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The first objective is to estimate the expected and actual flow of benefits and costs of research for agriculture, and related areas, including the incidence of their distribution. <P>The second objective is to analyze decision strategies for funding, planning, managing, and evaluating agricultural research by public institutions and private organizations. <P>The last objective is to analyze opportunities, risks, and net benefits from existing and potential future public-private sector linkages, including new institutions (joint ventures, partnering, consortia, specialty research centers, start-up companies, intellectual property), technology transfer.
Non-Technical Summary: Changes in sources of R&D funding, opportunities in science, intellectual property rights, and new technologies, which have resulted in major social impacts, have encountered public resistance. This project will analyze ways to foster existing and potential future public-private sector linkages which generate agricultural research programs that will result in improved agricultural systems and natural resource protection. <P> Approach: Advances in knowledge from research and development (RD), new technologies, and new social-economic issues associated with the organization of RD and impacts of new technologies are expected to continue well into the 21st Century. Careful examination and analyses of these issues can produce a national public benefit, yielding valuable information and facilitating better public and private RD polices in the future. In order to most effectively plan and implement an agenda for public research in agricultural and related areas, substantive information and analyses are needed on (1) expected net benefits and costs of alternative research programs, both basic and applied, (2) distribution of the costs and benefits (including environmental and other selected externalities) among producers, consumers, and (agri-) business and industry, (3) key inter-relationships between investments in research and other public sector programs affecting agriculture, (4) alternative mechanisms for planning, managing, and evaluating agricultural research portfolios, (5) new linkages and relationships between public and private RD, and (6) evaluation of alternative institutional configurations for funding and conducting research. To this end, we will evaluate research and associated outreach related to various agricultural management systems, especially with respect to their connection to public and private partnerships and in connection with water quality and land conservation. We will also explore relationships and cooperative arrangements between public agencies, universities, and other organizations regarding research and outreach programs in agricultural areas with high natural resource management values. In addition, we will work with agricultural interest and land managers to develop research and outreach priorities related to connections between agricultural systems and natural resource impacts. Finally, we will collaborate with producer groups, universities, and public agencies to establish and implement joint priorities for applied research in various farm production systems and will evaluate relative costs and benefits.