The financial administrators, policy makers, bureaucrats and politicians are always interested in measures of benefits from Agricultural Research and Development (R&D) investment. They want to ensure that spending on R&D constitutes a sound venture. R&D accelerates agricultural and economic growth through improvement in productivity. There is a boost in the income of the masses. Both producers as well as consumers benefit from the research. It increases the productivity and reduces the cost of production, which result in low output prices and generates a lot of welfare effects to the society.
There are flows over time of net annual benefits attributable to the R&D project. These represent the sum of benefits across individuals in the society, accruing in each year, relative to the situation if the project has not been undertaken ie with and without.
In the initial seven years known as "R&D lag" period there is no return from the investment. During this period, major expenditures are on infrastructure development, identifications of issues, priorities setting, training, etc. The R&D benefits start from the eighth year with little benefit during the first year and increase fast in the next ten years, followed by a constant period covering about seven years, the benefits started decreasing and-or remain constant in the later years.
This all depends on the adoption process. This period could be large or small, based on the technology, adoption and other environmental conditions. Similarly, the research cost will be higher during the R&D lag period and remains constant for the next ten years. In general the benefits can be harvested upto 30 years. Later technologies become obsolete and there is no use of them.
The Green Revolution initiated during the late sixties brought revolution in agricultural development and overall prosperity but now it has lost its potential, especially in the field_of conventional breeding. Providing elucidation to the problems of insect pests, diseases, waterlogging and salinity, environment, drought stress, etc is a complex one. The technological innovation brought these problems.
The livestock sector where majority of our poor population is engaged is also not adequately addressed in the green and post-green revolutions. To find out the resolution of these areas is a real challenge ahead of the scientific communities. For the twenty-first century we need another green revolution in agricultural technology.
In order to address the growing demands of livestock and their product, white revolution is required. Productivity increases are still vital, but must be combined with environmental protection or restoration, while new technologies must be both cost-effective and geared to the needs of the poor and undernourished.
The inelasticity in prices for most agricultural commodities further aggravates the situation for developing countries. It means that lower world prices lead to lower export earnings. Many developing countries, and especially certain least developed countries, remain dependent on prices significant share of their export earning on one or a few agricultural exports.
At a general level all of the commodities are affected by the same basic factors of demand and supply, but these can change through technology, by consumer's preferences, market structures, policies or institutions, etc.
Biotechnology offers promises as a mean of improving food security and reducing pressure on the environment, due to recent development in plant molecular biology, genetic engineering, and rapid advancement in genomics provided the perceived environmental threats from biotechnology itself are addressed. Its tools are specific and make development of new strain of enhanced crop and livestock production more rapid.
The rate of return to agricultural investment not only depends on the direct investment but on human resources. One of the criteria to judge the human resources in a country is the availability of agricultural scientist per million population.
The condition in Pakistan is very bad; according to John Mellor Associates (1994) there were 44 agricultural scientists per million during 1988, which was very low as of 2360, 1400, and 300 in USA, UK, and Egypt, respectively.
The condition in Pakistan is gloomy as we have the lowest agricultural scientist per million population. Pakistan has diversified and different agricultural production systems, a large number of agro-ecological zones and we are cultivating more then 130 commercial crops on diversified system, needs much more trained and well equipped agricultural scientists.
The agricultural research system in Pakistan is funded, organised and managed at a lower level since only maintenance research is being achieved with little prospect for meaningful future augment in crop yields and livestock production through research.
The research expenditure per agricultural scientist in Pakistan is 8.9 thousand dollar (240 thousands rupees) during 1980 as compared to 56.4, 45.9, 30.2, and 21.8 thousand per dollar per agricultural scientist in Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, India, respectively. Surprisingly, it is lower than even Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka.
The research funding level in Pakistan is quite lower around 0.2 percent of agricultural GDP as against 1.6 percent recommended by Pakistan Commission on Agriculture. The real operational expenditure per scientist in a year was lowered overtime ie from Rs 9500 to Rs 9314 during 1991 to 2003-04, respectively.
The internationally recommended salaries to operational cost ratio is 60:40 while in Pakistan it is very low ie 85:15. The agriculture research is mainly concentrated on major crops ie wheat, rice, cotton and sugarcane whereas disproportionately small amounts are allocated to research for livestock, minor crops, horticulture, natural resource management, fisheries, environment, post-harvest technologies, etc.
