research problem example in agriculture

5 Key Issues in Agriculture in 2021

Photo Credit: Maria Fleischmann/World Bank

As 2021 ends, we take a retrospective look at five topics that were covered in our analytical work this year. These issues represent just a fragment of the Bank's work, but they are key to reducing poverty and hunger while slowing climate change.

Food Security

Like the previous year, news in agriculture and food in 2021 was dominated by deteriorating food security. Approximately 30 percent of the world’s population lacked access to adequate food in 2020 and into 2021.

The World Bank took action to fight food insecurity around the world, providing immediate aid to vulnerable households and more long-term support to farmers in the form of seeds, fertilizer, and other agricultural inputs.

COVID-19 also pushed more people into poverty and made the poor poorer around the world. This, along with supply chain interruptions and rising prices had a major impact on hunger. To learn more about these impacts, read this brief compiled by the Bank and updated at least once a month.

Our new podcast series, Table for 10 Billion , launched in March examined the causes of growing hunger and offered some surprising answers.

Farming Insects for Food and Feed

This December, the Bank released a ground-breaking report looking at the valuable role farming insects can play in both food security and climate-smart agriculture, Insect and Hydroponic Farming in Africa: The New Circular Food Economy .

While two billion people regularly eat insects harvested in the wild, farming them for food at scale is new. The report found that African insect farming could generate crude protein worth up to US$2.6 billion and biofertilizers worth up to US$19.4 billion. That is enough protein meal to meet up to 14% of the crude protein needed to rear all the pigs, goats, fish, and chickens in Africa.

Key benefits of insect farming include:

• Insects can be farmed without arable land.
• Insects can be grown within a couple of weeks.
• The food they need to grow comes from food waste.
• Insect waste can be used as fertilizer.
• Insects can be used as animal feed, cutting farmer expenses, and reducing greenhouse gases generated from farming and transporting other feed such as soybeans.
• People can eat insects or sell them for income, increasing food security.

For more on farming insects and the role they can play in the food system, take a listen to this episode of the Table for 10 Billion podcast .

Fixing Food Finance to Build a Greener Future

While agriculture currently accounts for about 25% of greenhouse gas emissions, it also offers opportunities to both fight climate change and feed more people as the world’s population grows to 10 billion people by 2050. One of the keys will be changing the way agriculture is financed and incentivized .

A report from the Bank, published in September, explains the US$12 trillion in annual hidden social, economic, and environmental costs generated by our current food system and offers recommendations to break the cycle by implementing five food finance imperatives that will help implement climate-smart agriculture .

The report, Food Finance Architecture: Financing a Healthy, Equitable and Sustainable Food System , was written in conjunction with the Food and Land Use Coalition, and the International Food Policy Research Institute, and released to coincide with the UN Food Systems Summit.

A feature story and episode of the Table for 10 Billion podcast examine transforming the food system to adapt to climate change.

Digital Agriculture and the Path to the Future

Agriculture continued its march to the digital future in 2021, both with new techniques being developed for growing food and technology that better links the world’s 570 million farmers and 8 billion consumers.

In March, the Bank released the report What’s Cooking: Digital Transformation of the Agrifood System , which explores how digital technologies are improving the food system and provides a roadmap for countries to scale up their own digital agriculture. The report also provides a framework to evaluate policy proposals that can make the food system more efficient, equitable, and environmentally sustainable.

A live event was held in conjunction with the report’s release and the Table for 10 Billion podcast also looked forward to the digital future of food.

Feeding Growing Cities

In March, the Bank looked at the fast-growing cities of Asia and how they have integrated food systems into their planning. The resulting report, RICH Food, Smart City , demonstrated that more needs to be done at the planning stages to ensure a plentiful and safe supply of food to residents now and in the future.

Only 8% of the 170 emerging Asian cities surveyed by the Bank and FAO were deemed to be “food-smart”–working proactively to ensure strong food systems.

As was made clear by the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, it is key for cities to pursue “smarter” food policy in order to foster reliable, inclusive, competitive, and healthy (“RICH”) food systems better aligned with their challenges and aspirations.

The authors of the book sat down to answer questions on what needs to be done and how to do it.

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Article Contents

1. introduction, 2. analytical framework, 3. literature search, 5. discussion, 6. conclusion, acknowledgement.

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Research impact assessment in agriculture—A review of approaches and impact areas

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Peter Weißhuhn, Katharina Helming, Johanna Ferretti, Research impact assessment in agriculture—A review of approaches and impact areas, Research Evaluation , Volume 27, Issue 1, January 2018, Pages 36–42, https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvx034

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Research has a role to play in society’s endeavour for sustainable development. This is particularly true for agricultural research, since agriculture is at the nexus between numerous sustainable development goals. Yet, generally accepted methods for linking research outcomes to sustainability impacts are missing. We conducted a review of scientific literature to analyse how impacts of agricultural research were assessed and what types of impacts were covered. A total of 171 papers published between 2008 and 2016 were reviewed. Our analytical framework covered three categories: (1) the assessment level of research (policy, programme, organization, project, technology, or other); (2) the type of assessment method (conceptual, qualitative, or quantitative); and (3) the impact areas (economic, social, environmental, or sustainability). The analysis revealed that most papers (56%) addressed economic impacts, such as cost-effectiveness of research funding or macroeconomic effects. In total, 42% analysed social impacts, like food security or aspects of equity. Very few papers (2%) examined environmental impacts, such as climate effects or ecosystem change. Only one paper considered all three sustainability dimensions. We found a majority of papers assessing research impacts at the level of technologies, particularly for economic impacts. There was a tendency of preferring quantitative methods for economic impacts, and qualitative methods for social impacts. The most striking finding was the ‘blind eye’ towards environmental and sustainability implications in research impact assessments. Efforts have to be made to close this gap and to develop integrated research assessment approaches, such as those available for policy impact assessments.

Research has multiple impacts on society. In the light of the international discourse on grand societal challenges and sustainable development, the debate is reinforced about the role of research on economic growth, societal well-being, and environmental integrity ( 1 ). Research impact assessment (RIA) is a key instrument to exploring this role ( 2 ).

A number of countries have begun using RIA to base decisions for allocation of funding on it, and to justify the value of investments in research to taxpayers ( 3 ). The so-called scientometric assessments with a focus on bibliometric and exploitable results such as patents are the main basis for current RIA practices ( 4–6 ). However, neither academic values of science, based on the assumption of ‘knowledge as progress’, nor market values frameworks (‘profit as progress’) seem adequate for achieving and assessing broader public values ( 7 ). Those approaches do not explicitly acknowledge the contribution of research to solving societal challenges, although they are sufficient to measure scientific excellence ( 8 ) or academic impact.

RIA may however represent a vital element for designing socially responsible research processes with orientation towards responsibility for a sustainable development ( 9 , 10 ). In the past, RIAs occurred to focus on output indicators and on links between science and productivity while hardly exploring the wider societal impacts of science ( 11 ). RIA should entail the consideration of intended and non-intended, positive and negative, and long- and short-term impacts of research ( 12 ). Indeed, there has been a broadening of impact assessments to include, for example, cultural and social returns to society ( 13 ). RIA is conceptually and methodologically not yet sufficiently equipped to capture wider societal implications, though ( 14 ). This is due to the specific challenges associated with RIA, including inter alia unknown time lags between research processes and their impacts ( 15–17 ). Independent from their orientation, RIAs are likely to influence research policies for years to come ( 18 ).

Research on RIA and its potential to cover wider societal impacts has examined assessment methods and approaches in specific fields of research, and in specific research organizations. The European Science Foundation ( 19 ) and Guthrie et al. ( 20 ) provided overviews of a range of methods usable in assessment exercises. They discuss generic methods (e.g. economic analyses, surveys, and case studies) with view to their selection for RIAs. Methods need to fit the objectives of the assessment and the characteristics of the disciplines examined. Econometric methods consider the rate of return over investment ( 21 ), indicators for ‘productive interactions’ between the stakeholders try to capture the social impact of research ( 22 ), and case study-based approaches map the ‘public values’ of research programmes ( 8 , 23 ). No approach is generally favourable over another, while challenges exist in understanding which impact areas are relevant in what contexts. Penfield et al. ( 6 ) looked at the different methods and frameworks employed in assessment approaches worldwide, with a focus on the UK Research Excellence Framework. They argue that there is a need for RIA approaches based on types of impact rather than research discipline. They point to the need for tools and systems to assist in RIAs and highlight different types of information needed along the output-outcome-impact-chain to provide for a comprehensive assessment. In the field of public health research, a minority of RIAs exhibit a wider scope on impacts, and these studies highlight the relevance of case studies ( 24 ). However, case studies often rely on principal investigator interviews and/or peer review, not taking into account the views of end users. Evaluation practices in environment-related research organizations tend to focus on research uptake and management processes, but partially show a broader scope and longer-term outcomes. Establishing attribution of environmental research to different types of impacts was identified to be a key challenge ( 25 ). Other authors tested impact frameworks or impact patterns in disciplinary public research organizations. For example, Gaunand et al. ( 26 ) analysed an internal database of the French Agricultural research organization INRA with 1,048 entries to identify seven impact areas, with five going beyond traditional types of impacts (e.g. conservation of natural resources or scientific advice). Besides, for the case of agricultural research, no systematic review of RIA methods exists in the academic literature that would allow for an overview of available approaches covering different impact areas of research.

Against this background, the objective of this study was to review in how far RIAs of agricultural research capture wider societal implications. We understand agricultural research as being a prime example for the consideration of wider research impacts. This is because agriculture is a sector which has direct and severe implications for a range of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. It has a strong practice orientation and is just beginning to develop a common understanding of innovation processes ( 27 ).

The analysis of the identified literature on agricultural RIA (for details, see next section ‘Literature search’) built on a framework from a preliminary study presented at the ImpAR Conference 2015 ( 28 ). It was based on three categories to explore the impact areas that were addressed and the design of RIA. In particular, the analytical framework consisted of: ( 1 ) the assessment level of research; ( 2 ) the type of assessment method; and ( 3 ) the impact areas covered. On the side, we additionally explored the time dimension of RIA, i.e. whether the assessment was done ex ante or ex post (see Fig. 1 ).

Analytical framework for the review of non-scientometric impact assessment literature of agricultural research.

Agricultural research and the ramifications following from that refer to different levels of assessment (or levels of evaluation, ( 29 )). We defined six assessment levels that can be the subject of a RIA: policy, programme, organization, project, technology, and other. The assessment level of the RIA is a relevant category, since it shapes the approach to the RIA (e.g. the impact chain of a research project differs to that at policy level). The assessment level was clearly stated in all of the analysed papers and in no case more than one assessment level was addressed. Articles were assigned to the policy level, if a certain public technology policy ( 30 ) or science policy, implemented by governments to directly or indirectly affect the conduct of science, was considered. Exemplary topics are research funding, transfer of research results to application, or contribution to economic development. Research programmes were understood as instruments that are adopted by government departments, or other organizational entities to implement research policies and fund research activities in a specific research field (e.g. programmes to promote research on a certain crop or cultivation technique). Articles dealing with the organizational level assess the impact of research activities of a specific research organization. The term research organization comprises public or private research institutes, associations, networks, or partnerships (e.g. the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and its research centres). A research project is the level at which research is actually carried out, e.g. as part of a research programme. The assessment of a research project would consider the impacts of the whole project, from planning through implementation to evaluation instead of focusing on a specific project output, like a certain agricultural innovation. The technology level was considered to be complementary to the other assessment levels of research and comprises studies with a strong focus on specific agricultural machinery or other agricultural innovation such as new crops or crop rotations, fertilizer applications, pest control, or tillage practices, irrespective of the agricultural system (e.g. smallholder or high-technology farming, or organic, integrated, or conventional farming). The category ‘other’ included one article addressing RIA at the level of individual researchers (see ( 31 )).

We categorized the impact areas along the three dimensions of sustainable development by drawing upon the European Commission’s impact assessment guidelines (cf. ( 32 )). The guidelines entail a list of 7 environmental impacts, such as natural resource use, climate change, or aspects of nature conservation; 12 social impacts, such as employment and working conditions, security, education, or aspects of equity; and 10 economic impacts, including business competitiveness, increased trade, and several macroeconomic aspects. The European Commission’s impact assessment guidelines were used as a classification framework because it is one of the most advanced impact assessment frameworks established until to date ( 33 ). In addition, we opened a separate category for those articles exploring joint impacts on the three sustainability dimensions. Few articles addressed impacts in two sustainability dimensions which we assigned to the dominating impact area.

