Commissioned by the CGIAR Science Council and prepared as a Background Paper for the 2008 World Development Report of the World Bank.

The United States was the first country in the world to explicitly offer intellectual property protection for plant varieties. Beginning in 1930, asexually reproduced plants were afforded plant patent protection, in 1970 sexually propagated plants could be awarded plant variety protection...

[Supporting Material for “A Bounds Analysis of World Food Futures: Global Agriculture Through to 2050.” Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics 2014 (forthcoming)]

Over the past century and more, research and development (R&D) has contributed to a transformation of the U.S. food and agricultural sectors. R&D has fueled productivity growth, enabling U.S. farmers to do more with less. It has helped U.S. farmers to remain competitive in increasingly...

Final (updated) version posted Dec. 1, 2014

Recent trends in farm productivity and food prices raise concerns about whether the era of global agricultural abundance is over. Agricultural R&D is a crucial determinant of agricultural productivity and production, and therefore food prices and poverty. In this paper we review past and present...