Enhancing Mutual Benefits from Firm‐Level Research Efforts

Abstract

The food system is usually thought of as having a series of participants that includes consumers, retailers, wholesalers, processors, assemblers, farmers or ranchers, input manufacturers, and input suppliers. Although there are others, the university is one important participant omitted from that list. The omission is made by both food industry executives and university scholars. Excluding the university component from the food system diminishes the opportunities of interaction between agribusiness and the campus. Potential for reciprocal advantage through increased interaction would suggest considering the university as an integral part of the food system, although currently the industrial and scholastic activities have fairly large nonoverlapping parts (figure 1). This paper discusses the potential for enlarging the UB intersection in figure 1 by enhancing the mutual benefits from firm-level studies such as those being conducted under existing research approval policies. Barriers blocking potential interaction and suggestions for suppressing them are analyzed with specific illustrations from a case example. Alternative activities for capturing benefits similar to those from firm-level research are also explored briefly.