Duration: 10/01/2011 to 09/30/2016

Administrative Advisor(s):

NIFA Reps:

Non-Technical Summary

Statement of Issues and Justification

Statement of Issues and Justification

1. What is the need for the project as indicated by stakeholders?

The first stakeholder driven need is measurement of agricultural productivity growth and the contribution of agricultural research investment to that growth. Productivity is literally a measure of the amount of agricultural production one may obtain from a given level of land, water, and other inputs. Conversely, it also measure the amount of resources required to achieve a given level of production. Productivity growth then is a fundamental requirement in meeting demands for food, fiber, and biofuels without placing undue pressure on land, water, and environmental resources. Productivity growth is also necessary to maintain the competitiveness of US agriculture. Key policy questions here are (a) is productivity growth slowing down and contributing to rising global food prices and (b) is productivity growth on pace to provide for future global food security?

Agricultural research investment is a prime contributor to agricultural productivity growth. NC-1034 research examines the causal linkages between different measures innovative activity and productivity growth. Such measures include public and private research investment, patenting, and biotechnology field trials. There are long, but pervasive lags between research investment and productivity change. This means that changes in research investment today can have long-lasting implications for future productivity growth. There are public policy demands for an understanding of how research-funding decisions made today affect future productivity growth. Estimates of the rates of return to agricultural research are important to inform decisions about funding of agricultural research. There is ongoing demand for estimation of payoffs to agricultural research.

A second critical need that NC-1034 addresses is objective evaluation of the social impacts of new agricultural technologies. Ongoing public policy debates over the first generation of agricultural biotechnologies exemplify the need for objective analysis. In those debates, key questions included (a) how have new technologies affected producer returns and environmental quality? (b) How has changing structure and pricing strategies among input suppliers altered the distribution of gains between input supply firms, agricultural producers, and consumers; and (c) how have regulatory frameworks to manage risk affected the diffusion, returns, and sustainable use of new technologies? These questions will remain important in evaluating succeeding generations of agricultural technologies. NC-1034 will continue to address them.

Society has called upon the agricultural research system to address a broader array of issues. These include natural resource management, improved nutrition, and meeting competing demands from agriculture as a source of both food and fuel. There is thus a need to expand research evaluation methods to account for changes in environmental quality, consumer nutrition and health, and growing linkages between energy and agricultural sectors. This includes both anticipatory, ex ante evaluations of potential impacts of emerging technologies and ex post evaluations of the diffusion and impacts of recently deployed technologies. Ex ante analyses help policymakers anticipate potential impacts of new technologies, while ex post analyses allow lessons to be drawn from experience and to guide future research.

A third critical need is for systematic study of process of agricultural research itself. The contributions of agricultural research depend not only on the level of funding, but also the sources and mechanisms of funding and the organization of the research process. There have been dramatic changes in the organization and funding of agricultural research that pose challenges and present opportunities. The share of state agricultural experiment station (SAES) research funded by USDA has remained roughly constant. Yet, the share funded by state governments has declined, while the share funded by the private sector and other federal agencies has increased. This has led to the recent development of several multi-institute research partnerships between universities, federal labs, and private industries, particularly in the areas of biotechnology and biofuels R&D. The structure and performance of such collaborations merit serious research investigation to inform public policy debates about public-private research partnerships.

The Bayh-Dole Act altered the incentives for IPR protection and distribution of income from discoveries financed completely or partially by the federal government. This provided Land Grants and other universities with income-generating rights over discoveries. The Bayh-Dole Act was a major force behind the rapid growth of university technology transfer offices and associated increases in university patenting, licensing, and start-up companies, and increase in licensing income of public universities. Changes in intellectual property rights, however, have involved a trade-off between providing economic incentives and rewards for innovation and maintaining scientists access to information and technologies that serve as research tools. Finding the proper balance between IPR protection and access to research tools is critical to avoiding research delays and hindering our systems collective research effort.

