To ensure competitiveness, doubling US investment is key.

Sustained productivity growth in US agriculture is crucial to ensure competitiveness in the world market. US farm output has grown remarkably since the 1950s – by more than two-fold and this historic rise was mainly driven by productivity growth (USDA ERS, ). Efforts to develop and disseminate new technologies can be traced back to public research and development (R&D) activities conducted in universities and government institutions. To ensure long-term farm productivity growth, continued investments in public agricultural R&D are needed. The economic gains from R&D-driven productivity growth are well researched (Alston et al., ; Andersen and Song, ; Fuglie, ; Jin and Huffman, ; Plastina and Fulginiti, 2011; Wang et al., ). In a recent meta-analysis of 492 studies, Rao et al. () estimated that the median internal rate of return from agricultural R&D is around 34.0% per year for developed countries. Similarly, the meta-analysis of Alston et al. () found that past investments in international agricultural research for developing regions indicate benefit-cost ratios at around 10:1.

However, there has been a slowdown in investments in the US public agricultural R&D systems (Fuglie et al., ; Nelson and Fuglie, ). The stagnation of public funding for US agricultural scientific research is alarming when contrasted with the growth in R&D investments in middle-income countries, particularly in China which has surpassed US research spending in recent years (Clancy, Fuglie, and Heisey, ; Pardey et al., ). Less R&D spending at home and greater investments abroad could erode the competitiveness of US farm exports in the coming decades.

In addition to the economic benefits, agricultural productivity growth from R&D investments can also offer GHG mitigation co-benefits. Several studies which use global models of the agricultural sector – models which explicitly incorporate drivers of agricultural demand and supply, farm input use, and agricultural trade – have shown that greater agricultural productivity could dampen future agricultural land expansion and farm greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Valin et al. () examined the global GHG emissions impacts of productivity growth in several crop and livestock sectors as well as other land-based sectors. The authors focused on methane emissions from paddy rice and livestock, emissions from fertilizer use, as well as land-use change emissions. They found that under business as usual, world agricultural GHG emissions are expected to increase by around 30% between 2000 and 2050, from 3.5 to 4.6 gigatons (Gt) carbon dioxide-equivalent per year (CO2-eq/year). The authors also found that greater productivity through higher yield growth and yield convergence across crops and livestock sectors could reduce global farm GHG emissions by roughly 10% relative to the 2050 baseline. Jones and Sands () estimated that without total factor productivity growth in crop and livestock production, global farm GHG emissions would rise by 47% between 2004 and 2034. WRI () used a global agricultural model to calculate future changes in agricultural production, land use, and greenhouse gas emissions between 2010 and 2050. The authors estimated several scenarios using different assumptions regarding future diets, food waste mitigation, productivity growth, and emission reduction in agriculture. Under business as usual, the authors estimated that GHG emissions from global agricultural production and land-use change are expected to increase by around 25% between 2010 and 2050, from 12 to 15 Gt CO2-eq/year. If productivity remains flat over this period, future emissions are projected to rise to 33 Gt CO2-eq/year, primarily due to increased emissions from land-use change.

This study formally links the literature on R&D-driven productivity growth to previous work on the GHG mitigation benefits from increased productivity growth. By connecting agricultural productivity directly to R&D spending, it is possible to calculate the economic costs and benefits of productivity-based GHG mitigation strategies. Specifically, this study examines the economic and GHG mitigation benefits from increased public agricultural R&D investments in the US over 2025–2035. This study focuses on US agriculture and directly calculates the implied growth in agricultural productivity from US R&D spending using statistically estimated parameters from a historical analysis of the gains from US public R&D spending (Baldos et al., ). It also uses technological spillover estimates from the literature (Fuglie, ). These productivity changes are then used in a global economic model of agriculture to see how future increases in US R&D investments change the trajectories of agricultural production, land use, and GHG emissions at the global level and in the US. A farm input reduction scenario is also estimated to show how policies directly mitigating land use and GHG emissions in US agriculture affect production and price outcomes.

The results show that over the period 2017 to 2050, greater public R&D investments in US agriculture could significantly boost crop and livestock production, limit agricultural land expansion and GHG emissions, and reduce food prices globally. However, the reduction in US farm input use and associated GHG emissions from R&D is dampened by increased price competitiveness of US agricultural commodities in the world market and resulting expansion in US production. Reducing farm input use alone can drastically reduce US agricultural GHG emissions, but at the cost of lower farm output and higher commodity prices. Substantial reductions in US GHG emissions and greater agricultural production can only be achieved when both R&D investment and farm input constraint policies are implemented.