Documentation
Data for public and private funding of food and agricultural
research and development cover the years 1970-2009 (public) and
1970-2007 (private). Data are available as nominal figures and
adjusted for inflation.
Public funding is based on data from two
sources:
- State-level data are from USDA's Current Research Information
Systems (CRIS). For the years 1970-1993, the data come from the
"Inventory of Agricultural Research" publications. CRIS stopped
publishing the Inventory and moved to a web-based reporting system
that can be found on the CRIS home page. Those data are used for
1993-2009.
Private funding estimates are constructed by
ERS, based on the methodology presented in the ERS report, Research Investments and
Market Structure in the Food Processing, Agricultural Input, and
Biofuel Industries Worldwide, ERR-130, December 2011. This
report built on earlier work reported in Private-Sector
Agricultural Research Expenditures in the United States, 1960-92
(Staff Paper AGES9525). Research expenditures are estimated for
eight agricultural industries and then aggregated. These industries
include seven agricultural input industries: 1) crop genetic
improvement; 2) crop protection chemicals; 3) synthetic
fertilizers; 4) farm machinery; 5) animal health; 6) animal genetic
improvement; and 7) animal nutrition; and the agricultural output
industry, 8) food and kindred products.
We used a number of approaches to construct estimates of private
R&D spending by sector. For research-intensive agricultural
input industries, we built a database of agriculturally related
research spending firm by firm over time, for all firms in the
sector (including "legacy" firms, or firms that exited the industry
during the period of study) that have or have had significant
R&D expenditures. For large conglomerates, for which
agriculture may be only one business segment, we separated
agriculturally related R&D spending from R&D spending on
nonagricultural business segments. We gathered this information by
canvassing a broad set of material, including company annual
reports and websites, reports by industry associations and
consulting services, and personal interviews with company
representatives.
For agricultural input industries in which firms do not often
report their research spending, we estimated agricultural R&D
for the industry by taking a percentage of total agricultural input
sales, with the percentages (or research intensities) derived from
observations on R&D spending from a subset of firms and from
previous surveys of the industry. For the food manufacturing
industry, we relied on the U.S. country-level estimate produced by
the Organisation for Co-operation and Development.
The R&D deflator (to convert current
dollars to real) is based on methodology described in Pardey et
al. (U.S. Agricultural Research Deflators:
1890-1985, University of Minnesota Department of Applied
Economics Staff Paper P87-25, 1987). which provides weights for
three components: researcher salaries, State and local government
consumption expenditures, and construction costs. The deflator has
been updated using information from the American Association of
University Professors (The Annual Report on the Economic Status of the
Profession, various years) and the Bureau of Economic Analysis
(National Economic Accounts, Table 3.9.4: Price Indexes for Government Consumption
Expenditures and Gross Investment).