To categorize the type of RIA method, we distinguished between conceptual, qualitative, and quantitative. Conceptual analyses include the development of frameworks or concepts for measuring impacts of agricultural research (e.g. tracking of innovation pathways or the identification of barriers and supporting factors for impact generation). Qualitative and quantitative methods were identified by the use of qualitative data or quantitative data, respectively (cf. ( 34–36 )). Qualitative data can be scaled nominally or ordinally. It is generated by interviews, questionnaires, surveys or choice experiments to gauge stakeholder attitudes to new technologies, their willingness to pay, and their preference for adoption measures. The generation of quantitative data involves a numeric measurement in a standardized way. Such data are on a metric scale and are often used for modelling. The used categorization is rather simple. We assigned approaches which employed mixed-method approaches according to their dominant method. We preferred this over more sophisticated typologies to achieve a high level of abstraction and because the focus of our analysis was on impact areas rather than methods. However, to show consistencies with existing typologies of impact assessment methods ( 19 , 37 ), we provide an overview of the categorization chosen and give examples of the most relevant types of methods.

To additionally explore the approach of the assessment ( 38 ), the dimensions ex ante and ex post were identified. The two approaches are complementary: whereas ex ante impact assessments are usually conducted for strategic and planning purposes to set priorities, ex post impact assessments serve as accountability validation and control against a baseline. The studies in our sample that employed an ex ante approach to RIA usually made this explicit, while in the majority of ex post impact assessments, this was indicated rather implicitly.

This study was performed as a literature review based on Thomson Reuters Web of Science TM Core Collection, indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-Exp) and the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI). The motivation for restricting the analysis to articles from ISI-listed journals was to stay within the boundaries of internationally accepted scientific quality management and worldwide access. The advantages of a search based on Elsevier’s Scopus ® (more journals and alternative publications, and more articles from social and health science covered) would not apply for this literature review, with regard to the drawbacks of an index system based on abstracts instead of citation indexes, which is not as transparent as the Core Collection regarding the database definable by the user. We selected the years of 2008 to mid-2016 for the analysis (numbers last updated on 2 June 2016) . First, because most performance-based funding systems have been introduced since 2000, allowing sufficient time for the RIA approaches to evolve and literature to be published. Secondly, in 2008 two key publications on RIA of agricultural research triggered the topic: Kelley, et al. ( 38 ) published the lessons learned from the Standing Panel on Impact Assessment of CGIAR; Watts, et al. ( 39 ) summarized several central pitfalls of impact assessment concerning agricultural research. We took these publications as a starting point for the literature search. We searched in TOPIC and therefore, the terms had to appear in the title, abstract, author keywords, or keywords plus ® . The search query 1 filtered for agricultural research in relation to research impact. To cover similar expressions, we used science, ‘R&D’, and innovation interchangeably with research, and we searched for assessment, evaluation, criteria, benefit, adoption, or adaptation of research.

We combined the TOPIC search with a less strict search query 2 in TITLE using the same groups of terms, as these searches contained approximately two-thirds non-overlapping papers. Together they consisted of 315 papers. Of these, we reviewed 282 after excluding all document types other than articles and reviews (19 papers were not peer-reviewed journal articles) and all papers not written in English language (14 papers). After going through them, 171 proved to be topic-relevant and were included in the analysis.

Analysis matrix showing the number of reviewed articles, each categorized to an assessment level and an impact area (social, economic, environmental, or all three (sustainability)). Additionally, the type of analytical method (conceptual, quantitative, and qualitative) is itemized

In the agricultural RIA, the core assessment level of the reviewed articles was technology (39%), while the other levels were almost equally represented (with the exception of ‘other’). Generally, most papers (56%) addressed economic research impacts, closely followed by social research impacts (42%); however, only three papers (2%) addressed environmental research impacts and only 1 of 171 papers addressed all three dimensions of sustainable development. Assessments at the level of research policy slightly emphasized social impacts over economic impacts (18 papers, or 58%), whereas assessments at the level of technology clearly focused primarily on economic impacts (46 papers, or 68%).

The methods used for agricultural RIA showed no preference for one method type (see Table 1 ). Approximately 31% of the papers assessed research impacts quantitatively, whereas 37% used qualitative methods. Conceptual considerations on research impact were applied by 32% of the studies. A noticeable high number of qualitative studies were conducted to assess social impacts. At the evaluation level of research policy and research programmes, we found a focus on quantitative methods, if economic impacts were assessed.

Overview on type of methods used for agricultural RIA

a Mix of conceptual and qualitative methods.

b Mix of conceptual, qualitative, and quantitative methods.

Additionally, 37 ex ante studies, compared to 134 ex post studies, revealed that the latter clearly dominated, but no robust relation to any other investigated characteristic was found. Of the three environmental impact studies, none assessed ex ante , while the one study exploring sustainability impacts did. The share of ex ante assessments regarding social impacts was very similar to those regarding economic impacts. Within the assessment levels of research (excluding ‘others’ with only one paper), no notable difference between the shares of ex ante assessments occurred as they ranged between 13 and 28%.

The most relevant outcome of the review analysis was that only 3 of the 171 papers focus on the environmental impacts of agricultural research. This seems surprising because agriculture is dependent on an intact environment. However, this finding is supported by two recent reviews: one from Bennett, et al. ( 40 ) and one from Maredia and Raitzer ( 41 ). Both note that not only international agricultural research in general but also research on natural resource management shows a lack regarding large-scale assessments of environmental impacts. The CGIAR also recognized the necessity to deepen the understanding of the environmental impacts of its work because RIAs had largely ignored environmental benefits ( 42 ).

A few papers explicitly include environmental impacts of research in addition to their main focus. Raitzer and Maredia ( 43 ) address water depletion, greenhouse gas emissions, and landscape effects; however, their overall focus is on poverty reduction. Ajayi et al. ( 44 ) report the improvement of soil physical properties and soil biodiversity from introducing fertilizer trees but predominantly measure economic and social effects. Cavallo, et al. ( 45 ) investigate users’ attitudes towards the environmental impact of agricultural tractors (considered as technological innovation) but do not measure the environmental impact. Briones, et al. ( 46 ) configure an environmental ‘modification’ of economic surplus analysis, but they do not prioritize environmental impacts.

Of course, the environmental impacts of agricultural practices were the topic of many studies in recent decades, such as Kyllmar, et al. ( 47 ), Skinner, et al. ( 48 ), Van der Werf and Petit ( 49 ), among many others. However, we found very little evidence for the impact of agricultural research on the environment. A study on environmental management systems that examined technology adoption rates though not the environmental impacts is exemplarily for this ( 50 ). One possible explanation is based on the observation made by Morris, et al. ( 51 ) and Watts, et al. ( 39 ). They see impact assessments tending to accentuate the success stories because studies are often commissioned strategically as to demonstrate a certain outcome. This would mean to avoid carving out negative environmental impacts that conflict with, when indicated, the positive economic or societal impacts of the assessed research activity. In analogy to policy impact assessments, this points to the need of incentives to equally explore intended and unintended, expected and non-expected impacts from scratch ( 52 ). From those tasked with an RIA, this again requires an open attitude in ‘doing RIA’ and towards the findings of their RIA.

Another possible explanation was given by Bennett, et al. ( 40 ): a lack of skills in ecology or environmental economics to cope with the technically complex and data-intensive integration of environmental impacts. Although such a lack of skills or data could also apply to social and economic impacts, continuous monitoring of environmental data related to agricultural practices is particularly scarce. A third possible explanation is a conceptual oversight, as environmental impacts may be thought to be covered by the plenty of environmental impact assessments of agricultural activities itself.

The impression of a ‘blind eye’ on the environment in agricultural RIA may change when publications beyond Web of Science TM Core Collection are considered ( 53 ) or sources other than peer-reviewed journal articles are analysed (e.g. reports; conference proceedings). See, for example, Kelley, et al. ( 38 ), Maredia and Pingali ( 54 ), or FAO ( 55 ). Additionally, scientific publications of the highest quality standard (indicated by reviews and articles being listed in the Web of Science TM Core Collection) seem to not yet reflect experiences and advancements from assessment applications on research and innovation policy that usually include the environmental impact ( 56 ).

Since their beginnings, RIAs have begun to move away from narrow exercises concerned with economic impacts ( 11 ) and expanded their scope to social impacts. However, we only found one sustainability approach in our review that would cover all three impact areas of agricultural research (see ( 57 )). In contrast, progressive approaches to policy impact assessment largely attempt to cover the full range of environmental, social, and economic impacts of policy ( 33 , 58 ). RIAs may learn from them.

Additionally, the focus of agricultural research on technological innovation seems evident. Although the word innovation is sometimes still used for new technology (as in ‘diffusion of innovations’), it is increasingly used for the process of technical and institutional change at the farm level and higher levels of impact. Technology production increasingly is embedded in innovation systems ( 59 ).

The review revealed a diversity of methods (see Table 2 ) applied in impact assessments of agricultural research. In the early phases of RIA, the methods drawn from agricultural economics were considered as good standard for an impact assessment of international agricultural research ( 39 ). However, quantitative methods most often address economic impacts. In addition, the reliability of assessments based on econometric models is often disputed because of strong relationships between modelling assumptions and respective results.

Regarding environmental (or sustainability) impacts of agricultural research, the portfolio of assessment methods could be extended by learning from RIAs in other impact areas. In our literature sample, only review, framework development (e.g. key barrier typologies, environmental costing, or payments for ecosystem services), life-cycle assessment, and semi-structured interviews were used for environmental impacts of agricultural research.

In total, 42 of the 171 analysed papers assessed the impact of participatory research. A co-management of public research acknowledges the influence of the surrounding ecological, social, and political system and allows different types of stakeholder knowledge to shape innovation ( 60 ). Schut, et al. ( 36 ) conceptualize an agricultural innovation support system, which considers multi-stakeholder dynamics next to multilevel interactions within the agricultural system and multiple dimensions of the agricultural problem. Another type of participation in RIAs is the involvement of stakeholders to the evaluation process. A comparatively low number of six papers considered participatory evaluation of research impact, of them three in combination with impact assessment of participatory research.

Approximately 22% of the articles in our sample on agricultural research reported that they conducted their assessments ex ante , but most studies were ex post assessments. Watts, et al. ( 39 ) considered ex ante impact assessment to be more instructive than ex post assessment because it can directly guide the design of research towards maximizing beneficial impacts. This is particularly true when an ex ante assessment is conducted as a comparative assessment comprising a set of alternative options ( 61 ).

Many authors of the studies analysed were not explicit about the time frames considered in their ex post studies. The potential latency of impacts from research points to the need for ex post (and ex ante) studies to account for and analyse longer time periods, either considering ‘decades’ ( 62 , 63 ) or a lag distribution covering up to 50 years, with a peak approximately in the middle of the impact period ( 64 ). This finding is in line with the perspective of impact assessments as an ongoing process throughout a project’s life cycle and not as a one-off process at the end ( 51 ). Nevertheless, ex post assessments are an important component of a comprehensive evaluation package, which includes ex ante impact assessment, impact pathway analysis, programme peer reviews, performance monitoring and evaluation, and process evaluations, among others ( 38 ).

RIA is conceptually and methodologically not yet sufficiently equipped to capture wider societal implications, though ( 14 ). This is due to the specific challenges associated with RIA, including inter alia unknown time lags between research processes and their impacts ( 15–17 ). Independent from their orientation, RIAs are likely to influence research policies for years to come ( 18 ).

However, in the cases in which a RIA is carried out, an increase in the positive impacts (or avoidance of negative impacts) of agricultural research does not follow automatically. Lilja and Dixon ( 65 ) state the following methodological reasons for the missing impact of impact studies: no accountability with internal learning, no developed scaling out, the overlap of monitoring and evaluation and impact assessment, the intrinsic nature of functional and empowering farmer participation, the persistent lack of widespread attention to gender, and the operational and political complexity of multi-stakeholder impact assessment. In contrast, a desired impact of research could be reached or boosted by specific measures without making an impact assessment at all. Kristjanson, et al. ( 66 ), for example, proposed seven framework conditions for agricultural research to bridge the gap between scientific knowledge and action towards sustainable development. RIA should develop into process-oriented evaluations, in contrast to outcome-oriented evaluation ( 67 ), for addressing the intended kind of impacts, the scope of assessment, and for choosing the appropriate assessment method ( 19 ).