Finally, there are public policy questions that arise from the transformation in the way USDA funds the Land Grants and other cooperating institutions. From 1993 to 2009, formula-based, Hatch funds fell from 49% to 33% of CSREES (now NIFA) administered funding, while competitive, National Research Initiative funding rose from 16% to 23%. NIFAs Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) Competitive Grants Program promises to further transform U.S. agricultural research funding with greater emphasis on multi-year, multi-disciplinary, and multi-state projects. Policy questions include: (a) how will different institutions fair in this new funding environment? (b) How will they maintain base funding in an era of relatively less state and formula funding support? (c) To what extent can AFRI-promoted collaborations increase research spillover benefits across states?

2. What is the importance of the work and what are the consequences are if it is not done?

Members of NC-1034 (and its predecessor committees) have conducted pioneering work in (a) agricultural productivity measurement; (b) estimation of returns to agricultural research; (c) the determinants and effects of adoption of new agricultural technologies, particularly biotechnologies; (d) implications of changes in intellectual property rights for U.S. agriculture; (d) improved design of biotechnology regulations; and (e) evaluation of research funding mechanisms and processes. In fact, virtually all of the analyses of agricultural research conducted worldwide are based on methods developed by members of this group. Publications of group members have been widely cited in National Academy of Sciences studies of agricultural research and biotechnology.

What would be the consequences of the groups work were not done? Some consequences include: (i) a lack of an objective knowledge base to inform public policy debates concerning biotechnology and other new agricultural technologies; (ii) lack of an understanding and appreciation of the social contribution of agricultural research; and (iii) lack of understanding of barriers to productivity growth and the role of agricultural research in maintaining global food security and U.S. agricultural competitiveness.

3. What is the technical feasibility of the research?

NC-1034 members have developed robust methods to evaluate agricultural research systems and technologies. The groups record of accomplishment of significant publications speaks to the feasibility of such methods. Demands on agricultural research systems have expanded over time and so has the groups research methods. Members have drawn on a variety of methods, as problems require. These include applications of agricultural economics, industrial organization, environmental valuation, rural sociology, human health and nutrition assessment, and energy economics.

4. What are the advantages for doing the work as a multistate effort?

Adoption of technologies and their impacts spill over across state and international boundaries. While there is a certain value of studying impacts of new technologies in their local contexts, there is also value in the ability to compare and contrast how new technologies affect agricultural producers in different areas. Both federal agencies and commodity groups are interested in evaluations of technology that can be scaled-up to commodity-wide or national scale impacts. Multistate collaborations facilitate comparative analyses. They also provide economies of scope for NC-1034 members. Such economies include (a) the ability to pool resources and share data; (b) avoiding redundancy in research activities; (c) increasing complementarity in research (e.g. on member may work on one aspect of a general problem, while another research works on another); and (d) transfer of methods across research applications. Members can also pool expertise in different production systems. For example, comprehensive evaluation of herbicide resistant crop varieties requires knowledge of corn, soybean, and cotton production systems in very different agronomic regions. Pooling research expertise can help identify commonalities in new technologies as well as regional or crop-specific differences. Another advantage of multistate collaboration is that it allows members to benefit from knowledge gained by other members from other multi-disciplinary projects. For example, one NC-1034 may gain valuable knowledge from working on a project with plant breeders, while another may have gained knowledge from weed scientists. Multistate collaboration raises awareness of contributions in other fields of research and of researchers they may collaborate with in the future.

5. What would be the likely impacts will be from successfully continuing NC-1034s work?

We envision future contributions to build on previous ones. These include: (a) a continued stream of high impact publications; (b) continued contributions to the knowledge base for agricultural research systems and technologies as evidenced by contributions to National Academy of Sciences panels, EPA Science Advisory Panels, and responses to requests from other federal and state agencies; and (c) continued contributions to decision making in the area of biotechnology regulation.

Over the next five years, we also envision future areas of focus to include (i) bio-fortification; (ii) linkages between agricultural, forestry, and energy research in biofuels development; (iii) expanded use of precision agriculture and advanced information systems to apply inputs more precisely, reduce input costs, and minimize environmental degradation; (iv) new developments in nanotechnology; (v) expanded use of genetic markers; and (vi) mechanization in horticultural crops to address farm labor supply constraints.

