The impacts of public investment in and for agriculture: synthesis of the existing evidence.

Abstract

In light of a reinvigorated policy orientation toward agriculture in developing countries following recent dramatic developments affecting food prices and agricultural land use, public resource allocation decisionmakers ought to have access to the existing evidence from academic research on the impact of public investments related to and in support of agriculture. The objective of this review paper is to synthesize available knowledge on the impact of public investments in and for agriculture in developing countries and to draw conclusions from this body of work to help determine policy and future research directions. The potential for agricultural investments to have significant and observable effects on health and nutrition is great, through access to own-produced food, by lowering food prices, and by raising incomes with which to buy more and more nutritious food and health services. An emerging literature on the cost-effectiveness of biofortification programs reveals strong impact of these interventions. For example, the internal rate of return (IRR) of biofortification investments range from 66 to 133 percent for golden rice in the Philippines, and the costs of averting loss of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) through zinc and iron biofortification of wheat and rice in many cases meet standards of high cost effectiveness.