This review aimed at providing an overview of impact assessment activities reported in academic agricultural literature with regard to their coverage of impact areas and type of assessment method used. We found a remarkable body of non-scientometric RIA at all evaluation levels of agricultural research but a major interest in economic impacts of new agricultural technologies. These are closely followed by an interest in social impacts at multiple assessments levels that usually focus on food security and poverty reduction and rely slightly more on qualitative assessment methods. In contrast, the assessment of the environmental impacts of agricultural research or comprehensive sustainability assessments was exceptionally limited. They may have been systematically overlooked in the past, for the reason of expected negative results, thought to be covered by other impact studies or methodological challenges. RIA could learn from user-oriented policy impact assessments that usually include environmental impacts. Frameworks for RIA should avoid narrowing the assessment focus and instead considering intended and unintended impacts in several impact areas equally. It seems fruitful to invest in assessment teams’ environmental analytic skills and to expand several of the already developed methods for economic or social impact to the environmental impacts. Only then, the complex and comprehensive contribution of agricultural research to sustainable development can be revealed.

The authors would like to thank Jana Rumler and Claus Dalchow for their support in the Web of Science analysis and Melanie Gutschker for her support in the quantitative literature analysis.

This work was supported by the project LIAISE (Linking Impact Assessment to Sustainability Expertise, www.liaisenoe.eu ), which was funded by Framework Programme 7 of the European Commission and co-funded by the Leibniz-Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research. The research was further inspired and supported by funding from the ‘Guidelines for Sustainability Management’ project for non-university research institutes in Germany (‘Leitfaden Nachhaltigkeitsmanagement’, BMBF grant 311 number 13NKE003A).

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Technology and Economics (1991)

Chapter: challenges to agricultural research in the twenty-first century, challenges to agricultural research in the twenty-first century.

Vernon W. Ruttan

In these remarks I will discuss some of the challenges facing the global agricultural research systems as we move into the first decades of the next century. Before doing so, however, I would like to first place my remarks within the intellectual climate that has conditioned our thinking about the relationships among environmental, technological, and institutional change during the second half of the twentieth century. I will then turn to some of the sources of stress from scientific, populist, and ideological sources that have buffeted the agricultural research community over the last several decades. Finally, I will report on some of the findings for research that have emerged from several recent "consultations" that I have organized around the issues of (a) biological and technical constraints on crop and animal productivity; and (b) resource and environmental constraints on sustainable growth in agricultural production.

TECHNOLOGY, INSTITUTIONS, AND THE ENVIRONMENT

The research that is conducted in our universities, research institutes, and our agricultural experiment stations is valued primarily for its contributions to technical and institutional change. The demand for advances in knowledge in the social sciences and humanities, and in related professional fields, is derived primarily from the demand for institutional change and more effective institutional performance.

There are several ways of characterizing the significance of technical change. It permits the substitution of knowledge for resources; it permits the substitution of more abundant for less abundant resources; and it releases the constraints on growth imposed by inelastic resources

supplies. But technical change is itself the product of institutional innovation. Whitehead insisted that the greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the institutionalization of the process of invention—the invention of the research university, the industrial research laboratory, and the agricultural experiment station. One effect of the lag in institutional innovations needed to achieve an incentive-compatible institutional infrastructure institutions capable of achieving compatibility between individual, organizational, and social objectives—is that the by-products of technical change, what the resource economists refer to as residuals, are now filling the landscape with garbage and the earth, water, and atmosphere with chemicals.

I am prepared to insist that the contributions of advances in natural and social science knowledge to technical and institutional change have enabled modern society to achieve a more productive and better balanced relationship to the natural world than was achieved in the ancient civilizations or in earlier stages of Western industrial civilization. But the relationship between advances in knowledge, resource use, and human well-being continues to be uneasy. We are, for example, in the midst of the third wave of social concern about the relationships between natural resources and the sustainability of improvements in human well-being since World War II—and the fifth since Malthus.

The first postwar wave of concern, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, focused primarily on the quantitative relations between resource availability and growth—the adequacy of land, water, energy, and other natural resources to sustain growth. The reports of the President's Water Resources Policy Commission and the President's Materials Policy Commission were the landmarks of the early postwar resource assessment studies generated by this wave of concern. The response to this first wave of concern was technical change. A stretch of high prices has not yet failed to induce the new knowledge and new technologies needed to locate new deposits, promote substitution, and enhance productivity. If the Materials Policy Commission report were writing today, it would have to conclude that there has been abundant evidence ''of the nonevident becoming evident; the expensive, cheap; and the inaccessible, accessible."

The second wave of concern occurred in late 1960s and early 1970s. In this second wave, the earlier concern with the potential "limits to growth" imposed by natural resource scarcity was supplemented by concern about the capacity of the environment to assimilate the multiple forms of pollution generated by growth. An intense conflict was emerging between the two major sources of demand for environmental services. One was the rising demand for environmental assimilation of residuals derived from growth in commodity production and con-

sumption—asbestos in our insulation, pesticides in our food, smog in the air, and radioactive wastes in the biosphere. The second was the rapid growth in consumer demand for environmental amenities—for direct consumption of environmental services—arising out of rapid growth in per capita income and high income elasticity of demand for such environmental services as access to natural environments and freedom from pollution and congestion. One response to these concerns, still incomplete, was the design of local incentive-compatible institutions designed to force individual firms and other organizations to bear the costs arising from the externalities generated by commodity production.

Since the mid-1980s these two earlier concerns have been supplemented by a third . These more recent concerns center around the implications for environmental quality, food production, and human health of a series of environmental changes that are occurring on a transnational scale—issues such as global warming, ozone depletion, acid rain, and others. The institutional innovations needed to respond to these concerns will be more difficult to design. They will, like the sources of change, need to be transnational. Experience with attempts to design incentive-compatible transnational regimes, such as the Law of the Sea Convention, or even the somewhat more successful Montreal Protocol on reduction of CFC emissions, suggests that the difficulty of resolving free-rider and distributional equity issues imposes a severe constraint on how rapidly effective transnational regimes to resolve these new environmental concerns can be put in place.

STRESS ON THE AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH SYSTEM

During the last century, American agriculture has made the transition from a natural resource-based industry to a science-based industry. During this period, rapid productivity growth enabled the agricultural sector to strengthen its position in world markets while simultaneously releasing much of its labor force to the nonfarm sectors of the economy. This is in sharp contrast to recent experience in the U.S. manufacturing sector. During the last decade and a half, lagging productivity growth in traditional and high-technology manufacturing has resulted in a loss of both jobs and competitive position in world markets.

The agricultural research community has taken considerable pride in its contribution to the remarkable economic performance of the agricultural sector over the last century (see Table 1 ). But this pride has been severely shaken. During the 1970s and early 1980s the closely articulated U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)-land-grant university research system was subject to considerable criticism from

TABLE 1 Average Annual Rates of Change (percentage per year) in Output, Inputs, and Productivity in U.S. Agriculture, 1870-1986.

populist, scientific, ideological perspectives. At the risk of some oversimplification, it may be useful to characterize these criticisms along the following lines.

The criticism directed toward agricultural research by the general science community was that agricultural research was not "good science." A central element in this negative perception of agricultural research was that it has been funded primarily through institutional support rather than through competitive grants. A second element is that a relatively high share of agricultural research has been directed toward technology development. While generally conceding that the investment in agricultural research has paid high social dividends in the past, there was concern that the system was losing its capacity to make comparable contributions in the future.

An ideological criticism that emerged with particular force in the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the early 1980s, was a perception that public research support should be confined to the basic sciences and that the private sector should be primarily respon-

sible for applied research. The proponents of this view tend to avoid questions of the articulation or synergy between basic and applied research. There was also an even greater reluctance to address the problem of how to ensure research performance in those areas of technology development where private incentives are inadequate to generate an economically or socially optimum level of research.

The populist critics have viewed agricultural research, and the technology that has been generated by agricultural research, as responsible for the displacement of small farms and farm workers, as a source of the decline of rural communities, as a cause of deterioration in the quality and safety of food, and as an assault on the quality of the environment. Thus, in the populist view, agricultural research was regarded as a powerful instrument of technical and social change that has been captured by organized agribusiness and has misdirected its energies against the people and the institutions that it was designed to serve. During the early and mid-1980s, a global recession and the rising value of the dollar combined to dampen the demand for U.S. agricultural commodities abroad. High interest rates, associated first with inflation and later with massive federal borrowing, imposed severe financial burdens on farmers and their suppliers. These combined to force a decline in farm commodity prices, severe deflation in land values, and a financial crisis for many farmers. Some critics suggested a moratorium on agricultural research and technology development. Others called for the transfer of resources from research directed to productivity enhancement to cost reduction—apparently without realizing that these were opposite sides of the same coin. State agricultural experiment stations were urged to withdraw from efforts supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development to strengthen national research systems in developing countries.

By the end of the 1980s new pressures were being brought to bear on the U.S. agricultural research system. Concerns about the impact of agricultural intensification widened. In the 1970s these concerns had initially focused on the effects of pesticides and nonpoint sources of pollution on natural environments and on the safety of farm workers and consumers. During the 1980s concerns about the effects of more intensive agricultural production on (a) resource degradation through erosion, salinization, and depletion of groundwater; and (b) the quality of surface and groundwater through runoff and leaching of plant nutrients and pesticides intensified. Terms that had been introduced by the populist critics of agricultural research—such as alternative, low-input, regenerative, and sustainable agriculture—began to enter the vocabulary of those responsible for allocating resources for agricultural research. After an initial period of resistance, some leaders of the

agricultural research community moved to embrace this new set of concerns. The recently issued report by the National Research Council Board on Agriculture on Alternative Agriculture has been viewed as a landmark in this conversion. In my judgment, this report is more appropriately viewed as a political document designed to capture the initiative from the populist critics of institutionalized agricultural research.

The changes that I have described can be put in a somewhat broader context. During the last two decades, the agricultural research system has been attempting to respond to a new set of demands—and opportunities—resulting from populist, scientific, and ideological challenges in an environment in which its access to economic and political resources has been declining. Federal agricultural research funding and performance have stagnated since the late 1960s (Figures 1 and 2 ). By the late 1980s the USDA provided only about 16 percent of total federal support for academic basic research in plant biology. An increasing share of the USDA Agricultural Research Service research was supported by transfers from other agencies. Modest growth of

FIGURE 1. Sources of funding for government R&D. SOURCE: Pray (1989).

FIGURE 2. Performance of government R&D. SOURCE: Pray (1989).

state support for agricultural research has been sufficient to slightly more than offset the decline in federal support. Private sector agricultural research has risen from a level roughly equivalent to the level of the USDA-land-grant system in the mid-1960s to close to 60 percent of the total in the mid-1980s. However, there is some evidence of a decline in private sector research, both in the newer areas of biotechnology and in the more traditional areas of biological technology such as plant breeding, since the mid-1980s.

In an attempt to reverse the stagnation in public support for agricultural research, the National Research Council Board on Agriculture issued a report in the fall of 1989 calling for an increase in funding of $500 million for the competitive research grants program administered by the USDA. The program would support research in public and private universities, the USDA research agencies, and other research agencies of the state and federal government. Despite the boldness of the proposal, it would not be surprising to see an increase in funding of the magnitude achieved over a five-year period—by

which time the purchasing power of the increase may have been reduced by 25 percent as a result of inflation. If an expanded competitive grants program, even of the size proposed, is to make more than a marginal impact on agricultural research capacity, the support for other public sector agricultural research will have to increase from a level of approximately $2.0 billion in 1986 to the $2.5 to $3.0 billion range (in current dollars) by the mid-1990s.

Funding increases in the range discussed above will not resolve the major problems facing the agricultural research system. One of the most critical is the issue of who will do the research. In framing the proposal for the $500 million increase in competitive grant funding, the Board on Agriculture was unable to avoid a conclusion that had become obvious a decade ago—most of the new research would be conducted by a subset of elite institutions. In testimony presented at joint hearings by the Senate and House Agriculture Subcommittees, William Marshall, who heads the Microbial Genetics Division of Pioneer Hybrid International, insisted that the viability of agricultural research will require ''broadening of the scientific base in agricultural research to include the fundamental sciences outside of the land-grant colleges of agriculture." Furthermore, "no more than 15 of our 57 experiment stations have the capability to do significant amounts of research in biotechnology."

It seems clear that by the end of the first decade of the next century, the agricultural research landscape will look much different than it does today. Moreover, pressures for the revision of research priorities arising from scientific, societal, and environmental change will not abate.

BIOLOGICAL AND TECHNICAL CONSTRAINTS

During the last six months, I have had an opportunity, with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, to organize a series of small "consultations" on the agricultural research priorities that might be expected to emerge as we move into the early decades of the next century. The first of these consultations was organized around the topic "Biological and Technical Constraints on Crop and Animal Productivity," and the second around the issues of "Resource and Environmental Constraints on Sustainable Growth in Agricultural Production." Although the consultations were not confined to domestic priorities, the issues and conclusions were quite relevant to U.S. agricultural research policy.

Those familiar with the evidence on long-term declines in agricultural commodity prices (Figures 3 and 4 ) or with media attention to

FIGURE 3. Real wheat prices since 1800. SOURCE: Edwards (1988).