Related, Current and Previous Work

Review of CRIS suggests there is very little duplication of NC-1034 research activities. NC-1034 research primarily applies two fields of science  economics and sociology  to the subject research on research management (not research management per se). According to CRIS 48 projects cross-listed economics applied to research on research management. Of these, 22 were either listings for NC-1034 activities at individual experiment stations are other related projects by NC-1034 members. Six other projects have been terminated, while another relates primarily to watershed management in a single state. There were 19 remaining projects related to administering grants under USDAs Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) Program. According to CRIS, 23 projects cross-listed sociology applied to research on research management. Of these, all were related to NC-1034 directly or NC-1034 members, terminated projects, or projects administering SARE grants.

These SARE related projects primarily address awarding research funds rather than evaluating them. There thus appears to be no duplication of effort. However, there may be scope for future collaboration and complementarity between activities in the future. SARE programs maintain information and histories of funded projects and outcomes, while NC-1034 concentrates on evaluation of funding mechanisms and research projects. Lessons learned from NC-1034 research on evaluating economic returns to research could assist SARE in program design, while SARE data and information could be a source of data for future NC-1034 analysis and publications.

During this past project period, NC1034 research has addressed three main objectives:
1. To estimate the expected and actual flow of benefits and costs of research for agriculture, and related areas, including the incidence of their distribution.
2. To analyze decision strategies for funding, planning, managing, and evaluating agricultural research by public institutions and private organizations.
3. To analyze opportunities, risks, and net benefits from existing and potential future public-private sector linkages, including new institutions (joint ventures, partnering, consortia, specialty research centers, start-up companies, intellectual property), technology transfer.

From the beginning date of the project (10/1/2006) until the end of 2010, NC-1034 members will have published more than 200 journal articles, books, book chapters and research reports addressing these three main objectives. Below we discuss previous, current and related research, focusing on research outputs highlighting collaborative efforts / projects.

Under earlier project years NC-1034 (and predecessor committee) members have conducted much of the seminal research on (a) measuring agricultural productivity growth (see e.g. Huffman and Evenson, 1993; Alston and Pardey, 1996; Ball and Norton, 2002) (b) developing and applying methods to measure the economic returns to agricultural research (e.g. Huffman and Evenson, 1993; Alston, Norton, and Pardey, 1995; Pardey and Smith, 2004); and (c) assessing adoption of new agricultural technologies and assessing their social impacts (e.g. Feder, Just, and Zilberman, 1985; Sunding and Zilberman, 2000).

The years 2007 and 2008 saw a reduction in the stocks-to-use ratios of many agricultural commodities and sharp, concomitant increases in global food prices. This prompted concern about world food security, whether agricultural productivity growth is keeping pace with population growth, and trade-offs in the production of food and biofuels. The 2009 NC-1034 research symposium, The World Food Crisis: The Future Role of Agricultural R & D Programs, Biotechnology, and Crop-Related Energy Policy co-sponsored by USDAs Economic Research Service and the Farm Foundation brought different researchers and policy officials together to address these issues. Participants included representatives from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the International Food Policy Research Institute, the International Consortium for Agricultural Biotechnology Research (ICABR) and CSREES. This symposium and subsequent workshops and conferences organized by NC-1034 members have led to a set of critical publications.

Along with several individual peer-reviewed articles this included:

1. A special section of Choices (2010) a journal of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association on the theme of Agricultural Productivity and Global Food Security in the Long Run organized by NC-1034 members and including 6 articles from NC-1034 members and collaborators.
2. The book, Alston, J., B. Babcock, P. Pardey, eds. (2010). The Shifting Patterns of Agricultural Production and Productivity Worldwide. Midwest Agribusiness Trade Research and Information Center (MATRIC), Iowa State University, Ames, IA.
3. A special issue of the Journal of Productivity Analysis (2010) devoted to agricultural productivity growth in developing countries.
4. The book, Alston, J.M., M.A. Andersen, J.S. James, P.G. Pardey (2010) Persistence Pays: U.S. Agricultural Productivity Growth and the Benefits from Public R&D Spending. Springer, New York.
5. A special issue of AgBioForum (2010) devoted to the bioeconomy with four sub-themes: the global food crisis, long-term sustainability of biofuels, food safety and nutrition, and constraints and incentives for innovation and globalization.
6. Prior to the 2007 NC-1034 conference, members collaborated on a special issue of AgBioForum devoted to Biofortified Food Crops: Progress and Prospects in Developing Countries.

