Korean agriculture has been facing many challenges including sluggish growth of agriculture, market opening, climate changes, and energy and resource shortage problems. Agricultural R&D should give appropriate solutions to these lessons and lead to agricultural growth. This study aims to foresee future R&D demand and suggest policy lessons and directions for agricultural R&D.
The scope of agricultural R&D needs to be extended encompassing various agricultural downstream and upstream industries. Like other many developing countries, agricultural R&D was carried out by the public sector mainly due to its public good nature in Korea. However, as the general and agricultural economy have developed, the role of private sector becomes important. For meeting agricultural R&D demand, the private sector should take part in agricultural R&D actively. The government also needs to support private sector's participation in agricultural R&D.
In Korea, national agricultural R&D has been carried out by several institutes including the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries (MIFAFF), Rural Development Adminstration (RDA), and Korea Forestry Research Institute (KFRI). Because of this, many problems have been pointed out: research subject duplication, waste of research fund, and lack of competition and policy leadership. In September 2009, the Korean government established the Korea Institute of Planning & Evaluation for Technology in Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (IPEI) to improve the efficiency of agricultural R&D. This institute is supposed to plan and coordinate national agricultural R&D activity.
The budget for agricultural R&D accounts for about five percent of MAFFF budget in 2009. The share of RDA in agricultural R&D takes up the most with 60 percent. In terms of budget source, the public agricultural R&D budget accounts for 68.1 percent of total agricultural R&D budget, followed by universities with 27.1 percent, and the private sector of 3.0 percent. According to this study, the share of agricultural R&D budget should be increased to about 10 percent of MAFFF's total budget for 2 percent growth of agriculture every year.
There are 884 private research institutes performing agricultural R&D. They account for 5.3 percent of total private research institutes. The problems of transferring and commercializing agricultural technology include shortage of available technology for sale, long period of agricultural research, small size of agricultural market, and uncertainty of market. It is surveyed that the private research institutes need research fund support and assistance in the commercialization of developed technology and expanded participation in national research projects.
According to the survey of this study, the levels of technology in 'cultivation & production,' 'breeding,' and 'soil & fertilizer & pesticide' are relatively high, while those of 'energy & environment,' 'bio-engineering,' 'bioenergy' are relatively low. After ten years from now, the technology gap between developed countries and Korea is expected to be significantly narrowed in the fields of ‘breeding,’ ‘cultivation & production,’ ‘soil & fertilizer & pesticide,’ and ‘post-harvest technology.’ However, the technology gap in ‘bioenergy,’ ‘BT & IT & NT,’ and ‘energy & environment’ will remain large.
The study reviews other countries' cases of agricultural R&D system: the United States, the Netherlands, and Japan. Three implications are derived. First, those countries have continuously reformed their R&D system to cope with changes in internal and external conditions. A large part of national research functions has been transferred to the private sector. Second, in all cases, the competition principle in distributing R&D budget has been reinforced. In the U.S., for example, the competitive fund has been expanded, while the formula fund has been declined. Third, the private sector actively participates in agricultural R&D. The strong cooperation among private sector, universities, and government makes it possible.
At the farm level, the demand for marketing and management, environment-friendly farming, mechanical technology, and safety seems to be high. According to the survey, the respondents answered that ‘processing & marketing,’ ‘resources & production,’ ‘production system,’ and ‘consolidation technology’ should be given priority in the short term. In the mid and long term, ‘consolidation,’ ‘processing & marketing,’ ‘resource & production,’ and ‘production system’ were the order of priority for R&D investment. The respondents pointed out that ‘breeding,’ ‘BT & IT & NT,’ ‘energy & environment,’ ‘post-harvest technology,’ and ‘bioenergy’ were important for agricultural R&D in the short run. They thought that ‘BT & IT & NT,’ ‘bioenergy,’ ‘breeding,’ ‘energy & environment,’ and ‘climate change & ecology’ should be given the most priority.
The future demand for agricultural R&D investment was calculated using a macro-economic model. The coefficient of R&D stock in the total agricultural productivity function was 0.05. It means that 20 percent increase in R&D investment is needed to increase 1 percent of total productivity. It is also analyzed that the contribution of R&D stock to the growth of agricultural GDP was 35.1 percent during 1980~2006. The study suggested that agricultural R&D budget should be increased by 8.5 percent annually to increase agricultural GDP by 2 percent every year.
This study suggests that the policy goal for agricultural R&D is to build an effective agricultural R&D system which leads to a competitive agri-food industry. For this, four points should be reiterated. First, the agricultural R&D system needs to be further reformed for establishing a demand-oriented R&D system, minimizing research duplication, and enhancing transparency of R&D budgeting. Second, the agricultural R&D budget should be expanded and the priority principle needs to be applied for allocating R&D budget. Third, the government effort to transfer and commercialize technology needs to be promoted. Fourth, the base for agricultural R&D including building D&B for agricultural R&D, strengthening interdisciplinary and international joint research, and nurturing research manpower should be established.