FIGURE 4. Real rice prices, 1900-1987. SOURCE: Pingali (1988).

the "new biotechnology" may find it difficult to comprehend why anyone should be concerned about the possibilities of a lag in either agricultural production or productivity over the next several decades. Let me justify my concern with just four observations: (1) the yields obtained on maximum yield trials at the International Rice Research Institute are no higher today than they were in the mid-1960s; (2) maize yields in the United States continue to increase at about one bushel per year—but this is a much smaller rate of increase than 30 years ago; (3) the projected impact of biotechnology on agricultural production continues to be postponed—benefits expected in this decade are now expected in the next; and (4) national agricultural research capacity has weakened in a number of debt-plagued developing countries and in Eastern Europe and the USSR.

Let me now turn to some major conclusions from the consultation on biological and technical constraints.

Advances in conventional technology will remain the primary source of growth in crop and animal production over the next quarter century. Almost all future increases in agricultural production must come from further intensification of production on land that is now devoted to crop and livestock production. Until well into the second decade of the next century, the necessary gains in crop and animal productivity will continue to be generated by improvements resulting from conventional plant and animal breeding and from more intensive and efficient use of technical inputs, including chemical fertilizers, pest-control chemicals, and higher quality animal feeds. The productivity gains from conventional sources are likely to come in smaller increments than in the past. If they are to be realized, higher plant populations per unit area, new tillage practices, improved pest and disease control, more precise application of plant nutrients, and advances in soil and water management will be required. Gains from these sources will be crop, animal, and location specific. They will require closer articulation between the suppliers and users of knowledge and new technology. These sources of productivity gains will be extremely knowledge and information intensive. If they are to be realized, research and technology transfer efforts in information and management technology must become increasingly important sources of growth in crop and animal productivity. In the short run, that is, the next several decades, no other sources of growth in production will be adequate to meet the demands that will arise from growth in population and income, and be placed on agricultural production in either the developed or developing countries. Both national and international agricultural research systems will need to increase the proportion of

research resources devoted to improvement of agronomic practice relative to plant breeding.

Advances in conventional technology will be inadequate to sustain the demands that will be placed on agriculture in the second decade of the next century and beyond . Advances in crop yields have come about primarily by increasing the ratio of grain to straw rather than by increasing total dry matter production. Advances in animal feed efficiency have come by decreasing the proportion of consumed feed that is devoted to animal maintenance and increasing the proportion that produces usable animal products. There are severe physiological constraints to continued improvement along these conventional paths. These constraints are most severe in those areas that have already achieved the highest levels of productivity—as in Western Europe, North America, and parts of East Asia.

The impact of these constraints can be measured in terms of declining incremental response to energy inputs—in the form of reductions in both the incremental yield increases from higher levels of fertilizer application, and the incremental savings in labor inputs from the use of larger and more powerful mechanical equipment. One consequence is that in countries that have achieved the highest levels of output per hectare or per animal unit, an increasing share of both public and private sector research budgets is being devoted to maintenance research—the research needed to sustain existing productivity levels. A decline in the incremental returns to agricultural research would impose a higher priority on efficiency in the organization of research and on the allocation of research resources.

A reorientation of agricultural research will be necessary to realize the opportunities for technical change being opened up by advances in microbiology and biochemistry . Advances in basic science, particularly in molecular biology and biochemistry, continue to open up new possibilities for supplementing traditional sources of plant and animal productivity growth. Possibilities range from the transfer of growth hormones into fish to the conversion of lignocellulose into edible plant and animal products.

The realization of these possibilities will require a reorganization in the performance of agricultural research. An increasing share of the new knowledge generated by research will reach producers in the form of proprietary products or services. This means that the incentives exist to draw substantially more private sector resources into agricultural research. Public sector research organization increasingly will have to move from a "little science" to a "big science" mode of organization. Examples include the Rockefeller Foundation-sponsored

collaborative research program on the biotechnology of rice and the University of Minnesota program on the biotechnology of maize. In the absence of more focused research efforts, it seems likely that the promised gains in agricultural productivity from biotechnology will continue to recede in the future.

Efforts to institutionalize agricultural research capacity in developing countries must be intensified . Crop and animal productivity levels in most developing countries remain well below the levels that are potentially feasible. Access to the conventional sources of productivity growth— from advances in plant breeding, agronomy, and soil and water management will require the institutionalization of substantial agricultural research capacity. In a large number of developing countries this capacity is just beginning to be put in place. A number of countries that experienced substantial growth in capacity during the 1960s and 1970s have experienced an erosion of capacity in the 1980s. Even a relatively small country, producing a limited range of commodities under a limited range of agro-climatic conditions, will require a cadre of 250-300 agricultural scientists. Countries that do not acquire adequate agricultural research capacity will not be able to meet the demands placed on their farmers as a result of growth in population and income. Research systems that do not generate resource and productivity enhancing capacity will fail to sustain public support.

There are substantial possibilities for developing sustainable agricultural production systems in a number of fragile resource areas . Research in the tropical rain forest areas of Latin America and in the semiarid tropics of Africa suggests the possibility of developing sustainable agricultural systems with substantially enhanced productivity. It is unlikely, and perhaps undesirable, that these areas become important components of the global food supply system. But enhanced productivity is important to the people who live in these areas now and in the future. It is important that the research investment in soil and water management and in farming systems be intensified in these areas.

Over the long run, energy and mineral nutrition can be expected to emerge as increasingly serious constraints on agricultural production. During the last century, technical change has been directed along alternative paths in different countries by their relative resource endowments. Countries where land was relatively scarce or expensive, such as Japan, placed an emphasis on biological technology—in effect, inventing around the land resource constraint. Countries where labor was relatively scarce or expensive, such as the United States, placed greater emphasis on advancing mechanical technology—in effect inventing around the labor constraint. Over the next half century, energy derived from liquid fuels is likely to become a serious constraint. It is also possible

that the reserves of phosphate raw material will decline to levels that will result in much higher relative prices for phosphate fertilizer. It is likely that it will be necessary to allocate substantial research resources to invent around these two constraints.

The rationalization of regulatory regimes will become an increasingly important factor in determining the profitability of research investments and international competitiveness in agricultural production . Incentives for private sector agricultural research appear to be quite sensitive to uncertainty about changes in regulatory regimes and the administration of regulations. Incentives for research and the potential gains from research investment are reduced when use of technology is restricted for reasons other than the assurance of health and safety. Consumers may press for regulation based on aesthetic concerns. Producers may press for regulation to protect themselves from domestic or international competition. Pressure to achieve greater consistency among national regulatory regimes is likely to become an increasingly important factor in international trade negotiations. It will be necessary to devote substantial research efforts to identifying and quantifying the scientific, technical, economic, and psychological information needed to rationalize regulatory regimes in the future.

A major effort to assemble and characterize available plant and animal genetic resources is essential to make the transition from the conventional biological technology of the twentieth century to a biotechnology-based agriculture for the twenty-first century . A major constraint in the development of a cost-effective strategy for collection and preservation of genetic resources is an adequate characterization of the materials in ex situ locations and in ex situ collections. A genome mapping program for crop plants is essential if we are going to make effective use of the genetic engineering techniques that are available now and that will become available in the future.

Research on alternative crops and animals that can be introduced into production systems can become a useful source of growth in some areas . On a local or regional basis, the development and incorporation of minor cultivars and species could make important nutritional and economic contributions. It is unlikely that alternative crops or animals will emerge to substantially replace existing crop cultivars or animal species in production systems. It would be wishful thinking to expect any new developments as significant as the expansion of soybean production during the past half century.

There is a need to establish substantial basic biological research and training capacity in the tropical developing countries . A number of basic biological research agendas that are important for applied research and technology development in health and agriculture in the tropics

receive, and are likely to continue to receive, inadequate attention in the temperate region developed countries. There is also a need for closer articulation between training in applied science and technology and training in basic biology. When such institutes are established, they should be more closely linked with existing universities than the series of agricultural research institutes established by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research.

RESOURCE AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONSTRAINTS

As we look even further into the next century, there is a growing concern, as noted earlier, about the impact of a series of resource and environmental constraints that may seriously impinge on our capacity to sustain growth in agricultural production. One set of concerns centers on the environmental effects of agricultural intensification. These include groundwater contamination from plant nutrients and pesticides, soil erosion and salinization, the growing resistance of insect pests and pathogens and weeds to present methods of control, and the contribution of agricultural production and land use changes to global climate change. The second set of concerns stems from the effects of industrial intensification of global climate change. It will be useful, before presenting some of the findings of the second consultation, to characterize our state of knowledge about global climate change.

There can no longer be any question that the accumulation of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and other greenhouse gases—principally methane (CH 4 ), nitrous oxide (N 2 O), and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)—has set in motion a process that will result in some rise in global average surface temperatures over the next 30-60 years. There is substantial disagreement about whether warming due to greenhouse gases has already been detected. And there continues to be great uncertainty about the increases in temperature that can be expected to occur at any particular date or location in the future.

Most carbon dioxide emissions come from fossil fuel consumption. Carbon dioxide accounts for roughly half of radiative forcing ( Figure 5 ). Biomass burning, cultivated soils, natural soils, and fertilizers account for close to half of nitrous oxide emissions. Most of the known sources of methane are a product of agricultural activities— principally enteric fermentation in ruminant animals, release of methane from rice production and other cultivated wetlands, and biomass burning. Estimates of nitrous oxide and methane sources have a very fragile empirical base. Nevertheless, it appears that agriculture and related land use could account for somewhere in the neighborhood of 25

FIGURE 5. Contributions to increases in radiative forcing in the 1990s.

SOURCE: Reilly and Bucklin (1989).

percent of radiative forcing. On a regional basis the United States contributes about 20 percent of radiative forcing by all greenhouse gases while Western and Eastern Europe and the USSR contribute about 30 percent. In the near future, contributions to radiative forcing from the Third World will exceed those from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and what used to be called the centrally planned economies.

Several participants in the second consultation characterized the alternative policy approaches to the threat of global warming as preventionist and adaptionist . It seems clear that a preventionist approach could involve about five policy options. They include reduction in fossil fuel use, or capture of CO 2 emissions at the point of fossil fuel combustion, reduction in the intensity of agricultural production, reduction of biomass burning, expansion of biomass production, and energy conservation.

The simple enumeration of these policy options should be enough to introduce considerable caution about assuming that radiative forcing will be limited to present levels. Let me be more specific. Fossil fuel use will be driven, on the demand side, largely by the rate of economic growth in the Third World and by improvements in energy efficiency in the developed and the centrally planned economies. On the supply side, it will be constrained by the rate at which alternative energy sources will be substituted for fossil fuels. Of these only energy efficiency and conservation are likely to make any significant contribution over the next generation. The speed with which it will occur will be limited by the pace of capital replacement. Any hope of significant reversal of agricultural intensification, reduction in bio-

mass burning, or increase in biomass absorption is unlikely to be realized within the next generation. The institutional infrastructure or institutional resources that would be required do not exist and will not be put in place rapidly enough to make a significant difference.

The possibilities for energy conservation make it fairly easy to be cautiously optimistic about endorsing a preventionist approach in dealing with the industrial sources of climate forcing—at least in the currently industrialized countries. I see little alternative, however, to an adaptionist approach in attempting to assess how agricultural research portfolios should respond to the implications of global climate change. It also forces me to agree that we will not be able to rely on a technological fix to the global warming problem. The fixes, whether driven by preventionist or adaptionist strategies, must be both technological and institutional. An adaptionist strategy for agriculture implies moving as rapidly as possible to design and put in place the institutions needed to remove the constraints that intensification of agricultural production is currently imposing on sustainable increases in agricultural production. I am referring, for example, to the policies and institutions needed to rationalize water use in the western United States or to deal with groundwater management (including contamination) in both developed and developing countries. If we are successful in putting in place such policies and institutions, we will then be in a better position to respond to the more uncertain changes that will emerge as a result of future global climate change.

Let me now turn to some of the research implications that emerged from the consultation.

A major research program on incentive compatible institutional design should be initiated . The first research priority is to initiate a large-scale program of research on the design of institutions capable of implementing incentive-compatible resource management policies and programs. By incentive-compatible institutions ! mean institutions capable of achieving compatibility among individual, organizational, and social objectives. A major source of the global warming and environmental pollution problem is the direct result of the operation of institutions that induce behavior by individuals, and public agencies that are not compatible with societal development—some might say survival—goals. In the absence of more efficient incentive-compatible institutional design, the transaction costs involved in ad hoc approaches are likely to be enormous. Substantial basic research will be required to support a successful program of applied research and institutional design.