NC-1034 continued to build on earlier assessments of adoption, diffusion, and impacts of agricultural biotechnologies (e.g. Huang et al., 2002; Qaim and Zilberman, 2003). The edited volume featuring NC-1034 research R.E. Just, J.M. Alston, and D. Zilberman (eds.) Regulating Agricultural Biotechnology. Springer, New York received the 2006 Quality of Communication Award from the American Agricultural Economics Association.

NC-1034 members contributed significantly to the National Research Council (NRC) report, The Impact of Genetically Engineered Crops on Farm Sustainability in the United States. The goal of the NRC, organized by the National Academy of Sciences, is to further knowledge and to advise the federal government on critical issues in science and technology. A stated objective of NC-1034 was that project participants would continue to be directly involved in NRC publications and to be sources of key cited references. David Zilberman (CA) served on the report writing committee and research findings by NC-1034 members were widely cited in the NRC report.

1. NC-1034 members contributed two papers to a special section of Choices (2010) on the theme of Genetically Engineered Crops and U.S. Agricultural Sustainability. These papers were an outgrowth of the larger NRC report, as was the article by Ervin, Glenna, and Jussaume Jr. (2010).

2. A special issue of AgBioForum (2010) devoted to Herbicide Resistant Crops--Diffusion, Benefits, Pricing, and Resistance Management featured multiple publications by NC-1034 members. Research collaborations arose as a result of earlier NC-1034 meetings and the Regulating Agricultural Biotechnology book project.

Other research activities assessed consumer acceptance of genetically modified food products.

Examples of earlier NC-134 research analyzing decision strategies for funding, planning, managing, and evaluating agricultural research by public institutions and private organizations include extensive treatments in books Alston and Pardey (1996) and Huffman and Evenson (1993, 2006). In addition, representative peer-reviewed articles address issues such as efficient incentives for agricultural research (Just and Huffman, 2000), the potential application of research prizes (Masters, 2005). Collaborative publications included Huffman et al. (2006), which examined how changes in emphasis between formula funds and competitive grants might affect the distribution of USDA research funds across states.

Previous NC-1034 research on public-private research linkages includes chapters in the edited volume Fuglie and Schimmelpfennig (2000) and Buccola and Xia (1997). Work on intellectual property rights includes Moschini and Lapan (1997), while Koo, Pardey and Wright (2003) examined the costs of gene bank management.

The 2007 NC-1034 research symposium Agricultural Research, Intellectual Property and Incentives for Innovation was held in conjunction with the Jenny Lanjouw Memorial Conference at the University of California, Berkeley. Representative subsequent publications include Glenna, et al. (2007) and Just and Huffman who assess the impacts of universityindustry research relations and increasing proprietary behavior by universities. Using new survey data, Lei, Juneja, and Wright (2009) found that scientists consider the proliferation of intellectual property protection to have a strongly negative effect on research. In addition, NC-1034 members contributed 5 chapters to the volume Jay P. Kesan. (2007) Agricultural biotechnology and intellectual property: seeds of change. CABI, Cambridge, MA.

Objectives

1. To measure trends, patterns, and sources of agricultural productivity growth.
   
2. To estimate the expected and actual flow of benefits and costs of research for agriculture, and related areas, including the incidence of their distribution.
   
3. To analyze decision strategies for funding, planning, managing, and evaluating agricultural research by public institutions and private organizations.
   
4. To analyze opportunities, risks, and net benefits from existing and potential future public-private sector linkages, including new institutions (joint ventures, partnering, consortia, speciality research centers, start-up companies, intellectual property), technology transfer.
   
