Theme 30: Socioeconomics of Pastoral Development
Description
Agricultural research funding amounts and modalities have been profoundly transformed in recent years in many countries. For instance, competitive funding has become the norm rather than the exception in most countries and funding sources have been greatly diversified. In addition, in some major countries, the private sector has become a major actor In agricultural research, both as a funder of research and as a provider research results. This poses a major challenge to public research institutions, which remain the major agricultural research actors and employers of researchers in most countries. With these changes in funding, formal procedures for research priority-setting and resource allocation have been developed and become quite popular in research financing organizations. Many researchers are not very happy with theses developments. They often see such formal procedures as purely bureaucratic, the source of much time lost and diverted from productive work on real research tasks, only to satisfy administrators. Most researchers ignore the economic concepts underpinning most formal priority-setting procedures. When they know them, they are often skeptical about the reliability of the data used in the quantitative models implementing these concepts. All of this casts serious doubt in the research community on the added value of these exercises. Thus, it is appropriate in an international meeting of grassland researchers to reflect on these developments, to assess their impact on research and to discuss how researchers can best cope with them.
Citation
Petit, M., "Priority Setting and Funding of Agricultural Research" (2022). IGC Proceedings (1993-2023). 2.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/igc/19/30/2
Included in
Priority Setting and Funding of Agricultural Research
Agricultural research funding amounts and modalities have been profoundly transformed in recent years in many countries. For instance, competitive funding has become the norm rather than the exception in most countries and funding sources have been greatly diversified. In addition, in some major countries, the private sector has become a major actor In agricultural research, both as a funder of research and as a provider research results. This poses a major challenge to public research institutions, which remain the major agricultural research actors and employers of researchers in most countries. With these changes in funding, formal procedures for research priority-setting and resource allocation have been developed and become quite popular in research financing organizations. Many researchers are not very happy with theses developments. They often see such formal procedures as purely bureaucratic, the source of much time lost and diverted from productive work on real research tasks, only to satisfy administrators. Most researchers ignore the economic concepts underpinning most formal priority-setting procedures. When they know them, they are often skeptical about the reliability of the data used in the quantitative models implementing these concepts. All of this casts serious doubt in the research community on the added value of these exercises. Thus, it is appropriate in an international meeting of grassland researchers to reflect on these developments, to assess their impact on research and to discuss how researchers can best cope with them.
