Costs and benefits of an agricultural research institute

Abstract

Abstract This paper represents an attempt to assess the economic impact of a publicly funded agricultural research institute in cost‐benefit terms. The institute is the Scottish Plant Breeding Station which was responsible for breeding two successful main‐crop potato varieties. Benefits, achieved and prospective, from new crop varieties are calculated from estimates of resources saved in producing constant crops at reduced acreages but with higher yields. Over the timescale 1951‐97, costs (discounted at 10/SL to 1972) total 9‐7 M/SL and benefits total 29‐8 M/SL (of which 21‐1 M/SL is attributable to the two successful potatoes). The net present value is estimated as 20‐1 M/SL (B/C 3‐1) (very probably in the range 12‐37 M/SL, B/C 2‐2‐4‐8). In discussion it is pointed out that few cost‐benefit studies of agricultural research are available and that the administrative implications of the present study are far from clear. Plant breeding, in general, being largely free of environmental or welfare effects, seems to be economically attractive and socially benign; and it must become even more attractive with rising food prices and land values.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 17 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.