Rob's Questions re R+D $'s
Charles Benbrook (benbrook@hillnet.com)
Sun, 24 Dec 1995 10:46:08 -0500 (EST)
Rob Kusmierski in Australia raises several questions we in the states
ponder and struggle with. Rob -- the person/project with the freshest
set of numbers on these questions is Mark Lipson, who runs the Organic
Farming Res. Foundation project on U.S. research support for organic
farming. Mark or Bob -- I know you are out there -- please post a short
project update with info re how Rob can contact you directly.
I have been working on the pest management side of your questions
for some time now. A really interesting and reasonably accurate
macro-sense of where $ have been going can be extracted from a properly
structured series of literature searches on AGRICOLA, the main database
of U.S. ag scientific and technical literature. All you need is access
to the AGRICOLA CD-rom, and a terminal, and away you go. The search
strategies are obvious: start with weeds; then herbicides; then
herbicides and weeds; then, weeds plus various keywords representative of
non-chemical alternatives, i.e. weeds/rotations; weeds/rotary hoe(s);
weeds, thresholds; weeds/ecology. Then compare numbers you get from that
with numbers from weeds and herbicides, and any subset of herbicide pest
management related key-words, ala resistance, residues, etc. The results
speak for themselves, and show where the money has been going, if you
believe that what academics and other scientists publish on is
reflective of what they work on.
In consr. area, compare citations on no-till versus citations on
mechanical cultivation adn rotations.
You should also look at R+D funding patterns on biotech. I just
finished a table for a report with the focus of 23 genetically eng. seed
products expected to hit the markey by 2000. What traits has
agribusiness focused on in these 23 seed varietires: 20 were relevant to
what I call chemical-intensive IPM; of these, 15 involved herb. tol.
plants, and 5 BT-transgenic plants. None were relevant to bio-intensive
IPM. Unfortunatley, private sector bio-tech R+D is driven toward where
there is profit potential, and that is in winning/holding pesticide
marketshare, not developing new technologies to lessen pest pressure and
enhance viability of genetic, cultural and management based pest
management systems. Private sector commercial interests in biotech also
have come to have significant influence on public setor work, since the
common strategy to overcome funding cuts and heightened competition
within S+T community is to ehance private sector collaboration and
relevance, and attract co-financing of work, and this requires working on
technologies/lines of research relevant to where private sector thinks
they can capture a return on investment. Its how our system works,
whether we like it or not, and regradless of whether the outcome is
science in the public interest.
Given the major divergence between biotech-ag applications that
serve the broader public's and farmers' interests in safe, lower-cost
solutions to pest problems, from agribusiness interest in technologies
that can be made proprietary in ways profits can be extracted from the
market, it is a safe bet biotech public policy issues will become even
sharper, and probably divisive in the years ahead. Good luck with your
info. gathering exercise.