194 | North America and Europe (NAE) Report

change. This reflects new ideas about interactions between the public and private sectors, such as the client focus (Per-sley, 1998). Some of the most rapid changes have occurred in the UK, where the government has sharply reduced its support for agricultural research. In other countries, such as the Netherlands, the government is abandoning institutional financing but still finances a substantial research program through contracts with long-standing research organizations that now function almost as private sector entities. Priva­tization is not the only means of improving control over agricultural research and client responsiveness. Innovative research methods are being established that combine public and private sector research. And scientific capacity is well maintained in the majority of EU-15 and North America thanks to the important role played by their universities.

Drivers
Major drivers for expansion of formal AKST organiza­tions were industrialization, advances in technology and knowledge, and an optimistic view of societal benefits, af­fected by demand and mediated through policy (Alston et al., 1998; Van Keulen, 2007). Privatization was fostered by the introduction of Intellectual Property Rights, advances in genetics and new research policies (Alston et al., 1998). Public funding has taken a downturn since the mid 1970s mainly for the following two reasons: first, a general para­digm shift in the society towards a smaller role for public policy and a larger role for the marketplace and second, lesser societal benefits, eradication of food insufficiency, and a smaller share of GNP in NAE. This is true, although there is evidence of continued high returns to investments in public AKST (Alston et al., 2000). Many governments are giving AKST another opportunity to show its comparative advantage in contributing to emerging wider societal inter­ests through innovative, interactive AKST, even if rewarding mechanisms still need further development (OECD, 1999). The limited contribution of AKST to public debate and poli­cies during the recent decade is seen as a major challenge (OECD, 1999).
     Growth in size, specialization, consolidation of food chain organizations and increasing domination by multi­national corporations was driven first by industrialization and later by liberalization of international trade, mobility of capital and people, new technologies (Galizzi and Pieri, 1998) and by regulatory barriers discriminating small en­terprises. Public AKST had at least as much importance as private R&D and market forces in bringing about changes in livestock specialization (but not in crop specialization), farm size and farmers' off-farm activities (Busch et al., 1984; Huffman and Evenson, 2001), supported by well-tar­geted agricultural policies. (Van Keulen, 2007). Differences among NAE regions have been mainly due to differences in political-economic history.

5.5.1.2 Uncertainties of the future

Public funding to develop AKST organizations
Success in meeting the challenge of changing societal de­mand, whether public or private, will crucially affect public and societal support for development of AKST in the future. Questions about the future concern the following: Will re-

 

search questions be shared and will public sector research be increasingly oriented toward the generation of knowl­edge? Will the view of the societal potential for AKST widen to emphasize the notion of multifunctionality and ethical consumption in order to attract public acceptance for fund­ing AKST? Will the share of agriculture in the GDP decline? Will food insecurity and the central role of NAE AKST be­yond its borders turn the view of the societal potential of NAE AKST positive? Will AKST adjust its paradigms and image by adopting a wider, more diverse and flexible agenda to realize its comparative advantages in meeting the chang­ing societal demand?
     Will organization structures become flexible enough to promote changes in scopes and targets?

Role of private AKST organizations
Technological   developments   (such   as   functional   foods, gene-tailored diets, photosynthesizing microbes for energy, GMOs, nanotechnologies, information technologies) tend to increase the role of private companies in science and technology, thus compensating the decline in public fund­ing. However, the demand for public goods, including food security, will continue to grow. Policies determine whether the internalization of externalities make public goods eco­nomically rewarding to provide through private AKST. If not, will the companies cream off or manage to segment supply for different markets, thus better contributing to meeting the development and sustainability goals of this as­sessment? Will public and private AKST organizations man­age to increase synergy and intermediate spaces? Or will public AKST develop the public goods and set regulations that constrain the private sector?

Dis/integration of organizations at global and national level and within AKST
On the one hand, the integration of KST and AKST is in­creasingly being sought (OECD, 1999). On the other hand, we have learned from the US success story of integrating of research, education and extension. These two targets may, in some cases, be contradictory. There is overall agreement on the need for integration within AKST to increase the multifunctionality of food systems and agriculture. This has to proceed on and among different levels, starting from pol­icy coherence at the level of ministries and administrative bodies, to increased communication among food system actors and among disciplines within the formal knowledge systems. Interdisciplinarity is getting wide acceptance as the preferential strategy in the latter. This avoids the endless emergence of new sciences and borders through the unifi­cation of existing ones. However, there are multiple bar­riers to this kind of development, such as risks related to integration, especially for the necessary advancement of the disciplinary bases.
     Views opposing integration are also being considered (Sumberg et al., 2003; OSI, 2006). Will the barriers and risks be avoided, and will integrative approaches in struc­tural development of AKST organizations take over as pre­dicted for universities (Väyrynen, 2006), possibly based on flexible models of interacting scientific communities (Lele and Norgaard, 2005)? Will incentives and tools be created for public NAE science and technology organizations to in-