5. To analyze the adoption and diffusion of new agricultural technologies, assess physical, economic, and institutional barriers to adoption, and evaluate policies intended to overcome such barriers.
   

Methods

We have outlined 5 major objectives for the project. Methods are discussed in relation to the objective they seek to achieve. Objective 1: To measure trends, patterns, and sources of agricultural productivity growth. Methods to Achieve Objective 1: Research will continue to refine measurement of agricultural productivity. Simply put, productivity measures how much output one can obtain from a given level of inputs, or conversely, the resource requirements to generate a given level of output. Common partial measures of productivity include crop yield (e.g. bushels per acre) or labor productivity (output per labor hour). Total factor productivity measures aggregate output per unit of aggregate input. Measuring productivity accurately is a non-trivial issue, as one must determine how to measure changes in the quality of labor and human capital. Developing input data for developing countries is especially challenging. Productivity measures may also account for production of environmental disamenities. Ongoing research will account for such factors and examine the environmental implications of productivity growth (e.g. implications for chemical, energy and water requirements). An unsettled research and policy question that will continue to be examined is whether U.S. and global agricultural productivity is slowing down? Productivity growth has implications for U.S. agricultural exports, world commodity prices, and food security. New econometric methods will be combined with better measures of agricultural inputs and outputs to improve assessments of productivity trends. Objective 2: To estimate the expected and actual flow of benefits and costs of research for agriculture, and related areas, including the incidence of their distribution. Methods to Achieve Objective 2: Ongoing research will continue to measure benefits of agricultural research. Continuing challenges are measurement (a) of time lags between agricultural R&D investments and changes in productivity and (b) specification and measurement of technological spillovers across regions and commodities. Another set of challenges involves collecting and analyzing indicators of private sector R&D activity. These indicators may include R&D funding, patenting and field trials for new biotechnologies. Econometric methods will be employed to estimate what factors account for differences across space in time in public agricultural research funding. This includes differences across states within the United States as well as cross-country differences. Determinants of private R&D, patenting and field trials will also be estimated. Data on public and private R&D effort will be compared with productivity data to estimate how changes in R&D activity has affected trends and patterns in agricultural productivity. Implications for food prices and security will be assessed. Thus, research will examine the linkages from agricultural R&D investment, to productivity growth, to food security. Returns to research will be evaluated by a broader set of metrics than agricultural production. Other factors such as nutrition, health and environmental impacts will be measured and assessed. The project will also examine trade-offs between food and biofuels production and to assess the role of agricultural R&D in enhancing capacity to produce both. Objective 3: To analyze decision strategies for funding, planning, managing, and evaluating agricultural research by public institutions and private organizations. Methods to Achieve Objective 3: Applying economic principles of allocating scarce resources and dynamic planning under uncertainty can aid in research priority setting may increase the social benefits from public funds allocated to research, especially in low-income countries. Principles of priority setting will be advanced, information management systems developed to support the system, and a document to assistant experiment stations and other institutions set priorities will be written. Application of economic methods will be developed for developing countries and decision support tools will be developed and applied to evaluate economic impacts of alternative research projects. The project will examine the costs and benefits of alternative institutional, transfer, and operating arrangements: (a) for land-grant universities and USDA agencies (b) for the CGIAR system and the national agricultural research systems of the LDCs (c) for private sector companies. State Agricultural Experiment Stations and USDA research agencies were endowed with public federal and state funds to undertake research for the public interest. New funding mechanism challenge the traditional rationale for public sector financing of agricultural research, may crowd-out or complement traditional funding sources, and hence may result in more or less real resources for agricultural research in the long run. The research will assess these important land-grant research policy issues through new conceptual models and empirical analyses. Specific problem areas include: new arrangements and structures for extension and research formula, competitive and other funding mechanisms impacts of alternative funding on productivity. The establishment of the National Institute for Food and Agriculture (NIFA) and the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) represents a dramatic, institutional change whose effects on how and what research is undertaken will be examined. Applications of principal-agent game theory and mechanism design will be used to develop hypotheses about how new institutional structure affect university researcher incentive. Potential for innovative