A serious effort to develop alternative land use, farming systems, and

food systems scenarios for the twenty-first century should be initiated. A clearer picture of the demands that are likely to be placed on agriculture over the next century and of the ways in which agricultural systems might be able to meet such demands has yet to be produced. World population could rise from the present 5 billion level to the 10-20 billion range. The demands that will be placed on agriculture will also depend on the rate of growth of income—particularly in the poor countries where consumers spend a relatively large share of income growth on subsistence—food, clothing, and housing. The resources and technology that will be used to increase agricultural production by a multiple of 3-6 will depend on both the constraints on resource availability that are likely to emerge and the rate of advance in knowledge. Advances in knowledge can permit the substitution of more abundance for increasingly scarce resources and reduce the resource constraints on commodity production. Past studies of potential climate change effects on agriculture have given insufficient attention to adaptive change in nonclimate parameters. But application of advances in biological and chemical technology, which substitute knowledge for land, and advances in mechanical and engineering technology, which substitute knowledge for labor, have in the past been driven by increasingly favorable access to energy resources— by declining prices of energy. It is not unreasonable to anticipate that there will be strong incentives, by the early decades of the next century, to improve energy efficiency in production and use of agricultural products. Particular attention should be given to alternative and competing uses of land. Land use transformation, from forest to agriculture, contributes to radiative forcing through release of CO 2 and methane into the atmosphere. Conversion of low-intensity agricultural systems to forest has been proposed as a method of absorbing CO 2 . There will also be increasing demands on land use for watershed protection and biomass energy production.

The capacity to monitor the agricultural sources and impacts of environmental change should be strengthened . It is a matter of serious concern that only in the last decade and a half has it been possible to estimate the magnitude of soil loss in the United States and its effects on agricultural productivity. Even rudimentary data on soil loss are almost completely unavailable in most developing countries. The same point holds, with even greater force, for groundwater pollution, salinization, species loss, and other areas. It is time to design the elements of a comprehensive agriculturally related resource-monitoring system and to establish priorities for implementation. Data on the effects of environmental change on the health of individuals and

communities is even less adequate. The monitoring effort should include a major focus on the effects of environmental change on human populations.

Lack of firm knowledge about the contribution of agricultural practices to the methane and nitrous oxide sources of greenhouse forcing was mentioned at numerous times during the consultation. Much closer collaboration between production-oriented agricultural scientists, ecological trained biological scientists, and the physical scientists that have been traditionally concerned with global climate change is essential. This effort should be explicitly linked with the monitoring efforts currently being pursued under the auspices of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programs.

The design of technologies and institutions to achieve more efficient management of surface and groundwater resources will become increasingly important . During the twenty-first century water resources will become an increasingly serious constraint on agricultural production, which is already a major source of decline in the quality of both ground and surface water. Limited access to a clean and uncontaminated water supply is a major contributor to disease and poor health in many parts of the developing world and in the centrally planned economies. Global climate change can be expected to have a major differential impact on the water availability, water demand, erosion, salinization, and flooding. The development and introduction of technologies and management systems that enhance water use efficiency represent a high priority both because of short-and intermediate-run constraints on water availability and the longer-run possibility of seasonal and geographical shifts in water availability. The identification, breeding, and introduction of water-efficient crops for dryland and saline environments is potentially an important aspect of achieving greater water-use efficiency.

The modeling of the sources and impacts of climate change must become more sophisticated . One of the problems with both the physical and economic modeling efforts is that they have tended to be excessively resistant to advances in micro-level knowledge, including failure to take into consideration climate change response possibilities from agricultural research and the response behavior of decision-making units such as governments, agricultural producers, and consumers.

Research on environmentally compatible farming systems should be intensified . In agriculture, as in the energy field, there are a number of technical and institutional innovations that could have both economic and environmental benefits. Among the technical possibilities is the design of new ''third'' or "fourth" generation chemical, biorational, and biological pest management technologies. Another is the design of land use

technologies and institutes that will contribute to reduction of erosion, salinization, and groundwater pollution.

Immediate efforts should be made to reform agricultural commodity and income support policies . In both developed and developing countries, producers' decisions on land management, farming systems, and use of technical inputs (such as fertilizers and pesticides) are influenced by government interventions such as price supports and subsidies, programs to promote or limit production, and tax incentives and penalties. It is increasingly important that such interventions be designed to take into account the environmental consequences of decisions by land owners and producers induced by the interventions.

Alternative Food Systems . A food-system perspective should become an organizing principle for improvements in the performance of existing systems and for the design of new systems. The agricultural science community should be prepared, by the second quarter of the next century, to contribute to the design of alternative food systems. Many of these alternatives will include the use of plants other than the grain crops that now account for a major share of world feed and food production. Some of these alternatives will involve radical changes in food sources. One such system is based on lignocellulose—both for animal production and human consumption.

PERSPECTIVE

In this concluding section I return to the problem of whether the public agricultural research system will respond to the new challenges and opportunities of (a) releasing the biological and technical constraints on crop and animal productivity; (b) reducing the contribution of the agricultural sector to environmental degradation; and (c) enabling the agricultural sector to adapt to those environmental changes that emerge in response to the intensification of industrial production. Issues of both scientific and political capacity are involved.

Two decades of erosion in research capacity, particularly at the federal level, have left the research system in a weakened position to respond to either—let alone both—sets of concerns. The significance of this decline is reinforced by the even more rapid decline in research support and capacity in the other federal resource agencies and in the very limited support and capacity for mission-oriented research in the academic biological and environmental sciences.

The capacity of the agricultural research system to respond is also weakened by the political constraints within which it functions. The traditional agricultural research clientele—the organized commodity groups, elements of the agribusiness community, and the members of

the Congress and the state legislatures who have significant agricultural constituencies—are capable of bring considerable pressure to bear to limit the transfer of resources necessary to respond to the environmental research agenda. They doubt, correctly in my view, the capacity of the private sector to replace the traditional production-oriented research conducted by the public sector. Yet, they have not demonstrated in recent years the political resources necessary to secure expanded funding, or even the funding necessary to prevent erosion of capacity needed to respond to the challenge of meeting the constraints on agricultural production.

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Engineers need economists' insights about the marketplace to understand how economic forces shape the environment for technological innovation. Just as important, economists must come to understand the power and process of technological change in industry. Technology and Economics defines the common ground for this ongoing dialogue between engineers and economists.

This book presents the views of some of the leading U.S. economists and technologists who have worked to deepen understanding of the interactions between technology and economics. It explores topics relating to economic growth and productivity, the relation of technical progress to capital formation, investing in productivity growth, the relationship between technology and the cost of capital, future challenges to agricultural research, and innovation in the chemical processing industries.

Industrialists and technologists, as well as economists, will find this book useful as an overview to issues of common concern.

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Zero Hunger pp 71–79 Cite as

Agricultural Research: Applications and Future Orientations

• Naser Valizadeh Ph.D. Student 6 &
• Masoud Bijani Assistant Professor 7  
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Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals ((ENUNSDG))

Agricultural research methodology

Agricultural research can be broadly defined as any research activity aimed at improving productivity and quality of crops by their genetic improvement, better plant protection, irrigation, storage methods, farm mechanization, efficient marketing, and a better management of resources (Loebenstein and Thottappilly 2007 ).

Introduction

The objective of this document is to provide a tool to understand aspects and future orientations of agricultural research. It begins with an overview of the concept and/or definition of agricultural research. It then focuses on the role of agricultural research in achieving the goals of 2030 Agenda, different types of agricultural researched, systemic research methodology in agriculture, and finally different kinds of use for agricultural research.

The Concept and Definition of Agricultural Research

Finding answers for questions about unknown phenomena in the agricultural area is the key to agricultural...

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How to Conduct Research on Your Farm or Ranch

Common research designs for farmers.

or call (301) 779-1007 to order.

Completely Randomized Design

The completely randomized design works best in tightly controlled situations and very uniform conditions. A farmer wants to study the effects of four different fertilizers (A, B, C, D) on corn productivity. Three replicates of each treatment are assigned randomly to 12 plots.

The simplest experimental layout is a completely randomized design (Figure 3). This layout works best in tightly controlled situations and very uniform conditions. For this reason, the completely randomized design is not commonly used in field experiments. You can use it if you are working with a very uniform field, in a greenhouse or growth chamber, or if you have no idea about the variability in your field. The statistical analysis of completely randomized designs is not covered in this publication.

Paired Comparison

As the name implies, the paired comparison is used to compare the effect of two different treatments assigned randomly within blocks. Each block contains two plots—one plot of each treatment—and blocks are replicated four to six times across the field. Typically, plots run the length of the field and are one or two tractor widths in order to facilitate management. Figure 4 shows the layout for a typical paired comparison experiment.

In collecting yield data or other samples from the field, measurements are generally taken from the center rows of a plot in order to avoid any “edge effects.” You can use this design to evaluate any pair of treatments: comparing two varieties, growing the crop with and without starter fertilizer, comparing two rates of fertilizer application, comparing the timing of nutrient application, or using two different cover crop treatments, for example. The paired comparison is a type of randomized block design, but it is usually classified on its own since we use a simplified statistical analysis, the t-test, to analyze the data when compared to the standard randomized complete block design (described next). The t-test will help you determine whether the difference you observe in two treatments is due to natural variation or is a real difference. It is described in the section, Using the t-Test to Compare Two Treatments .

The paired comparison is used to study two treatments. Each treatment should still be replicated several times, generally in blocks that should be set up to account for any known field variability. Randomize treatments within each block. Harvest only the middle rows of each plot (e.g., eight middle rows). Adapted from Anderson (1993).

Randomized Complete Block

A randomized complete block experiment. Adapted from Nielsen (2010).

The randomized complete block design is used to evaluate three or more treatments. As with the paired comparison, blocking and the orientation of plots helps to address the problem of field variability as described earlier (Figure 3). Each block contains a complete set of treatments, and the treatments are randomized within each block. Four to six replications of a “complete block” are sufficient for most on-farm research projects. Figure 5 shows a schematic of a randomized complete block design with three treatments. The statistical test known as analysis of variance (ANOVA) is used to analyze the data from a randomized complete block experiment.

The split-plot design is for experiments that look at how different sets of treatments interact with each other. It is also used when one of the treatment factors needs more replication or when it is difficult to change the level of one of the factors. For example, in a cover crop study, it may be most convenient due to machinery limitations to plant cover crops in larger areas (the main plots) and then impose other treatments such as fertilizer rates in the sub-plots. In this design, main treatments are overlaid with another set of sub-treatments. Though fairly easy to set up in the field, a split-plot experiment will usually take up a larger area and be more complex to implement, manage and analyze. Given the greater number of treatments and the interaction component, using ANOVA for the split-plot design is also more complex than with the paired comparison or the randomized complete block. It is best to work with someone who has expertise in this type of research design when setting up a split-plot experiment. An example of a split-plot design is shown in Figure 6.

In split-plot design, one treatment (the main plot—fallow or pea) is split further into another treatment (sub-plots) of interest. Here, compost and fish fertilizer are compared to a no-treatment control. Main plots are sometimes decided by field machinery limitations, such as the pea planter used to plant a larger area, with compost and fish emulsion applied to smaller areas. Adapted from Sooby (2001).

