Plant Variety Protection, Private Funding, and Public Sector Research Priorities

Abstract

The objective of the Plant Variety Protection Act of 1970 (PVPA) was to increase a firm's ability to capture the returns on its applied breeding research and development (R&D) investments.Firms were expected to increase their R&D investments to take advantage of increased returns.Studies have shown that the PVPA has induced the private sector to increase its investments, particularly in soybeans and wheat (Butler and Marion; Perrin, Kunnings, and Ihnen).Recently, Stallman raised the concern that the PVPA may also influence agricultural experiment stations (SAES).She suggests that public R&D priorities may be shifted away from commodities and research topics that have high social rates of return.While it is possible that the PVPA will pull research away from the socially optimal allocation of resources, other sources of distortion may be equally important.Political pressure on public research or industry's contributions to public research may lead to too much research on certain topics (Ulrich, Furtan, and Schmitz) or commodities.Another concern is that, in certain commodities, the private sector research is crowding out public research.Both concerns raise the questions of who will teach the next generation of scientists, who will provide varieties when markets are insufficient to induce private research, and who will maintain the competitive structure of agricultural production, inputs, and marketing.This paper is part of a larger project on the impact of the PVPA and patents on public and private R&D, and on crop yields and genetic

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