The socio-economics and marketing sectors are also not given appropriate attention. The share of agriculture in total PSDP/ADP declined from 12.78 percent in 1980-81 to as low as 0.13 percent during 2001-02 and at present is 0.94.
There is a need to have constant share, the abrupt fluctuation in research budget hits serious by the continuous experiments and programmes. If we want to boost agricultural production the share of agriculture in total PSDP should be increased to at least 6-8 percent.
Besides human resource investment, the crop yield or production improved technologies (Genotype/seed) also depend on internal and external policies, natural environment and human management factors. There is a serious effect on all these factors.
Out of these factors even one is not conducive, affecting the yield/production. You have very good, high yielding genotype, excellent natural environment, efficient management but the farmers are unable to reap right price for his products, which badly affects the decision of production in the falling year.
Our farmers are not harvesting the frill potential of crop yields obtained by progressive farmers and demonstrated at research stations. This is mainly due the gap in all or some factors shown in Figure 2. There are three yield gaps, which are associated with extension, research and science. In Pakistan these entire yield gaps are wide due to general inefficiency in our production and management systems.
The extension and research gaps range from 31 to 75 and 25 to 57 percent respectively. The conventional estimate reported rates of return to agriculture in the range of 40 to 60 percent per year. The recent International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) " A Meta-Analysis of Rates of return to Agricultural R&D" estimates the rate of return with some reservations as 100 percent per year for research, 85 percent for extension, 48 percent for studies that estimated the returns to research and extension jointly and 81 percent for all the studies combined.
It is important to mention that the overall rate of return (ROR) in Pakistan agricultural research is around 60%, which is quite higher than the World Bank requirement, that is only 12% and the desired ROR of Pakistan's Financial Development Institutes (FDI) is 14%. There is lot of scope for investment in agricultural research.
The rate of investment is further enhancing with the emerging challenges and opportunities of globalisation, where countries can harness the maximum if there is efficiency and capacity to compete.
Agricultural research that leads to improve technologies also helps in poverty reduction. It directly facilitates the poor farmer through increasing their own-farm production, providing more food and nutrients for their own consumption and increasing the output of market products for higher income.
There will also be more employment opportunities for poor farmers and landless labourers in the rural areas and also in urban areas due to forward and backward linkages. Agriculture research also helps in reducing the prices and cost of production, which benefits both consumers and producers either residing in the rural or urban areas.
Agriculture research can lead to greater physical and economic access to crops that are high in nutrients and crucial to the well-being of the poor, particularly poor women in the population. Research can empower the poor by increasing their access to decision-making process, enhancing their capacity for collective action and reducing their vulnerability to economic shocks through asset accumulation.
It is important that the poor farmers get the benefits of new generated technologies, only if they adopt them but the farmers will only adopt these technologies if they are appropriate and profitable for farming conditions. The poor farmers must have access to the knowledge and inputs necessary to adopt the technologies, including access to credit and institutes.
Due to not giving the importance to the agriculture sector in regard to Pakistan's economy, and considering the emerging challenges, the evidence that production and productivity growth are not keeping pace with the past growth rate, we are importing wheat at higher prices, the projected widening gap between food and fibre supply make it imperative to revitalise our agricultural research system.
The research systems in Pakistan offer limited career growth opportunities and little financial incentives are even to highly qualified scientists. The agricultural scientists are facing a number of issues and constraints.
SOME OF THEM ARE THE FOLLOWING:
-- Limited career growth opportunities
-- Poor service structure
-- Inadequate operational funds
-- Shortage of trained professional staff and research managers
-- Ban on employments
-- Lack of on-job training
-- Weak formal linkages between extension, education and research system
In order to cope with the emerging challenges, increasing food demand due to the fast growing population, sustainable economic growth and poverty eradication, agriculture research should be given special attention. At present, agricultural research in Pakistan is inadequately funded, poorly organised and these are no career opportunities for the scientific staff and weakly linked with extension and education. We would like to quote the report of National Commission on Agriculture:
"Let's not forget that the future of Pakistan agriculture can be saved only through research. Increased demands for food and other commodities from shrinking land and water resources can only be met through aggressive research programmes and fulfilling R&D needs of the National Agriculture Research System (NARS) and designing farmer friendly policies" (Government of Pakistan, 2003).
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