Setting Policies and Priorities for Public Research

by Patrick O'Brien, Director, Commodity Economics Division, ERS. USDA, Washington, DC.

Why and how do we invest public money in agricultural research? Important research challenges face agriculture, with growing pressure to produce and market a broadening array of products more efficiently while protecting the environment. This chapter will explore how to improve the payoff on research, both to minimize pressure to reduce funding and to increase support for activities already under way.

Two aspects of research need to be examined in order to enhance payoff. The first is to improve planning and priority setting. The second is to rethink the mix of bench science and applied research.

USDA's Research Mandate

USDA has a longstanding commitment to public support for agricultural research, defined broadly to include basic research (sometimes called bench science), applied research, education, and extension. Article I of the Constitution empowered Congress to act as necessary "to promote the progress of science." USDA was established in 1862 under this authority and charged with "acquiring... preserving... and distributing ... all useful information concerning agriculture in the most general and comprehensive sense which can be obtained by means of books and correspondence, and by practical and scientific experiments."

Successive acts of Congress and executive decisions have reinforced this mandate. The Agricultural Research Service, Cooperative State Research Service, Economic Research Service, and Extension Service form the core of USDA's physical and social science research program, but virtually all the other USDA agencies are involved in research as well.

The Land Grant University Act of 1862 also required that each State "establish a college of agriculture" and "the means for transmitting agricultural discoveries and related information to the public." The 1862 legislation was used as a model for establishing the 1890 colleges. The resulting network of institutions has since become a key source of public support for agricultural research.

This underlying research commitment is grounded in a sense that the payoff on public money invested wisely can be large enough and far-reaching enough to warrant the outlay of tax dollars. Also, some of the most promising research can be so costly and its benefits dispersed so widely as to rule out private investment without public support. The research payoff in question can take many different forms, resulting in more and better inputs, improved production and marketing practices, better natural resource management, enhanced nutrition, and improved operation of our rural economies.

USDA's funding of agricultural research grew sharply over time to $2.6 billion in FY 1991. This included $900 million for activities within USDA and another $1.7 billion for joint activities with other public institutions. But tightening budgets in the 1990's, combined with agriculture's declining proportion of the general economy, have renewed interest in old questions about why, how, and how much public money we invest in agricultural research.

The research challenges facing agriculture are on the rise; we are looking for ways to produce and market more efficiently and still protect the environment. Funding research, however, often involves investing scarce tax dollars in long-term activities with uncertain payoff. Such activities seldom do well in the face of tightening budgets. At issue in this setting is how to improve the payoff on agricultural research? While the specifics vary widely depending on the discipline and institution in question, two general options stand out:

Strengthen the process of setting research priorities. Payoff varies widely across activities, often with the outcome difficult or impossible to forecast. However, sharpening our planning and priority setting can strengthen our ability to identify potentially high payoff activities; and;

Modify research activities to change the mix of basic research and applied research. This change could help move more scientific discoveries through to commercial application faster.

Strengthening the Process of Setting Research Priorities

The challenge of strengthening priority setting is not new. Public research planners have struggled to combine both "micro" and "macro" elements in determining priorities. Merging the best of the two involves the difficult task of incorporating the scientist's often partial view of the world but hands-on research experience with the strategic planner's broader view but distance from research fundamentals.

Many agencies use "strategic" assessments of broad research needs as a starting point. However, the increasingly technical nature of agricultural research and expertise needed even to evaluate proposals often push priority setting away from the strategic toward the tactical or operational level away from strategic planners toward the laboratory director and bench scientist. Moreover, the role of the laboratory director and bench scientist in shaping the perceptions of strategic planners via their reporting of research findings can reinforce this tendency.