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• Research Tools
• Food Safety Research Projects Database

Solving Problems in Sustainable Agriculture

<p>The target objectives of the project are the following: </p> <p>1. Improve agriculture students' ability to solve complex, multidisciplinary problems by having students work on cases that integrate ideas and information from multiple areas. </p> <p>2. Implement a proven computer based approach to teaching students how to solve multi-disciplinary problems using Iowa State University's open-source ThinkSpace tool at three veterinary programs and two horticulture programs at four U.S. universities. </p> <p>3. Build and support a community of educators at the five target academic programs. Provide effective technical support, learning cases and/or case development support, and faculty development.</p> <p>4. Produce at least 20 multi-disciplinary cases that will work using the open-source, online delivery tool ThinkSpace, and that will be freely available to all who wish to use them.</p> <p>The direct impact of this project will be to increase the ability of graduates of veterinary and horticulture programs at Iowa State University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Wisconsin - Madison, and Kansas State University to solve multidisciplinary challenges that threaten the safety of America's food supply (priority area e), and/or undermine the country's ability to develop and maintain sustainable crop and animal production (priority area c). The developed cases can be used by any program anywhere, hence the overall impact is likely to extend beyond the participating universities. The first year activities will include the open-source release of ThinkSpace, case authoring, building collaborative relationships, planning for implementation in individual programs, and establishing the on-line support framework. We will also collect baseline data regarding student readiness to solve complex interdisciplinary agricultural problems. The second year will be the pilot implementation of the project. All identified programs will incorporate cases into one or more courses in the program. We will also collect data on student performance. The third year will mark the second full year of implementation of the project in multiple programs, with data again collected during that period. During the third year, we will analyze the student performance and prepare the project for broader dissemination.</p>

<p>NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY: <br/>Very frequently, problems involving food safety and sustainable agriculture require the perspectives of multiple disciplines to be solved effectively. Currently, however, graduates of programs in agriculture-related disciplines struggle to integrate information when attempting to address problems that cut across relevant disciplines or sub-areas of one discipline. Thus far, educational programs have not successfully addressed this problem. It is not enough simply to expose students to a variety of disciplines; the National Research Council recommends that students must work on complex, multidisciplinary tasks that give them a chance to develop these skills (2009). This project will provide faculty members with a case delivery tool and relevant multidisciplinary cases to use for addressing this problem in their courses. Experts from a variety of fields related to food safety and sustainable agriculture will come together to create a number of multi-disciplinary cases that will be freely available to anyone, and usable through Iowa State University's free open source "ThinkSpace" software tool. During this project, the participating experts will author cases, make them available, and implement them in three veterinary programs and two horticulture programs at four universities (Iowa State, the University of Pennsylvania, The University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Kansas State University.) As a result of this project, high quality course materials will become widely available, more faculty will be prepared to use those materials, and more agriculture and veterinary students will graduate who are equipped to effectively handle complex multidisciplinary problems related to food safety and sustainable agriculture. <p>APPROACH: <br/>For each participating program,both in horticulture and in veterinary medicine, cases incorporating concepts drawn mainly from the primary discipline, but incorporating relevant concepts from other disciplines, will be included in the instruction in each participating course. The following illustrative example provides detail from the proposed method at the Iowa State University College of Veterinary Medicine. Authentic clinical cases integrating information from all relevant disciplines will be covered in the final clinical rotation (VDPAM 477). In some instances, the same cases used in a prior course will be extended for use in other disciplines. For example, students in their second year Clinical Pathology course will learn complex diagnostic reasoning skills using clinical laboratory data in over 100 cases. In the Fall semester of their third year, these same students will again encounter these cases, sometimes with additional data and historical information in their Pharmacology class to learn how to choose appropriate pharmacological interventions. Cases in which poisoning was the central issue will be extended in the Spring semester of the third year to the Toxicology course where they will apply diagnostic rationale and treatment from the perspective of an expert toxicologist. Outcomes will be evaluated as follows: Outcome 1: A minimum 5% increase in ability for students in targeted programs.Success at this outcome will be assessed by first determining the baseline competency of students in target courses in the 5 participating programs. Scores will be compared between the initial (baseline) year and subsequent years to determine if the anticipated changes (5% or 1/2 grade level improvement) have occurred. Outcome 2: Number of U.S. graduates with a measurably improved ability to solve multi-disciplinary problems increased by 4% in horticulture and 14% in veterinary medicine. This will be determined by first determining how many targeted students, on average, in a given academic class (freshman, sophomore, etc.) achieved the results targeted in outcome 1 (for both all horticulture students and all veterinary students participating in target programs). We will then calculate the percentage of all graduates of horticulture and veterinary programs, in a given year, whose abilities to solve these inter-disciplinary problems improved as a result of this program. We will also evaluate learner use of and satisfaction with the learning materials to be developed.

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• 15 Nov 2018

Can the Global Food Industry Overcome Public Distrust?

The public is losing trust in many institutions involved in putting food on our table, says Ray A. Goldberg, author of the new book Food Citizenship. Here's what needs to be done. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

• 17 Oct 2016

Business Solutions That Help Cut Food Waste

Up to 40 percent of food grown in the United States for human consumption is wasted. But solutions are starting to come together from retailers, farmers, academics, policy makers, and social service organizations, according to José Alvarez. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

• 09 Apr 2012
• Research & Ideas

Who Sways the USDA on GMO Approvals?

Government agencies can be "captured" by the very companies or industries they regulate. Looking at how genetically altered food products are approved, Assistant Professor Shon R. Hiatt finds unexpected influencers on the US Department of Agriculture. Key concepts include: "Regulatory capture" describes the phenomenon whereby regulatory agencies tasked with serving the public instead end up advancing the interests of the companies they regulate. Traditional theories of capture such as lobbying and campaign contributions had little effect on whether the US Department of Agriculture approved any particular genetically altered agriculture product. What did seem to affect the approval process was the influence of third-party groups such as associations and even related regulatory agencies. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

• 19 Jun 2009
• Research Event

Business Summit: The Evolution of Agribusiness

Agribusiness has come to be seen not just as economically important, but as a critical part of society. The future for this massive industry will be both exciting and complex. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

• 03 Nov 2008

Economics of the Ethanol Business

What happens when a group of Missouri corn farmers gets into the energy business? What appears to be a very lucrative decision quickly turns out to be much more risky. Professor Forest Reinhardt leads a case discussion on what the protagonists should do next. From HBS Alumni Bulletin. Key concepts include: The case examines the complex political and economic underpinnings of the ethanol industry. By investing in corn-based ethanol, farmers reduce their exposure to corn prices, but at the expense of exposure to the oil market. The case promotes greater understanding of the way materials and energy flow in the modern U.S. agricultural system. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

• 02 Jul 2001

Ray A. Goldberg

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Agriculture Research

Industrial areas are associated with concentrated pools of personal and economic opportunities. However, urban imagery is misconstrued as the sole concretization of progress. We are abandoning agricultural lands in search of greener pastures in the cement and steel wonderland. We are converting fertile fields into urban projects, gambling our food source, for one. To mitigate future more devastating losses, academic institutes have poured hard work into writing researches in agriculture.

Agriculture research can be either or both qualitative and quantitative research . Agricultural science is not a new idea. It started roughly around the time when man learned he could grow his food. The concept was simple: “Plant A is edible, Plant B is not. Let’s plant more of A.” As humans practiced growing plants and animals for general consumption, we learned better ways to generate a better yield. Soon, we developed tools for the trade: chemicals, machines, and their derivatives that make farming more systematic and efficient.

Why We Research

More than 20,000 years since man’s first attempt at cultivation , yet a lot about agriculture is still an open question. Farming is not just about sowing seeds and reaping fruits. Complex processes occur between the planting and harvesting periods. In the past, farmers rely on trial-and-error methods to find out what works for them. Not having a strong and reliable foundation for our next move could mean our families would be hungry indefinitely. Just producing food wasn’t enough.

Food security

The marriage of agriculture and education allowed better crop management. We increased the yield and nutritional value of plants while making them grow healthier. We saw development in farming methods and innovations based on research and scientific investigations. An in-depth understanding of plant biology allowed for improved food production and reduced damages from pestilence and acts of God.

It is in the genes

Rice is one of the primary agricultural commodities in the world. Rice flowers bloom at a specific period in the morning, at times for two hours, for a few days. In that short time, the plant must be able to pollinate successfully. However, favorable weather will not discount the impact of pests and infections on the plant’s normal life cycle. One of the things that agricultural research scientists in the lab have worked on is tinkering with the genes of different rice varieties to extend or shorten the flowering time and making the plant resistant to fatal infestations and conditions.

Bigger is better

Another feat in the history of agriculture is farmers transforming corn into what it is today. In the past, a starkly different-looking plant would bear small fruits, not unlike the size of our fingers. The early civilization in Mexico did not have the present knowledge and resource about corn’s biology and genetics. It took several thousands of years of selectively cultivating the desirable traits of the plant teosinte into the hearty sized corn cob that we know and love today.

But not always

Not all agriculture research has turned out desirable, however. For years, people have worked on producing a big, juicy variant of red tomatoes. Researchers have tinkered with the genes that influence the size of the fruit. By doing so, they have unintentionally affected the genes that make the tomatoes taste good. Therefore, some big tomatoes today aren’t palatable as the genetic pathway responsible for its distinct sweetness was accidentally altered.

Nevertheless, agricultural science is hard at work on its effort to keep the world fed and healthy. It is unswayed in finding better ways to produce food that meet the demands of the modern world.

Price For Progress

However, it seems that the modern world is the giant goliath of farmers and scientists. Our idea of progress and advancement left out the contribution of agriculture in the past. Not to mention, people now prefer working in offices and establishments. The rise in population, decreasing land area to grow food, and the declining number of people who see farming as a good job to get all threaten our food security.

In urban areas, indoor gardening is gaining momentum. The rising prices of commodities makes growing your food a sensible choice. However, we should note that that small space in your apartment balcony or that small strip of land beside your house can’t feed you and your family forever.

10+ Agriculture Research Examples

If we can’t regain the farm lands or provide support to the dwindling population of farmers, we will face food crisis. We need to intensify agricultural research to prevent global hunger.

1. National Agriculture Research Example

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2. Global Agriculture Research System Example

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3. Agriculture Research in Development Example

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4. Agriculture Investment Research Example

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5. Computer Application in Agriculture Research Example

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6. Standard Agriculture Research Example

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7. Printable Agricultural Research Example

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8. Long Term Agriculture Research Example

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9. Agriculture Assessment Ethics Research Example

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10. Sample Agriculture Research in Development Example

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11. Public Agriculture Research Example

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Getting Started

The following are reminders on how to make writing your agricultural research papers less arduous.

1. Define The Problem

Your first step to any research is identifying the area that you wish to work on. A literature review is a good way to start your case. Reading on updated and recent materials regarding your chosen topic will help you explore the problem and determine its place in the context of society. Is the problem urgent? Is your contribution original? By spotting the gaps in related literature, you can give new information or significantly improve current practices.

2. Write A Proposal

Drafting a research proposal requires the researcher’s familiarity with the chosen topic and thesis design. Reviewers will look into your capacity to perform the study before it is approved. The convincing pledge of skill is found in your literature review. When you are vying for a study grant, you should consider the interests of the institution that you are approaching. Their priorities should be aligned with the goals of your research.

3. The Common Good

Since you are proposing a study in agriculture, you should be aware of the goal of this community. Your expected findings should be beneficial to the farmers and the agricultural sector. The problem should be specific, clear, relevant, and timely. Even if the result will be negative, the study should still have something useful to provide the community. Don’t forget, your research must follow all the ethical guidelines for research.

4. Be Two Steps Ahead

Create a visual roadmap for your research project. Flow charts and research plans are organization tools that will help you a great deal during your entire endeavor. They keep you grounded on the things you have to perform. You can also track your progress the whole time using Gantt charts , and see to it that your goals are achieved. Cover your bases and plan a successful study ahead.

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National Research Council (US) Planning Committee for the Workshop on Research to Improve the Evaluation of the Impacts of Genetically Engineered Organisms on Terrestrial and Aquatic Wildlife and Habitats. Genetically Engineered Organisms, Wildlife, and Habitat: A Workshop Summary. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2008.

Genetically Engineered Organisms, Wildlife, and Habitat: A Workshop Summary.

• Hardcopy Version at National Academies Press

3 Research Questions, Approaches, Projects, and Needs

T o fulfill the main charge of the workshop, participants divided into groups to identify key research topics at the interface of managed and natural ecosystems where genetically engineered organisms (GEOs) would be likely to interact with wildlife and their habitats. These interfaces, which included agriculture/wildland; silviculture/wild forest; and aquaculture/aquatic habitat provided the context for discussing the potential interactions that might occur, and possible approaches to observe or study them. Approximately ten participants were assigned to each group, based on their area of expertise. (Because of the participant numbers, two separate agriculture/wildland groups met for a total of four breakout groups).

Each group met twice. During the first breakout session, the groups were asked to identify research questions or topics related to the potential impacts of GEOs on wildlife and habitats at the given interface and to consider the range of research approaches available that could address these topics and themes, including fundamental or theoretical research, modeling, laboratory, and field approaches.

During a second breakout session, the groups were assigned with building on the research topics they identified by drafting more specific proposals for research at their respective ecosystem interface. As workshop committee chair Kapuscinski said in explaining the charge to the group, “Imagine that next week, cross-organizational teams were asked to submit proposals. What would you propose to study?” Recognizing that these proposals were produced in just a few hours, they nonetheless are useful bases on which to elaborate research that will answer some of the questions about the effects of GEOs on the different ecosystems.

The report-outs of the two breakout sessions are summarized below, organized by habitat interface; Box 3-1 contains a list of the research proposals generated by the four groups.

Summary of Research Proposals Identified by Breakout Groups. Agriculture/Wildland Interface Large-scale experimental comparisons of agricultural practices

• AGRICULTURE/WILDLAND INTERFACE

Two separate groups met to discuss research topics examining the potential impacts of GEOs at the interface of agricultural lands and wildlands. Each group developed its ideas for questions that would be important to pursue, and they also described different approaches or tools to address those questions. Richard Hellmich (U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service [USDA-ARS]) and Deborah LeTourneau (University of California, Santa Cruz) summarized the discussions of their respective breakout groups in the plenary session.

