reviews Rook reviews

Among the most important pro-

ducts of the centres have been the Book Reconc i ling agricultural

t 1 objectives researc

large numbers of well-trained and educated agricultural scientists who have returned home to create or rein- force the agricultural research capabi- lities of their nations. The result is that

PARTNERS AGAINST HUNGER: THE CGIAR

by Warren C. Baum

The World Bank, Washington, DC, USA, 1986, 337pp, f10.40

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR AGRICULTURE AND AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH

edited by Kenneth A. Dahlberg

Rowan and Allanheld, Totowa, NJ, USA, 1986

New Directions for Agrriculture and Agricultrual Research (Ed. Kenneth A. Dahlberg) Rowan and Allanheld, Totowa, N.J. (1986)

development that this was a formula that should be exploited further, with the creation of additional ‘Centres’. The financial resources for this could only be provided by collaboration between international and national development agencies together with private foundations. To this end, under the cosponsorship of the World Bank, FAO and UNDP, the CGIAR was created in 1971. Since then the group of up to 26 national aid agen- cies, five foundations and 11 interna- tional agencies, with varying degrees of commitment and loyalty, has

annually provided the cash equivalent of almost $200 million, in late 1980 values.

These two books describe contrasting approaches to agriculture and agri- cultural research. Warren Baum writ-

ing of the first 15 years of the work of the Consultative group on Inter- national Agricultural Research (CGIAR) is concerned primarily with efforts to increase the production of food in developing countries. Kenneth Dahlberg’s compilation is principally concerned with agriculture in the USA where food is in surplus and sensitivi- ties can be generated to factors other than production.

These funds enabled the first four institutions to be maintained and nine more centres to be established to undertake research in such diverse activities as animal diseases and pro- duction, potatoes, crop production in semi-arid and dry areas, plant germ- plasm, as well as on food policy and research organization.

Slow grind

a number of countries are now largely self-sufficient in applied and adaptive research and no longer need the same kinds of support from the centres. (Of course many small countries can never have the potential to become self- sufficient in research and their long- term aims must be mutual support from regional groupings of nations.) The first roles of the centres in applied research can now be diminished, perhaps greatly diminished, so enab- ling them to undertake research for the developing world in sciences whose practical applicability has only been revealed in the 1970s and 1980s; sciences like biotechnology. Moreov- er, when increasing the pile of grain was the most important priority, re- search often favoured poor consumers rather than poor producers. Increase in supply was maximized when pro- ducers in favourable conditions of land and capital could most easily exploit the research findings. As a result the green revolution bypassed poor producers in conditions less favourable to the adoption of the research: they may indeed have been further disadvantaged by the fall in price caused by increased supply.

The CGIAR grew out of the suc- cessful pioneering initiatives of the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations which together had created the Inter- national Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in 1960 and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Cen- tre (CIMMYT) in 1963. Subsequently the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and the Interna- tional Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) were established, both in 1967. The success of these institutions, especially IRRI and CIMMYT, in enhancing food production confirmed in the minds of those responsible for the support of agricultural research for

The major impact of the centres can be ascribed to IRRI and CIMMYT and predates the CGIAR. Their high- yielding varieties of rice and wheat fended off the prospects of famine, especially in Asia, in the 1960s. The quantum leaps in yield derived from varieties and associated Western agro- nomic packages. They have not been repeated since with wheat, rice or any of the other commodities or processes on which the CGIAR centres now work. These centres are therefore committed to the slow grind of agri- cultural development where incre- ments are modest and may be infre- quent. Nevertheless, the pace of agri- culture development would be even slower without their contributions. However, the nature of these con- tributions must change as we approach and enter the 21st century.

Further, major current anxieties in agriculture in several countries are caused by the relinquishments of some of the gains made in the green revolu- tion. For several past years yields from the rice and wheat rotation have de- clined in Bangladesh, the wheat-soya rotation has similarly suffered some decline in parts of Argentina. Be- tween 1 and 1.5 million hectares of formerly productive irrigated land is being degraded by salinization each year with the greatest damage in Pakistan, India and China. The cul- tivation of bread wheat has declined in the Yaqui Valley of North West Mex- ico, where the green revolution started, because of the Karnal Bunt disease. Worry is generated by events like these about the sustainability of high levels of production.

