines have become highly inbred and have lost close ties with the more general mother sciences from which they drew sustenance to develop as bona fide sciences in the earlier period. The failure of the agricultural sciences to be in the forefront of the recent biotechnology boom could be cited in support of this criticism. Other critics see the problems as being primarily a matter of coordination. The The author is a professor, Economic Growth Center, Yale University. This paper was prepared while he was a visiting fellow at the East-West Population Institute. I See Evenson, Waggoner, and Ruttan for a review of the studies of the productivity of the system. Rose-Ackerman and Evenson report estimates of the support base for research conducted in the State Agricultural Experiment Stations and conclude that expenditures will increase less than proportionately with farm output. 2 See Evenson, Waggoner, and Ruttan, and Ruttan for discussions of the mechanics of articulation of client interests and their role in making the system more effective. Among current critics, little concern is expressed over the means by which research systems effectively serve their clients. 3 This, of course, varied a great deal from discipline to discipline. Agricultural economics, for example, developed an internal knowledge cumulation process in its early years by drawing on three mother sciences: agronomy (itself a daughter science), economics, and statistics. This combination enabled it to achieve important early contributions to econometric studies as well as to applied agricultural studies in farm management and policy.

Abstracts of Nippon Dojo-Hiryogaku Zasshi

The policies influencing the American agricultural research agenda are developed by Congress, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the 58 state agricultural experiment stations of the land-grant university system, with input from various advisory groups. Despite the slow pace of change in the agricultural research agenda, there are no special barriers keeping the research system from adapting to contemporary and alternative agriculture issues. Rather, agricultural researchers have neither appropriate professional incentives nor sufficient financial incentives to shift toward alternative agriculture. Public intervention to alter these incentives has been thwarted because agricultural research institutions set their agendas through obscure processes. Five areas of policy change that could improve the prospects for evolution of a significant alternative agriculture research agenda are: 1) imposing a means test for formula fund payment limitations to states, with saved funds directed toward alternative agriculture research; 2) making priority setting a condition for receiving federalfunds for agricultural research to make the research agenda-setting process clearer to all interested parties; 3) requiring that federally funded research programs be categorized by the specific social goals toward which they are directed, to aid in judgments about the relevance of specific public agricultural research programs; 4) requiring information on research programs to be reported in a way that is specifically relevant to the alternative agriculture agenda; 5) formally involving public citizens and farmers in reviewing agricultural research grants to assure that the usefulness of proposed research is weighed along with scientific merit. These proposals complement current interest in making science generally more responsive to national priorities, and are entirely feasible within current agricultural research policy processes. Their effectiveness, however, is limited by the shrinking influence of federal funding in the state agricultural experiment station system, and they are only incremental changes within the existing system rather than radical reforms toward an alternative research system.

Agricultural Research at the Crossroads

Journal of Food ScienceVolume 25, Issue 6 p. 693-705 THE EFFECT OF MATURITY AND STORAGE ON PHENOLIC CONTENT, ENZYMATIC ACTIVITY AND DISCOLORATION OF POTATOESa NELL I. MONDY, NELL I. MONDY Graduate School of Nutrition New York State College of Home Economics and State Agricultural Experiment Station at Cornell University, Ithaca, New. YorkSearch for more papers by this authorBARBARA P. KLEIN, BARBARA P. KLEIN Graduate School of Nutrition New York State College of Home Economics and State Agricultural Experiment Station at Cornell University, Ithaca, New. YorkSearch for more papers by this authorLANELL I. SMITH, LANELL I. SMITH Graduate School of Nutrition New York State College of Home Economics and State Agricultural Experiment Station at Cornell University, Ithaca, New. York Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, the Agricultural Experiment Station, College Station, Texas.Search for more papers by this author NELL I. MONDY, NELL I. MONDY Graduate School of Nutrition New York State College of Home Economics and State Agricultural Experiment Station at Cornell University, Ithaca, New. YorkSearch for more papers by this authorBARBARA P. KLEIN, BARBARA P. KLEIN Graduate School of Nutrition New York State College of Home Economics and State Agricultural Experiment Station at Cornell University, Ithaca, New. YorkSearch for more papers by this authorLANELL I. SMITH, LANELL I. SMITH Graduate School of Nutrition New York State College of Home Economics and State Agricultural Experiment Station at Cornell University, Ithaca, New. York Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, the Agricultural Experiment Station, College Station, Texas.Search for more papers by this author First published: November 1960 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2621.1960.tb00016.xCitations: 30 a Presented at Nineteenth Annual Meeting of the Institute of Food Technologists, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, May 19, 1959. AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume25, Issue6November 1960Pages 693-705 RelatedInformation

