Collins, Julia

Cenacchi, Nicola

Rosegrant, Mark W.

Joshi, Pramod Kumar

Hoddinott, John F.

Breisinger, Clemens

Kishore, Avinash

Makombe, Tsitsi

Torero, Maximo

Ecker, Olivier

Al-Riffai, Perrihan

Stads, Gert-Jan

Koo, Jawoo

Robertson, Richard

Ringler, Claudia

Fan, Shenggen

Polman, Paul

Fisher, Myles

Cox, Cindy

Perez, Nicostrato

Garrett, Karen

Beintema, Nienke

Gillespie, Stuart

Badiane, Ousmane

Saade, Maurice

Akramov, Kamiljon

Cohen-Cline, Noah

Chen, Kevin

Timmer, Peter

Díaz-Bonilla, Eugenio

This 2013 Global Food Policy Report is the third in an annual series that provides an in-depth look at major food policy developments and events. Initiated in response to resurgent interest in food and nutrition security, the series offers a yearly overview of the food policy developments that have contributed to or hindered progress in achieving food and nutrition security. It reviews what happened in food policy and why, examines key challenges and opportunities, shares new evidence and knowledge, and highlights emerging issues.

2013 Global Food Policy Report

Nin-Pratt, Alejandro

Omot, Norah

Thi Pham, Nguyen

Southeast Asia made considerable progress in building and strengthening its agricultural R&D capacity during 2000–2017. All of the region’s countries reported higher numbers of agricultural researchers, improvements in their average qualification levels, and higher shares of women participating in agricultural R&D. In contrast, regional agricultural research spending remained stagnant, despite considerable growth in agricultural output over time. As a result, Southeast Asia’s agricultural research intensity—that is, agricultural research spending as a share of agricultural GDP—steadily declined from 0.50 percent in 2000 to just 0.33 percent in 2017. Although the extent of underinvestment in agricultural research differs across countries, all Southeast Asian countries invested below the levels deemed attainable based on the analysis summarized in this report. The region will need to increase its agricultural research investment substantially in order to address future agricultural production challenges more effectively and ensure productivity growth. Southeast Asia’s least developed agricultural research systems (Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar) are characterized by low scientific output and researcher productivity as a direct consequence of severe underfunding and lack of sufficient well-qualified research staff. While Malaysia and Thailand have significantly more developed agricultural research systems, they still report key inefficiencies and resource constraints that require attention. Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam occupy intermediate positions between these two groups of high- and low-performing agricultural research systems. Growing national economies, higher disposable incomes, and changing consumption patterns will prompt considerable shifts in levels of agricultural production, consumption, imports, and exports across Southeast Asia over the next 20 to 30 years. The resource-allocation decisions that governments make today will affect agricultural productivity for decades to come. Governments therefore need to ensure the research they undertake is responsive to future challenges and opportunities, and aligned with strategic development and agricultural sector plans. ASTI’s projections reveal that prioritizing investment in staple crops will still trigger fastest agricultural productivity growth in Laos. However, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam could achieve faster growth over the next 30 years by prioritizing investment in research focused on fruit, vegetables, livestock, and aquaculture. In Cambodia, Myanmar, and Thailand, the choice between focusing on staple crops versus high-value commodities was less pronounced, but projections did indicate that prioritizing investments in oil crop research would trigger significantly lower growth in agricultural productivity.

Agricultural research in Southeast Asia: A cross-country analysis of resource allocation, performance, and impact on productivity

Stads, Gert-Jan

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