funding mechanisms, such as research prizes, will be examined. Objective 4: To analyze opportunities, risks, and net benefits from existing and potential future public-private sector linkages, including new institutions (joint ventures, partnering, consortia, specialty research centers, start-up companies, intellectual property), technology transfer. Methods to Achieve Objective 4: Changes in public research have impacts on private R&D just as changes in private R&D have impacts on public research. Both static and dynamic models of these relationships will be developed and tested, including the application of game theory. New research will quantify the impacts of public research on aggregate private R&D, and examine the potential complementary/ substitute relationships between these major sources of R&D. New research policy recommendations will be developed. Specific projects include analysis of: industry technology pricing strategies, patenting of biotechnologies and university-industry research relationships. International comparisons of different institutions such as joint industrygovernment efforts overseen by the Research and Development Corporations (RDCs) in Australia will be examined to see what lessons might be drawn to improve agricultural R&D funding levels and outcomes. Other institutions may include end-point royalty schemes to pay for the research embodied in new crop varieties. While intellectual property protection is vital for generating private incentives for innovation, there are also benefits from allowing researchers access to information and technologies. Ongoing research will assess such trade-offs. Objective 5: To analyze the adoption and diffusion of new agricultural technologies, assess physical, economic, and institutional barriers to adoption, and evaluate policies intended to overcome such barriers. Methods to Achieve Objective 5: Research on the adoption and diffusion of agricultural biotechnologies will continue to be important. A key new issue raised in the National Research Council report is whether or not crops will insect resistant or herbicide traits may be deployed and managed sustainably. Thus, resistance management for biotechnologies remains a critical issue that will continue to be studied. Critical barriers to adoption of biotechnologies that remain are consumer and institutional acceptance of genetically modified foods. Methods in experimental economics will be applied to estimate consumer response to new food products and food labeling regimes. Barriers to governmental acceptance of biotechnologies, especially in developing countries will continue to be assessed. Even when technologies face no government restrictions, resource poor farmers may face other adoption barriers. Such barriers in both developed and developing countries (e.g. lack of credit, knowledge, extension services) will be measured and assessed. An important finding of recent research on agricultural technology adoption in the United States is the importance of off-farm employment and income in farm-level decisions. Off-farm income shelters producers from agricultural risk, but also limit time available for farm management. Thus, time constraints may prove a barrier to management-saving technologies, while encouraging adoption of time saving technologies and practices. Ongoing research will consider technology adoption in the context of an overall household income strategy. Research will continue to assess the impacts of biotechnologies, beyond field trial data, looking at impacts under actual production conditions. Methods include econometric analysis and simulations in multi-market settings. This might include use of multi-commodity, multi-region trade models or computable general equilibrium (CGE) models. Such models have scope for examining horizontal and vertical linkages between different commodity markets and can be used to examine question such as (a) how does technological change in feed grain production affect livestock sectors or (b) how are agricultural and energy markets linked via biofuels production? The role of agricultural and energy R&D in biofuels production and the increasing linkages between energy and agricultural markets will continue to be explored. Bio-energy is a potential source of future petroleum substitutes through bio-fuels, e.g., ethanol, bio-oils, and biomass from plants like switchgrass, and wind energy. Impacts of these new alternatives on farmers, the U.S. economy, and the environment, especially green house gases, will be identified and measured. In addition renewable energy technologies in the West compete with agriculture for scarce water. Such energy, agricultural, resource linkages will continue to be examined. The CGIAR System and National Agricultural Research Systems of the LDCs--The private sector development of agricultural biotechnology with a profit motive continues to be in conflict with the philosophy of the CGIAR system, which emphasizes farmers use over strong IPRs and licensing income. Research will continue on the optimal strategy for the CGIAR system in the new IPR environment, which greatly impacts the options available to the plant breeding program of the low and middle income NARS. Ongoing research will continue on analysis of: research prizes; performance of CGIAR system including genebanks; and intellectual property rights in developing countries. To achieve the above five objectives, the following methods will be employed, including coordination to avoid needless duplication. Sub-projects involve parallel but complementary projects undertaken by individual AESs. Over time, however, scientists at two or more participating institutions have undertaken an increasing number of sub-projects collaboratively. We expect this trend toward increasing collaboration to continue throughout the tenure of the project.