The nature of American agricultural research has been the subject of an intense debate during the past several decades. Land-grant colleges, agricultural experiment stations, and the United States Department of Agriculture have drawn public ire (Hightower, 1973; Berry, 1977; Friedland and Kappel, 1979; Vogeler, 1981). They also have generated a vigorous defense (McCalla, 1978; Ruttan, 1982; Busch and Lacy, 1983, pp. 167–204). Two questions rest at the heart of the matter. Is publicly funded agricultural research to assist small farmers, agribusiness, and/or consumers, and does it accomplish its mission(s) well? The first query raises a host of political and ethical issues — the fate of rural communities, the role of minorities in agriculture and agricultural research, justification for continued public funding, and the like. The second depends to a great degree on the answer to the first. But it also hinges on the measurement of effectiveness: is effectiveness measured by cost, immediate applications, long-range goals, or in some other way?

Experiment station research expenditures are responsive to economic and institutional forces. A four‐equation model of resources allocation to state agricultural experiment station research, consisting of demand and supply equations for research, an equation allocating state governmental revenues to station research, and an expenditure identity, is presented. A reduced‐form expenditure equation, derived from this model, is fitted to cross‐sectional data for forty‐eight U.S. states, pooled together for 1960, 1965,and 1970. A large share of the variance in per capita expenditures of state agricultural experiment stations is explained by the variables included in the model.

Starch research comprises several aspects covering a multitude of domains. It is essential to elucidate the themes, trends, and knowledge structure of starch research on a holistic basis to understand its historical evolution and research hotspots, and to promote the development of starch research. In this review, the direction and discipline of starch research are analyzed based on 84 853 Web of Science (WoS) core collection documents over three decades. Co‐citation network maps, influential authors, collaborative patterns, changing paradigms, and research hotspots of starch research in food science and technology are identified using CiteSpace software. Starch research in food science and technology is becoming increasingly popular and is undergoing rapid development. Collaborative networks of countries, institutions, and study authors have been formed to study the functional properties of starch and their effects on human health; the effects of polyphenols and polysaccharides on starch structure, physicochemical properties, and digestibility; and Pickering emulsions, which are hotspots of starch research in food science and technology. These three research hotspots have their research emphases. In this review, a broad perspective is provided to facilitate the understanding of starch research and its various aspects.

This report presents an overview of the Philippine national agricultural R&D system in the context of the country’s wider national science and technology (S&T) policy. The discussion includes institutional developments and recent trends in human and financial resources based on data collected under the Agricultural Science and Technology Indicators (ASTI) initiative. With a total of close to 4,000 full-time equivalent researchers in 2002, the Philippines has one of the largest agricultural research systems in Asia. But in terms of total agricultural research spending, the Philippines ranks behind more economically advanced Asian countries such as Malaysia and South Korea. Nonetheless, agricultural R&D spending in the Philippines has shown significant growth in recent years. In 2002, the country invested $269 million in agricultural R&D (in 2000 international dollars), which is an increase of two-thirds over the level recorded a decade earlier. Public agricultural R&D in the Philippines is heavily reliant on government sources of support. In 2002, the Philippine government provided more than 85 percent of funding to the government agencies. In recent years, however, the share of internally generated resources has gradually increased. Foreign donor support plays only a marginal role in the Philippine agricultural R&D system, distinguishing it from some other countries in the region. The organization of public agricultural R&D in the Philippines is complex. The Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCARRD) acts as the central coordinating body providing support to 132 implementing R&D agencies collectively called the National Agriculture and Resources Research and Development Network (NARRDN) as well as 14 region-based consortia. Compared to most countries in the Asia-Pacific region, the private sector plays a relatively important role in conducting agricultural R&D in the Philippines. We estimated that about 18 percent of total (public and private) spending in agricultural R&D was done by the private sector, mostly fruit plantations. Authors' Preface

Inflation erodes the purchasing power of dollars in every budget in our society. Budgets of agricultural research organizations have been no exception. Inflation has been defined as an increase in the average of prices {I}. A popular indicator of the rate of inflation is the annual percentage change in the Consumer Price Index (cpr) {2}, The CPI is intended to apply to consumer purchases, yet the concept implies that a similar indicator of the annual percentage change in prices of inputs purchased by agricultural research organizations conceivably could be developed. This paper reports an attempt to develop a quantitative measure of changes in the purchasing power of dollars appropriated from 1973 to 1978 for agricultural research in state agricultural experiment stations (SAES). It is intended to be a complete agricultural research price index, constructed to provide an accurate index for deflating the rising dollar expenditures for agricultural research to constant purchasing power. It is hoped such an index will lead to more accurate forecasting of the rate of increase in the cost of doing research and thus help agricultural science administrators adjust for inflation in budget making and expenditure programming.

U.S. agricultural research deflators: 1890–1985