Tactical or operational priority setting has a number of strong points. It tends to ensure that the topics invested in are "researchable" that they are technically well grounded, with realistic expectations about results and appropriate concern about methods and review. However, it can also lead to a technology-push agenda, where test tube results determine priorities and staff members tend to continue working in areas where they have established expertise. This can come at the risk of less practical applicability and slowed response to changing research needs. In some cases, market pull can be dulled to the extent that major shocks are necessary to change the agenda.

How do we improve priority setting in this environment?

Several efforts are under way as a result of USDA and Congressional initiatives to develop a better mix of strategic, tactical, and operational priority setting. These efforts include individual agency initiatives and efforts cutting across Government and other public organizations.

The Agricultural Research Service's National Program Staff (NPS) is a good example of an individual agency's efforts. The NPS was established to introduce a broad national, cross-disciplinary perspective on research needs into agency planning. The NPS has lead responsibility for strategic planning and developing the 6-year implementation plan detailing the agency's research priorities. However, the NPS is also responsible for including tactical and operational input in their planning. NPS staff work with agency managers, bench scientists, and research users to plan research initiatives, set agency research priorities, and evaluate research progress. Similar, less formal efforts are under way in USDA's other large research agencies.

The 1977 Food and Agriculture Act mandated similar efforts cutting across Government, university, and private organizations. Congress instructed the Secretary of Agriculture to establish a Joint Council on Food and Agricultural Sciences with membership from Government, universities, foundations, and farm and agribusiness organizations. The Council's primary charge was to "bring about more effective research, extension, and teaching by improving the planning and coordination of publicly and privately supported agricultural science activities." The council reports to Congress annually on:

"(A) national priorities for food and agricultural research, extension, and teaching programs; (B) suggested areas of responsibilities for Federal, State, and private organizations; (C)levels of financial support; and (D) progress made toward accomplishing these priorities."

The council is also charged with preparing a 5-year plan for the food and agricultural sciences that reflects the coordinated views of the research, teaching, and extension communities.

The 1977 Act also created a National Agricultural Advisory Board, with membership from research, extension, and education users in agribusiness. The Board's functions include development of an annual report to Congress that includes:

"(A) a review and assessment of the allocation of funds for agricultural research and extension made for the Department of Agriculture; and (B) an evaluation of: (i) the effectiveness of coordination of Federal and private research initiatives; (ii) new research and extension programs that need to be conducted by the research system; and (iii) the effectiveness of the private and public research and extension system."

Parallel priority setting activities are also under way for related public organizations. The State Experiment Station directors work through ESCOP (the Experiment Station Committee on Organization and Policy) to develop a broader perspective on their individual and collective research agendas. A similar ECOP (Extension Committee on Organization and Policy) works to develop research planning links across Federal, State, and university extension programs.

How successful are these efforts at introducing a broader perspective on research needs into priority setting?

Clearly, more time is invested in strategic planning and information exchange. However, difficulties persist in efforts to link strategic planning with tactical and operational decision making. Several forces are at play. The tendency to fall back on micro-level technology-push planning and priority setting is strong. Even in cases where broader assessments of research needs are available, strategic planning and recommendations are often so general that specific research projects are determined by mid-level mangers and ultimately the bench scientist. This has the advantage of minimizing the effect of the pressing but short-term needs of a particular strategic planning effort in disrupting longer term activities. However, it does so at the expense of responsiveness to real changes in research needs.

What more can we do to improve the way we set research priorities?

With the range of institutions already in place, the answer appears to be to make existing arrangements work better and, where necessary, to change basic attitudes. For example, strategic planning that stops short of translating general research needs into specific tactical priorities is of limited value. A better mix of the bench scientist's sense of what is "researchable" and the strategic planners' sense of what research is needed is critical; this improvement in the way research priorities are set could enhance public payoff.

Equally important is a change in attitude that allows us to look at agricultural research with the same critical eye that is used to evaluate other longterm investments. Agricultural research has often been seen as a good in and of itself, independent of public payoff. With added emphasis on payoff, more effort has to be put into the "investment planning" of research.