Measurement of Progress and Results

Outputs

• Development of new data sets measuring agricultural input use, output use, and productivity
• Development of new data sets measuring public and private research investment, patenting and other invventive activity
• Analysis of data to estimate factors determining inventive activity and the effect of agricultural R&D on productivity and economic returns
• Published research will assess the economic and social impacts of new technologies,including biotechnologies, bioenergy, and information technologies
• Theoretical models iwll be developed to assess how institutional changes affect researcher incentives
• Output 6 Surveys of university researchers will be conducted and data analyzed

Outcomes or Projected Impacts

• Project participants will continue to contribute to projects and publications of The Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources (BANR). BANR is the major program unit of the National Research Council (NRC) responsible for organizing and overseeing studies on issues of agricultural production and related matters of natural resource development, including forestry, fisheries, wildlife, and land and water use. The goal of the NRC, organized by the National Academy of Sciences, is to further knowledge and advise the federal government on critical issues in science and technology. Project participants will continue to be directly involved in publications and to be sources of key cited references.
• Outputs will be used to enhance knowledge and awareness among state agricultural experment station directors, NIFA, and groups such as ESCOP and ECOP that influence the allocation of research and extension dollars of the impacts of changes in research and extension funding levels and funding mechanisms.
• Knowledge and awareness of issues related to the five project objectives among members and staff of Congress and staff of federal and state agencies will be enhanced through testimony, briefings, and workshops, and further evidenced by citations of project-related work in congressional, federal agency, or state reports and decision documents.
• The project will provide analysts and program planners with improved methods to evaluate impacts of technological change and to conduct economic evaluations of alternative research policy options. Research administrators will be provided with improved methods to analyze data and information and to make recommendations to decision-makers.
• Organizations furthering international agricultural research and technology transfer such as the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research, the World Bank, USDA, and the U.S. Agency for International Development will use research findings and research evaluation methods developed by project participants.

Milestones

(2012): Publication of book or journal special issue(s) on topic of Biotechnology, Bioenergy, and Global Food Security resulting from 2011 research symposium. Research symposium on US agricultural research funding structure and impacts. Program organized to inform debates concerning research title of the 2012 Farm Bill.

(2013): Research symposium to share results of collaborative projects and to develop joint publications by NC-1034 members.

(2014): Research symposium to share results of collaborative projects and to develop joint publications by NC-1034 members.

(2015): Research symposium to share results of collaborative projects and to develop joint publications by NC-1034 members.

(2016): Research symposium to share results of collaborative projects and to develop joint publications by NC-1034 members.

Projected Participation

View Appendix E: Participation

Outreach Plan

This project places a premium on communicating and disseminating research results to experiment station directors, national level research administrators, and national policy makers and research directors responsible for justifying and allocating research resources. For the next term of the project, the outreach plan is to continue activities such as the following examples:

1. Reprints of the publication, Huffman, W., G. Norton, G. Traxler, G. Frisvold, and J. Foltz. 2006. Winners and losers: Formula versus competitive funding of agricultural research. Choices 21(4): 269274 co-authored by five NC-1034 members were distributed nationally to directors of experiment stations and deans of colleges of agriculture.

2. In 2007, George Norton (VA) presented testimony before the House Agriculture Sub-Committee on Conservation, Credit, and Research on agricultural research funding issues drawing on work from NC-1034 research.

3. NC-1034 members have collaborated with the Farm Foundation on organizing research and policy workshops such as the
a. 2007 Farm Foundation conference, Funding Research and Extension to Assure
the Future of U.S. Agricultural Competitiveness.
b. 2009 NC-1034 conference The World Food Crisis: The Future Role of
Agricultural R&D Programs, Biotechnology, and Crop-Related Energy Policy
hosted by the USDA, Economic Research Service.