Research Questions

Research questions identified by the groups include the following:

What Are the Effects of Gene Flow?

In the context of agricultural crops, gene flow means that a gene has moved from a GEO crop and has been sexually incorporated into a wild population of plants in the field or near the field, or perhaps into microbes of the rhizosphere. The fact that this movement has occurred might be considered an “effect” on its own, but a fundamental question is whether there will be consequences of gene flow on wildlife and their habitats. The answer to that question might depend on the nature of the gene involved, whether it persists in the natural environment because it confers fitness to organisms into which it has moved, how those organisms relate to the rest of their environment and whether the transgene has altered that relationship, and how widespread the gene flow is.

What Are the Direct and Secondary Effects of GE Crops?

Direct effects include toxicity or some other negative effect on an organism. But there might also be secondary effects, for example if the GE crop resulted in the “removal” of food eaten by wildlife (such as insects or weeds). How far into the food web, it was asked, might those secondary effects be observed, for example that might result in changes in population sizes?

What Are the Effects of GE-Related Agriculture Practices Relative to Other Practices?

Not only do GE crops have potential direct and secondary effects, but because certain agricultural practices are associated with the use of GE crops, they might have effects as well. For example, no-till planting of GE crops causes less soil disturbance than traditional plowing, and crop residue is also left on the surface of the soil. Pesticide use will be different for Bt -crops than conventional crops. Picking up on the studies described by Wolfenbarger, the group felt that an examination of the effects of agricultural practices should include comparators that place into perspective the significance of any changes relative to the alternative.

How Would GE-Bioremediation Applications be Evaluated?

One suggestion for a research topic was whether it would be possible to use the tools of genetic engineering to develop plants or microbes or other organisms that would be released in order to improve compromised or degraded ecosystems (e.g. transgenic microbes to metabolize soil contaminants or transgenic ash trees to protect against emerald ash borers). The group felt such applications—for the purpose of environmental biore mediation—probably would not arise out of a commercial motivation (as GE crops have) but might be developed with public funding. The use of GEOs to improve ecosystems was thought to be something that the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) might champion to improve the environment. The same questions about gene flow and direct and indirect effects would also apply, but with a twist, because the goal is to have a purposeful impact on the environment. Some felt that this would be an opportunity to demonstrate to the public the positive impacts of biotechnology while generating research information on the interactions of GEOs with wildlife and natural habitats.

Research Approaches

In addition to suggesting important research questions, the two groups identified possible methods and approaches to studying the questions listed above.

Identification and Use of Indicator Species

It might be possible to identify species that would be useful indicators of direct effects of GE crops on wildlife, both for direct toxicity testing or other negative effects, and for examining effects at higher trophic levels. Perhaps standard protocols could be developed using indicators to evaluate the risk of GE crops to wildlife.

Hellmich noted that he participates in the International Organization for Biological Control, which is working to harmonize protocols for laboratory testing of surrogate species, particularly for so-called Tier 1 tests on safety. He thought USGS could contribute by identifying species of interest to add to the list. It was pointed out that sometimes a compromise about the selection of indicators is needed—the species (often insects) must be widely available and easily reared in a lab, even if a more informative indicator may exist. Another point made was that indicators should reflect effects on wildlife at different life stages (for example, pupae, juveniles, adults).

Historical Data Analysis

A compilation of relevant historical, geographic, and socioeconomic data on land use and environmental quality can help evaluate different scenarios or hypothesis about the negative or positive effects of GEO use. As an example, LeTourneau cited a theory that the use of GE crops would lead to more intensive farming on smaller parcels of land (leaving more land in an unmanaged or wild state). Another theory is that GE crops reduce pesticide runoff and reduce soil erosion. These potential benefits could be examined through the lens of historical land use and environmental data.

Planned Experimental Comparisons

The breakout group thought that a U.S. version of the U.K. Farm Scale Evaluation (FSE; see Box 2-1 ) could be useful in examining the effects of different agricultural practices, including the use of GE crops, on habitats and organisms, both on farms and in surrounding landscapes. Such a study would require partnerships among government agencies, such as between USGS and USDA, as well as incentives to growers to use specified alternative practices. The group noted the FSE provides valuable lessons for a U.S. version, but that there are a wider range of agricultural practices employed in the United States. The group also proposed that such a study would need to anticipate future changes in cropping practices, such as an eventual second generation of GE crops that would replace current Bt -crops or the next generation of herbicide-resistant crops as resistance to the herbicide glyphosate develops in field weeds. The study would examine the effects of refuges, buffers, riparian zones, and other wildlands, perhaps more than the FSE.

Spatial Modeling

Existing data might help to predict the spatial distribution of GEO impacts on wildlife. For example, existing Canadian data on GE rapeseed (canola) could be used to form a hypothesis about the evolution and spread of glyphosate resistance to weeds in the United States. In addition, if glyphosate were to become ineffective against weeds, herbicide use might change and that, in turn could have effects on wildlife. Other areas to look at are habitat replacement by drought- and salt-tolerant crop expansion, as well as expansion of crops modified for production of biofuels and industrial materials.

Targeted Data Collection and Integration

In addition to analyzing and integrating historical data, an effort could be made to collect data in farmlands that would permit detection of landscape-level and long-term effects of transgenic organisms. Key data to augment existing databases could include increased monitoring of agricultural habitat, a comprehensive database on commercial releases and field tests of transgenic events by county, determination of the incidence of high exposure of organisms in order to see spatial overlap with releases, coordination with the Forest Inventory Assessment database, and use of GIS mapping to detect robust impacts or early warning signs.

Use of Existing USGS Monitoring Systems

The emphasis on mapping, spatial modeling, and combining new and existing databases to put GE questions into context was in part to build on USGS’ strengths. The question was asked whether existing USGS efforts could be used to track effects of GE crops on wildlife and habitats. Looking for effects on pollinators, it was suggested, might be a good fit, given the recent high level of interest in monitoring their status. Would USGS water quality monitoring programs identify effects of GE crops if there were any?

This discussion prompted USGS participants to describe some of their agency’s efforts and capabilities for data collection. Bob Szaro noted that the USGS is looking at landscape change, including agricultural practices, particularly now that the Department of Interior has a broader perspective on the landscape that it manages. Adding GEOs to these efforts would be location-dependent, since information is more available in some places than others. The USGS is working toward a coordinated national effort; participants suggested such an effort on the agriculture/wildland interface would be of huge value for many sectors of society. Many questions that are controversial could be more definitively answered and, depending on the answers, laid to rest or addressed. Kay Briggs added that USGS currently has a better handle on public lands in the West and on the wildland-urban interface, principally because Department of Interior lands are located there and because of firefighting concerns. But more information will be available in the future: USGS is talking about moving toward a national Light Detecting and Ranging (LIDAR) database and making satellite imagery available to the public at no charge via the Internet.

Research Proposals

The agriculture participants regrouped in the second breakout session to see if they could develop more research proposals based on the research topics summarized above. Subgroups of three or so participants developed the research questions below, and began to flesh out strategies for how each question could be answered.

Study of the Effects of Agricultural Practices on Wildlife and Habitats

Using the U.K. Farm Scale Evaluation as a model, this research question, summarized by Emma Rosi-Marshall (Loyola University, Chicago), could be addressed through a large-scale working farm experiment, situating study sites in areas where wildlife and habitats of concern overlap with agriculture, looking at current agricultural practices, as well as those anticipated in the next decade.

The group proposed two regions to study soy and corn farming: The Platte River Valley because it is already designated as a USGS Priority Ecosystem Science Study Area and is a hotspot for migratory birds, and, as a contrast, upstate New York because of its different scale of agricultural land use, as well as different pests, wildlife, and habitats. The group also suggested Arizona and Georgia to compare organic, conventional, and transgenic cotton production, again because of the two states’ different wildlife, habitats, and agricultural practices.

Data collection, the group suggested, could take place within fields, on the margins, and in adjacent wildlands, and could measure biodiversity, species of concern and their habitats (such as migrating wildlife and endangered species), and water quality.

The group’s envisioned outcome is data to help determine the effects of agricultural practices, including GE crops, on wildlife and habitats. It was suggested that support for the activity might be sought from the USDA Biotechnology Risk Assessment Grants (BRAG) program (see Chapter 1 ), which supports research beyond predicting worst-case scenarios. Although a specific study size was not discussed, Rosi-Marshall said the group envisioned a study on a larger scale than that in the United Kingdom, which had 60 sites.

Study of Consequences of GE Practices at the Landscape and Regional Scales

Speaking for his breakout group, Norman Ellstrand (University of California, Riverside) described the objectives of the study as trying to elucidate putative risks and benefits of GE crops to guide future policy decisions. The project would integrate spatial data about cropping practices with data from previous monitoring studies on species distribution and abundance, environmental quality, and socioeconomic and demographic patterns. The project would record and measure changes in the distribution of transgenics (and transgenes) over time, and be used to predict future distribution of transgenes and their effects.

The proposed approach would be to add a new information layer to current maps. The new layer would plot transgenic events and alternative practices at the county scale or finer, using GIS analysis for past distribution effects. Spatial modeling would be used to predict future distribution.

Study of the Effects of Agricultural Practices (Including GE Corps) on Pollinator Abundance and Function, Including the Role of Pollinators in Gene Flow from Crops

Diane Larson (USGS) summarized her group’s proposal to estimate the number and diversity of bees and other pollinators on different habitat types in the agricultural landscape, to measure the seed set of selected native outcrossing species of plants, and to characterize landscape loads of pollen, including GE pollen. Because the study would focus on agricultural practices, which is broader than the use of GE crops, the study would be able to document the impact of GE pollen relative to other practices.

The group suggested the many different types of stakeholders would first need to be engaged on a study steering committee. Stakeholders would include farmers, beekeepers, members of the Xerces Society, scientists, and others. A pilot study could develop methods and mapping resources, later scaling up to a long-term study that would include restoration if problems were identified.

It was suggested that recent concern about the abundance and distribution of pollinators might mean that there is public interest in providing resources to study them. Other groups may have interest in combining resources, perhaps through establishment of a pollinator database similar to that which exists for birds.

Exploration of Surrogate Species for Lab-Testing of Possible Effects of GEOs on Non-Target Wildlife

The objectives of this proposal would be to develop lab-based (tier) tests for select wildlife species associated with GEOs, including lab-rearing methodology, and to determine how well Tier 1 tests predict outcomes of higher-tier tests. Hellmich, speaking on behalf of the subgroup, recommended consultations with experts in USGS, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and other agencies to identify candidate species that would potentially be exposed to GE crops and trees, and consultations with regulatory scientists to develop tests that ideally could be harmonized for international use. He noted that regulatory approval of some testing materials might be necessary.

The group could not identify specific surrogate species, although it was suggested that insects would probably be the initial surrogates studied. He reiterated the opportunity for USGS to become involved with the International Organization for Biological Control. There was also some discussion about the iterative progressive methods used in a tiered testing scheme (e.g., Tiers 1-4 used by EPA) and whether GEOs adhere to the paradigm of when and how to test at each level.

Baseline Studies of Insects and Microbes

Guy Knudsen (University of Idaho) reported on the discussion of his group, which felt that a 5- to 10-year time frame was too short to develop a specific research agenda about the effects of GE insects and microbes on wildlife and habitat. While there are GE insects and microbial applications in the pipeline, few, if any will likely be in use in the next five to ten years except in small-scale trials.

Over a slightly longer time frame, however, there will be many different kinds of GEOs released, including engineered sterile insects, paratransgenic insects (insects containing GE microbes), and engineered biocontrol fungi and bacteria. Potential ecological effects include possible gene flow into native populations, nontarget activity of antibiosis (growth inhibition) or pathogenicity, the alteration of rhizosphere communities, and the alteration of species composition in wild plant communities. Rather than specific proposals to look at effects, this subgroup emphasized understanding insect and microbial ecology, and the need to look beyond food chains and food webs to symbioses and biogeochemical relations.

Therefore, the shorter-term research agenda might be to collect baseline information and to survey and characterize the associations of plants and animals with insects and microbes (such as mutualists, commensals, and parasites) in the context of a wildland biotic community. That information could lead to the development of models that could be used to examine a range of “what if” scenarios involving the release or escapes of GE microbes or insects.

Because the issue of containment (or lack thereof) will be an issue with introduced organisms, the group felt it might be worthwhile to develop and refine technology for rapid detection and tracking of specific arthropods and microbial genotypes in the environment. Because arthropods and microbes are so fundamental to ecosystem processes, a change in the microbial flora may have the surprising potential to affect wildlife more than other, better-researched species. Participants urged the USGS and other research agencies to keep this in mind, even if the diversity of organisms, in addition to the time frame, made it difficult to develop research proposals at this workshop.

