Dr. Philip Pardey

 

 

World food prices are set to rise even higher if we don't see a renewed effort to invest in agricultural research.

That's according to Dr. Philip Pardey, Professor of Science and Technology Policy at the University of Minnesota. Pardey, who does extensive development work in Africa with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, delivered the annual Daryl Kraft Lecture at the University of Manitoba on Tuesday.

He says the rate at which agricultural yields are increasing has dropped significantly over the last two decades.

"The big driver (of food prices) on the supply side is productivity growth. My concern is that we have fairly pervasive evidence of a slowdown in productivity growth in agriculture worldwide, which if true, and persists, portends to a future where commodity prices will trend up, not down," says Pardey. "The evidence suggests that there was a shift in the late 80s, early 90s in countries like the U.S., that productivity rates have slowed quite dramatically."

He says from the end of the Second World War up to 1990, productivity growth in U.S. agriculture averaged 2 percent per year. Since 1990, it has averaged just over 1 percent per year.

Pardey says they have found a direct link between spending on research and development and growth in productivity.

"Without revitalizing R and D spending it's hard to imagine that we're going to get a return to the rates of growth in productivity that we witnessed 20 or 30 years ago, unless we get serious about investing in R and D," he says.

On average, Pardey says there is a 25 year productivity lag on research investment.

"We see this evidence of very high returns to R and D spending. For example, in the U.S. our estimates are that for every dollar of investment you get 30 dollars back. So the question is, if it's such a good deal, why aren't we doing more of it? Part of it is this disconnect between political cycles, in terms of the commitments of politicians that have timescales of three to four years between elections, and the timescales over which these R and D investments play out, which are decadanal long."

 


 

Listen to Kelvin Heppner's full conversation with Dr. Philip Pardey:

 

 

~ Thursday, March 3, 2011 ~