The share of public agricultural research funds given to   universities   increased   considerably   from   the   1970s onwards in parts of NAE, particularly the US, UK and the Netherlands, indicating a shift towards more basic research. Between 1971 and 1993, the university share of public ag­ricultural R&D spending increased in the UK from 2.3% to 14.7%, in the Netherlands from 14.9% to 31.9% and in the US from 67.3% to 74.1%. In contrast, in the other countries analyzed by Alston et al. (1998) the average share of public agricultural R&D given to universities remained about 28% over the same period.

Public R&D expenditure relative to the value of agricultural output
The public agricultural R&D intensity ratio (ARI; public agricultural R&D expenditure relative to the value of ag­ricultural output) increased throughout the period 1971-1992 in most NAE countries analyzed (Alston et al., 1998). The average science and technology research intensity ratio for the countries increased by a much smaller proportion than the ARIs.
     Although these research intensity ratios suggest that ag­riculture has been treated relatively favorably in many NAE countries in terms of public R&D funds, a different picture emerges when trends in agriculture's share of total publicly performed science and technology are examined (Alston et al., 1998). In fact, the share of agricultural R&D out of the overall R&D funding declined in the 1980s to the early 1990s in analyzed countries (Figure 4-4) (Alston et al., 1998). In the Netherlands, for example, agriculture's share of the total public R&D budget declined from 14.5% in 1981 to 12.4% in 1993. In the US it declined from 6.2 to 5.6% and in the UK from 7.1 to 6.6% over the same time span. Across the 22 OECD countries analyzed, agriculture's share of the total public science and technology R&D budget declined on av­erage from 8.9% in 1981 to 7.4% in 1993, a proportional decrease of close to 17%. A likely cause for the changes was pressure to reallocate funds to other science R&D programs

(such as health) (Alston et al., 1998). This shift was also reflected in the declining space devoted to agriculture and natural resources in major journals (e.g., economic journals) while coverage of issues such as manpower, labor, popula­tion developments, welfare programs, consumer economics as well as urban and regional economics increased (Ryan, 2001). A meta-analysis of all the available studies of the impact (in terms of rates of return) of agricultural R&D between 1953 and 1998 found no evidence of a decline in returns to investments throughout these decades (Alston et al., 2000). These results imply that equally large returns to current spending on agricultural R&D will also be feasible in the future (CGIAR Science Council, 2005). During the 1990s agricultural R&D spending in the US increased again, from 3216 million in 1991 to 3828 million in 2000 (in 2000 international dollars), representing 16.1% and 16.6% of the global total, respectively (CGIAR Science Council, 2005). The US is also increasing funding for more basic agricultural research (Danford, 2006).

Privatization of R&D
In most NAE countries, the private sector has had a long­standing triple role in the public agricultural R&D: firstly through involvement with the management of the publicly provided funds as the primary user, secondly through fund­ing publicly performed research in public sector organiza­tions and universities and thirdly by performing research using public funds. There was also a net flow of public funds to private research (Alston et al., 1998).
     Investments of the private sector in agricultural R&D have generally increased since the early 1980s. Growth of the private sector spending slowed at the end of 1990s but the balance continued to shift towards private sector funding. Privately performed R&D has become a prominent feature of agricultural R&D in rich countries including most countries in NAE (Alston et al., 1998; Rubenstein and Heisey, 2005) and constituted by 2000 around 55% of all agricultural R&D in developed countries (Table 4-5; Pardey et al., 2006).