FOOD POLICY November 1988 405

These factors are now recognized by the CGIAR in defining the mission for the centres. Concentration must be on the needs of the poor producers, ie on economic equity. A movement ‘up- stream’ is requested to newer scientific fields which cannot easily be under- taken in developing countries. High priority is to be given to research for agriculture and agricultural systems that can be sustained without de- terioration of the agroecological en- vironment.

Sustainability

Sustainability is one of the major themes of the volume edited by Ken- neth Dahlberg in which some 16 au- thors - economists, sociologists, philosophers, research administrators and historians - consider the neglected dimensions and emerging alternatives in agriculture and agricultural re- search. The context is that of the USA but with global, and especially Third World, issues seen against the US experience. The history of this experi- ence is described by D.R. Danborn as changing from Jefferson’s view that farmers were almost intrinsically vir- tuous, to the 19th century view from the cities that they were virtuous so far as they served society, to the current posture of farmers themselves that they are businessmen demanding equal status with those in other businesses. The latter accords with present emphasis that production and productive efficiency are the chief goals for the industry and its support- ing research: ‘adding to the pile of grain’ as it was described originally in the CGIAR context.

By contrast the alternative argu- ment is that a nation’s first priority should be to develop a sustainable and socially just agriculture: economic equity and sustainability in the CGIAR context. Emphasis is placed on the ways in which pollution, over- use and resource degradation threaten the loss of agroecological resilience in any farming system. A clear view emerges that, to develop more sus- tainable and resilient agricultural sys- tems, critical regard must be paid to the farmer’s needs and motivations - economic, social and moral.

406

Dahlberg’s book is concerned with the social, environmental, economic, even ethical conditions in which food production is practised in the USA and the world. It is thought provoking and, by the various perspectives of its authors, it enabled me to see agricul- ture and agricultural research in new ways.

What becomes clear, from viewing the recent CGIAR goals and the outlook of the Dahlberg authors together, is that new methods are needed of defining the priorities in agricultural research and evaluating its results. Components in the evaluation may be: environmental and social impacts, the interests of wider ranges of social groups, threats to genetic resources, rights to intellectual prop- erty and whether agricultural develop- ment helps or hinders other compo- nents of the economy - especially if it is subsidized at their expense.

Traditionally the farmer has pro-

tected his seed corn for next year and his farm for his offspring. Now the world community is looking in a simi- lar way at its wider responsibilities for maintaining national food production systems and for the agroecology of its regions.

The challenge now facing the lead- ers of agricultural research is how to reconcile objectives that may fre- quently be opposed. How can the aim of satisfying the present need for food be set against conservation of the capacity for production in the long term? The balance between the levels of priority assigned to each will vary with time and place. The prime ques- tion will be what is the irreducible minimum priority below which the conservation objective can never be allowed to fall.

Ralph Riley Cambridge, UK

Estimating the economic benefits of agricultural research ASSESSMENT OF AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH PRIORITIES: AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE

by J.S. Davis, P.A. Oram and J.G. Ryan

Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research in collaboration with IFPRI, Canberra, Australia, 1987, 85pp, A$14.00

In this monograph a detailed mathe- matical model is presented that esti- mates the economic benefits from agricultural research for all developing countries of the world; even the dis- tribution of benefits as between con- sumers and producers has been in- cluded. So far, the model has been applied to 12 major commodities. These results are given and further work is planned.

The object of this work is not a ‘panacea for determining agricultural research priorities’ but rather the pro- vision of ‘useful information on the likely economic benefits and distribu-

tive implications of alternative re- search strategies’.

There is a snag, however. Mathematics may be a language, as Gibbs once said, but it is not one that is spoken by most policy makers, consequently they must take results on trust. This difficulty is aggravated by the fact that economics is not a science in which theory can be validated by experiment; the best that can be hoped is an eventual consensus that the mathematics is correct, the model realistic, its parameters plausible, and its application apt.

In all these respects the present study gives cause for concern. Thus, in applying the (not uncontroversial) concept of economic surplus, supply rather than cost curves have wrongly been used in the calculation of produc- ers’ surpluses; from this has resulted an actual mathematical error - equa- tion (A30) is incorrect for the highly inelastic supply curves most often used. In view of these, and other difficulties, the comparisons given of consumers’ and producers’ surpluses

FOOD POLICY November 1988