• SILVICULTURE/WILD FOREST INTERFACE

A third breakout group examined the interface between managed forest plantations where GE trees may be grown and surrounding wild forest habitats. The results of the group’s two breakout sessions to first identify topics and then research proposals, are reported here.

Research Topics

As reported by David Harry (Oregon State University), the group’s thoughts crystallized around three priority research areas: 1) gene flow; 2) general experimental approaches using exemplars; and 3) development of new technologies for genetic manipulation.

Because current environmental concerns and regulations prevent gene flow from being studied in the field, the group felt that simulations and alternatives using GEO proxies, such as natural mutants, are needed. The effect of factors, such as flowering, phenology, and pollen viability on gene flow rate and distance, need to be better understood. Eventually, if GE trees are to be released, there is likely to be some gene flow, because containment is never complete. Therefore, the group would like to see agreement on an acceptable threshold of gene flow, which might be established by research with proxies, at least in terms of risk quantification.

One participant observed that there are different opinions about whether it is possible to draw generalizations about the risk of categories or types of genes. He suggested that some research on gene-by-environment-by-organism (G × E × O) effects shows that hybrids that result from a cross of a transgenic and non-transgenic species have improved fitness characteristics, suggesting that containment must be maintained. However, he added, much can be learned by setting up pre-flowering systems, perhaps with some additional redundant systems built in.

Another participant noted that when the question was posed to a scientific advisory panel a few years ago about an acceptable level of gene flow, the response was that even a tiny level of gene flow just shifts the time frame of the effects: thus, the acceptable level, according to this panel, was zero. The Catch-22, summarized Harry, is that because we do not know what the fitness effects are, there can be no release—but without field study, the fitness effects will not be known. An acceptable level of gene flow perhaps could be on the order of a mutation rate, proposed a participant, because that kind of gene flow would be the same as a mutation occurring within the population.

Start with Simple Approaches

The group noted that case-by-case research is important, but if that cannot always be achieved, then moving forward will require using exemplar species and traits. Despite limitations created by containment requirements, some kinds of field experiments can take place, particularly with trees before they reach the flowering stage (recognizing that with trees, as opposed to smaller plants, this stage could last many years). The effects of modified lignin or other commercially important phytochemicals, Harry suggested, are researchable even today. A matrix to design or plan field studies could help lay out questions and risks.

Gene flow is the major concern related to field trials of GE trees because that represents a biological (and self-replicating) escape. Studies to determine the fitness benefits and nontarget effects of transgenes could be conducted in creative ways in contained, semi-wild environments if the will and vision were present, keeping in mind regulations governing this type of research on public lands.

Some participants suggested that gene flow might not be the only way a transgenic tree could affect the environment, and asked what kinds of studies could help us to understand the ecological interactions between GE trees and wildlife moving through the area. Members of the working group admitted that trees in field trials might have an impact on the broader community of herbivores, microbes, animals, and other organisms moving through the area, but posited that this is less of a concern than gene flow. They noted that GE trees would most likely be used in plantations, not in wildlands (with a few exceptions, such as the reforestation of native American chestnut trees), which assume different types of forest management. The appropriate baseline for studying the impact of a stand of transgenic trees on transient wildlife would be a comparison of GE versus non-GE plantation-managed trees, rather than comparison with a natural forest. That kind of study could rely on existing data about effects of conventional plantation forestry on wildlife and ecosystem services.

Biotechnology

The effects of genetic background in forest trees on GE expression and the resulting phenotype is much less understood than in agricultural crops. The group saw a need for better technology for inserting genes precisely and for alternative breeding approaches for moving genetic constructs into different genetic backgrounds.

The forestry group identified two research proposals to study the priority areas they identified, as reported by Richard Lindroth (University of Wisconsin).

Creation of a National Infrastructure for Collaborative Research to Address Key GE issues, Using Exemplar Species and Traits

The forestry subgroup identified an overriding need for “big science” to study the effects of GE trees on a large and long-term scale. The important questions to answer, the group felt, are beyond the realm of individual investigators. Rather, they need to be addressed through multiscale, multilevel, long-term studies that will require significant scientific, social, regulatory and political commitments. National Ecological Observatory Network NEON (see Box 2-3 ) is as an example of the large-scale effort needed to study the effect of GE trees on wildlife and habitats.

Taking off from NEON, this group proposed a “GEON” (GE Observatory Network) to conduct studies on three focal areas: the production and yield characteristics of GE trees, their impacts on biodiversity, and their impacts on ecosystem function. The overall goal of the proposal is to develop baseline information on the consequences (both positive and negative) of GE forestry for wildlife, forest ecosystems, and commerce.

The first exemplar traits to examine would be Bt insertion and lignin modification, and possibly others such as phytoremediation. The experimental design proposed by the group would encompass single tree plots to understand growth, fitness, and competition, as well as growth/yield block plots to understand community and ecosystem effects. The plots should include nontransgenics and transgenics both with and without the trait of interest.

Some caveats to a GEON are that some issues cannot be addressed adequately at this scale and that appropriate controls would be complex and variable. A GEON would also require significant funding, although no specific amount was estimated in this exercise.

Development of a Model to Assess Gene Flow

The group’s second proposal would lead to better understanding of the effects of gene flow from GE trees on wildlife and habitat. The group proposed development of spatially explicit landscape models linked to the results of exemplar studies. Perhaps with the assistance of USGS mapping expertise, the research could answer questions about where genes will move and what impacts may occur.

A model could be refined using new genotyping platforms for param eter estimation (such as non-GE trees), and “innocuous” GE markers for tracking. The model, once developed, could also be used to determine appropriate levels of containment for specific genes and environments, as well as the importance of rare long distance movements, such as severe storms or animal transport.

The question was raised about this group’s suggestion to compare GE trees both with and without the trait of interest (null transformant). Although this has been done in crops, these comparisons have not been done with GE poplar and pine. Another important comparison would be the difference in GE effects on managed versus unmanaged areas. Understanding the impacts of the spread of transgenes into a wild area on the fitness of transgenic offspring is important for addressing the issue of ecosystem services.

• AQUACULTURE/AQUATIC HABITAT INTERFACE

A significant challenge in studying the ecological effects of GE fish, in addition to the containment issue referred to earlier, is their diversity, said Tim King (USGS), as he introduced the priority research areas of the aquatic subgroup. Most fish are fusiform-shaped, he quipped, but that is about where the similarities end.

The group identified two “top-tier” research topics and two “top-tier” research approaches needed to help understand the effects of GE fish on the environment:

What Are the Gene X Environment Interactions of GE Fish?

Documenting the physiological characteristics of transgenic fish under many different aquatic environmental conditions would generate data on the range of possible outcomes that might occur if transgenics were released into the wild. Observing the variability of transgenes on fish behavior, growth, and survival, including the variability of antagonistic pleiotropic (opposing) effects, is essential for predicting critical fitness traits and ecological consequence traits, the group felt. This is more complex than it sounds because these interactions are very species- and situation-specific, and may even be strain-specific in some cases.

There was question as to whether a framework could be established to figure out which genetic traits and environments are the most important to assess. But King noted that the field is at the earliest stage of developing systematic protocols and methodologies, given the many species with highly variable genetic backgrounds and environments. The mere process of developing these systems would serve as a starting point to eventually determining what kinds of studies to do and also help regulators frame their questions in the future. It was suggested that a group with the right expertise get together to brainstorm a key set of traits on which to focus. This consensus could help identify what needs to be asked.

How Does Genetic Background Affect Trait Expression?

Related to the first research topic, the group felt that it is essential to understand better how subtle differences in the genome into which transgenes would be introduced would affect critical fitness and ecological consequence traits for fish and aquaculture targets. As Devlin’s (Canada Department of Fish and Oceans) earlier presentation revealed, the effects of transgenes are very different when introduced into a wild-type fish versus a cultivated fish of the same species.

Development of Models of Critical Fitness and Ecological Consequences

One approach to understanding and predicting fish-environment interactions is to develop models with real world conditions in mind. Thus, the breakout group felt that models need to be integrated with data collected on real ecosystems, fish demography, and information about the fish genetics as it relates to critical fitness traits and ecological consequence traits. This is something the group felt that USGS should contribute to and even excel at, given its Status & Trends of Biological Resources program and strong mapping capability.

Collecting Baseline Ecological Data

In addition to collecting data for models, the group felt that the synthesis of existing baseline ecological data on aquatic systems was an important activity for documenting the current conditions of a wide variety of existing aquatic environments. Gap analysis could be used to determine where the collection of new data is essential.

Important, but lower priorities for research efforts and approaches proposed by this group include the following:

• Trial applications of uncertainty (sensitivity) analysis methods.
• Research and development to improve and assess the effectiveness of bioconfinement methods.
• Use of transgenics to control invasive species.

In its second breakout session, the group developed two broad research proposals that might be conducted using species that are of highest importance in the U.S. aquaculture industry: catfish, rainbow trout, tilapia, followed by Atlantic salmon and shrimp. Other species of concern include ornamental fish and transgenic biocontrol species.

Before describing its proposals the group first explained that in order to conduct the research, there would need to be large, confined mesocosm facilities that mimic the wild or natural environment. The development of those facilities is a tall order in itself, given the many variables that define the real environment. Indeed, one workshop participant asked how one would know if the mesocosm would adequately reflect a real environment. Another asked if there were a serious scientific threat to releasing experimental fish at very small scale semi-natural or natural environments. The fisheries group responded that if permission were even granted to use a part of an estuary to study salmon, for example, it would be so cordoned off that researchers would learn less than with good artificial facilities.

A third participant drew comparisons with trees that can be studied before flowering or with insects that can be sterilized, and asked whether fish could be made sterile and then studied for that one generation. Members of the fisheries group said that transgenic sterility is under development. Other sterilization techniques, such as triploidy (a sterile fish with three copies of chromosomes) exist, but there are effects of sterilization on growth and other characteristics that are essential to understand.

The fisheries group, said Jim Winton (USGS), is convinced of the need for large contained facilities, and has spent a lot of time discussing how to improve mesocosm facilities. It became clear, he said, that an important first step is to take an inventory of existing facilities, perhaps modify some of them, and set up a network so that scientists can work on a larger scale. Another important point of discussion was how to develop principles so that experiments help the risk assessment process, even if the experimental subject is not the exact species or environment that a regulatory agency has to deal with.

The two research proposals of the fisheries group are as follows:

Exploring the Environmental Impacts of GE Native Fish Species

The group proposed research to look at the effects of genes that influence growth enhancement, disease resistance, and sterility/reproductive reduction in native fish, such as catfish and rainbow trout. The research would explore four subjects:

• G × E interactions: The study would compare the impact of varying temperature, food, and pathogens on GE fish as compared to wild/native species.
• Genetic background effects: The study would compare various commercial-use stocks to understand the effect of different genetic backgrounds of recipient populations.
• Competition with natives: Using mesocosms developed to reflect the extremes of the G × E interactions, the study would examine how GE fish compete relative to natives.
• Gene flow to natives: Behavioral studies of reproduction would be conducted in the different mesocosms at the time of spawning.

Study of the Ecological Effects of Non-Native GE Fish

The second research proposal generated in this breakout session would be to determine how transgenic properties (growth, disease resistance, sex control, and others) influence the effects of non-native GE fish on the broader ecosystem. In particular, the studies would examine four variables:

• Competition with native species: The study would ask if the GE traits make a non-native fish more or less competitive with a community of native fish.
• Food web interactions: The research would look how a non-native GE fish would impact the naturally existing food web.
• Habitat use and environmental boundaries: The research would examine the range of a GE fish and its use of physical and biotic resources in the aquatic environment.
• Reproductive fitness: The research would explore whether the transgenic traits influence the ability of the non-native GE fish to become established.

Field studies that look at the same ecological effects of unmodified non-native fish and that parallel these four studies would inform future risk assessments and mesocosm studies.

This research might be conducted with the goal of understanding the implications of using transgenic technologies to develop biocontrol agents. The control of invasive species would involve the delivery of disruptive genes carried by the released transgenic biocontrol fish to the invasive species through breeding. It was noted that an international symposium on this topic currently is being organized.

• Cite this Page National Research Council (US) Planning Committee for the Workshop on Research to Improve the Evaluation of the Impacts of Genetically Engineered Organisms on Terrestrial and Aquatic Wildlife and Habitats. Genetically Engineered Organisms, Wildlife, and Habitat: A Workshop Summary. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2008. 3, Research Questions, Approaches, Projects, and Needs.
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