4. Julian Alston (CA) and Phil Pardey (MN) published the Farm Foundation Issue Report Funding Research and Extension summarizing the 2007 conference. http://www.farmfoundation.org/projects/documents/May07_revisedJune4.pdf

5. NC-1034 members have made coordinated publications in special issues of Choices and AgBioForum. Special issues in these on-line journals publish brief, accessible reports of research findings relatively quickly, facilitating broad dissemination to policy audiences.

6. Research findings by Lilyan Fulginiti (NE) and Richard Perrin (NE) have been highlighted in experiment station news releases such as
a. UNL's Ag Research Division Boasts 36 Percent Rate of Return over 42-year
Period. February 05, 2010. http://ianrnews.unl.edu/static/1002050.shtml
b. A big return for a research buck: A study shows the Missouri
AgriculturalExperiment Station beats other states and outpaces the stock
market in return on investment. Oct. 14, 2009.
http://cafnr.missouri.edu/news/stories2009/mo-roi.php
c. Testimony by Kevin D. Kephart, Vice President for Research, and Dean of
the Graduate School at South Dakota State University before the U.S. House
of Representatives Committee on Agriculture, May 18, 2010.

NC-1034 will continue to emphasize dissemination of research findings, not just in peer-reviewed academic journals, but also via more accessible publications and direct testimony to policy makers.

NC-1034 members at universities collaborate extensively with researchers at USDAs Economic Research Service, both with ERS staff who are NC-1034 members and others conducting critical research and data development for agricultural productivity, research impact, and technology assessments. There is an active exchange if information, data and expertise between ERS economists and NC-1034 members, beneficial to both. ERS forums, publications and briefings are a critical means of bringing NC-1034 research findings to the attention of policy makers in timely and accessible formats. Continued close collaboration with ERS economists will continue throughout the next phase of the project.

Symposia will be organized annually to present, discuss, and disseminate research. Past symposia have made a point of inviting speakers and participants from experiment stations, federal agencies and private industry. This practice will continue throughout the projects tenure. Research findings have been and will continue to be published in a variety of outreach publications including Iowa Ag Review, UC-Davis Agricultural Issues Center Briefs, Michigan State University International Policy Briefs, the Arizona Review, and publications of the University of Wisconsin Program on Agricultural Technology Studies. Reports and issues papers will also be supplied to national organizations such as the Farm Foundation and C-FARE.

Organization/Governance

The project will be organized as a Multistate Research Project consistent with the specifications for membership and organization given in the Guidelines for Multistate Research Activities. The project technical committee shall consist of one vote from each cooperating agency as appointed or otherwise designated by each respective organization, an administrative advisor appointed by the Association of North Central Experiment Station Directors and a representative of the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES).

The executive committee for NC-1034 shall consist of a chairman and secretary, elected by the technical committee. Members of the executive committee will be elected annually and may succeed themselves. This committee will have the major responsibility for coordinating annual research symposia contributing to the Multistate Research Project.

The chairman of the project technical committee will prepare the annual report, summarized from material supplies to him by the project committee member from each participating agency. The chairman will send two copies of the final draft of the annual report with original signature of recommendation and an approval block for signature to the Administrative Advisor. The Administrative Advisor will make the appropriate distribution.

Meetings will be held at least once a year at time and place mutually agreed upon by the technical committee with the approval of the administrative advisor. The secretary will have responsibility to record the minutes of the annual meeting. The secretary will be responsible for distribution of approved minutes to members of the technical committee. The Administrative Advisor will send approved copies to CSREES and Directors of participating SAES and other agencies. A research symposium, drawing on the work of individuals inside and outside the project, will normally be held in conjunction with the annual meeting.

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Attachments

Land Grant Participating States/Institutions

AZ, CA, CO, FL, GA, IA, IL, IN, KS, MI, MO, MT, ND, NE, NJ, NY, PA, TX, VA, WA, WI, WY

Non Land Grant Participating States/Institutions

USDA-ERS/RED, USDA/ERS