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Abstract
This paper argues that the largely unrealized potential of agricultural science and
technology (S&T) in promoting growth and poverty reduction in developing countries
results from deeply rooted incompatibility among policy environments, institutional
arrangements, and micro conditions and behavior in agricultural research and
development (R&D). Achieving growth and poverty reduction based on greater
agricultural productivity therefore means achieving greater compatibility among these
three dimensions of agricultural innovation systems. Research is sorely needed to build
understanding of (1) the “big picture” influencing agricultural S&T policy design and
implementation in developing countries, (2) strategies for sustainable funding and
delivery of agricultural R&D, (3) priorities for and impacts of emerging and prospective
agricultural technologies, and (4) the role of science in food and agricultural policy
processes. Agricultural S&T policy analysis as presented here extends beyond the
current boundaries of agricultural economics into such disciplines as public finance,
public administration, political science, history, sociology, and psychology. The
economics of science and innovation in industry has embraced some of these disciplines
and benefited greatly from having done so, as has industrial policy in the developed
world. The fundamental horizontality of agricultural development policy and the long
reach of agricultural S&T policy suggest similarly high returns were agricultural
economics to do the same for science and innovation in agriculture.