Prabhu Pingali Deputy Director Agriculture Development Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Enhancing Developing World Agricultural Performance: getting beyond the current

plateau through R&D

Prabhu PingaliPrabhu PingaliDeputy DirectorDeputy Director

Agriculture DevelopmentAgriculture DevelopmentBill & Melinda Gates FoundationBill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Keynote address to Conference on “Integrated Assessment of Agriculture & Sustainable Development”, Egmond aan Zee, Netherlands, 10-12 March 2009. Views expressed are personal.

Recent Trends in Developing World Crop Productivity Growth

• Production– Cereal output in

developing countries has grown 2.8 percent annually for three decades

• Productivity– Yields, not area, were

responsible for growth– TFP grew along with

yields

Long run commodity price decline has had a positive impact on food security and poverty reduction

Real prices for commodity group

Small holder productivity growth triggered overall rural growth and rural

transformation.

Investments in agricultural research and development yield high returns.• Agricultural research

and development (R&D) yield returns of 40-50 percent.

• Returns are high in all regions, including Sub-Saharan Africa.

• International & national public sector played a crucial role.

• Public research carried out in OECD countries had large spillover effects in developing countries.

Developing world agriculture is facing increasing divergence

• Low Productive Agriculture in the Least Developed Countries

• Modernizing Agriculture in the Transforming Economies

Low-Productivity Agricultural Economies

• Generally the Least Developed Countries (LDCs)

• Ag has a large share of GDP yet productivity is low

• Low NARS capacity & low private sector interest

• Low prospects for reaching the MDG goals on poverty and hunger & high levels of environmental degradation

The least developed countries are relying more on food imports …

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

61 64 67 70 73 76 79 82 85 88 91 94 97 00 03

Agricultural Imports AgriculturalExports

Billion US $

DEFICIT

Constraints to agricultural transformation in the LDCs

Age old constraints

– Low demand– Poor public good

provision– Lack of technology

R&D– Low agro-climatic

potential– Institutional barriers

New issues

– Declining competitiveness

– Availability of lower priced food imports

– Volatility in aid flows & directions

– Capacity limitations in meeting sanitary and phyto-sanitary standards

Implications for Agricultural R&D: back to basics?

• Focusing on productivity improvement but with the benefit of modern science and 40 years of lessons learnt on trade-offs.

• Dealing with the “Changing Locus of Agricultural Research” -- Public to Private Sector

• Going further down the impact pathway than in the past

• Building local capacity for R&D

Transforming Economies

• Dietary transformation fueled by economic growth and demographic shifts

• Organizational changes in retail, wholesale, processing, and procurement

• Tremendous heterogeneity observed w/ respect to participation and distribution of benefits

Transforming Economies: implications for R&D

• Sustaining and enhancing staple crop productivity gains

• Making domestic agriculture globally competitive

• Diversifying agricultural systems & household incomes

• Reducing rural poverty & malnutrition, especially in marginal environments

Cross cutting issues and concerns

• Investing in tropical agricultural science

• Revitalizing breeding programs

• Achieving scale in crop & resource management

• Dealing with the consequences of climate change

National and International public sector breeding programs are no longer the primary suppliers of

innovations

Declining Expenditures in Plant Sciences: the case of the CGIAR

(shares of total investment, 1972-2005, by research category)

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

1972-76 1977-81 1982-86 1987-91 1992-96 1997-2001 2002-2005

Sh

are

s o

f to

tal

investm

en

ts (

%)

Increasing Productivity Protecting the Environment Saving Biodiversity

Improving Policies Strengthening NARS

Source: CGIAR annual report 2001 for data from 1972-2001; Executive Summary of the 2004 CGIAR Financial Results (May 2005) for data from 2002 to 2005 (latter year projected).

REBUILD THE INTERNATIONAL NETWORKS FOR THE FLOW OF GENETIC RESOURCES AND IMPROVED GERMPLASM.

No nation– and no ongoing breeding program– can be self sufficient in terms of its requirements for genetic resources.

Crop and Resource Management Technologies: Can we achieve scale?

• Few examples of wide spread, cross country use of non-breeding technologies

• Technologies for sustainable use of inputs (eg., water use efficiency) have had limited success

• Knowledge-intensive practices (such as IPM) have not scaled up well

• We need a new paradigm for addressing sustainable crop & resource management

Integrating Climate Change Concerns

• Climate change adaptation should be seen as an integral part of the work on stress-prone environments (eg., drought tolerance)

• Sustainable management practices could contribute to mitigating climate change (eg., conservation agriculture)

• Added focus on climate change increases the ex ante returns to agricultural R&D

Way Ahead

• A renewed and revitalized CGIAR that is sharply focused on the international dimensions of agricultural research

• Reviving university based tropical agricultural research and capacity building

• Developing composite tools for addressing persistent problems (eg., plant breeding coupled with molecular biology tools)

• Promoting multi-disciplinary approaches for solving complex problems