Frikkie Liebenberg

Impact of science on African agriculture and food security.

Challenges facing African agriculture The role of impact assessment in evaluating agricultural investments in Eastern and Southern Africa Specific topics of impact assessment include: Wheat and maize research in Kenya Sorgum, millet, groundnut and sunflower research in Zimbabwe Cassava research in Uganda Agricultural extension in Tanzania The Sorghum and millet research improvement programme (SMIP) Maize research in Ethiopia Impact of the Russian wheat aphid control programme, and wine grape and technology research in South Africa.

South African agricultural R&D investments : sources, structure, and trends, 1910-2007

Abstract The twentieth century saw substantive shifts in the structure, funding and conduct of public agricultural research and development (R&D) and related regulatory and extension activities in South Africa. Following a long period of steady (and at times quite rapid) growth beginning in the early twentieth century, real spending on public agricultural R&D has essentially flat lined since the 1970s. There has also been an erratic pattern of funding per scientist and a loss of scientific personnel in recent decades. Notably, South Africa has lost ground relative to its competitors in international commodity markets, such as the United States (US) and Australia in terms of the intensity of investment in agricultural R&D. In the absence of changes to these trends, these developments may well have enduring, and detrimental, consequences for the productivity performance and competitiveness of South African agriculture. They deserve serious policy attention as the twenty-first century unfolds, with a firm eye to the long-run given the lengthy lags (often many decades) that typify the relationship between public agricultural R&D spending and productivity growth.

Returns to food and agricultural R&D investments in Sub-Saharan Africa, 1975–2014

Research-enabled growth in agricultural productivity is pivotal to sub-Saharan Africa’s overall economic growth prospects. Yet, investments in research and development (R&D) targeted to many national food and agricultural economies throughout Africa are fragile and faltering. To gain insight into what could be driving this trend, this article updates, summarizes and reassesses the published evidence on the returns to African agricultural R&D. Based on a compilation of 113 studies published between 1975 and 2014 spanning 25 countries, the reported internal rates of return (IRRs) to food and agricultural research conducted in or of direct consequence for sub-Saharan Africa averaged 42.3%py. In addition to the 376 IRR estimates, the corresponding 129 benefit-cost ratios (BCRs) averaged 30.1. Most (96.5%) of the returns-to-research evaluations are of publicly performed R&D, and the majority (87.6%) of the studies were published in the period 1990–2009. The large dispersion in the reported IRRs and BCRs makes it difficult to discern meaningful patterns in the evidence. Moreover, the distribution of IRRs is heavily (positively) skewed, such that the median value (35.0%py) is well below the mean, like it is for research done elsewhere in the world (mean 62.4%py; median 38.0%py). Around 78.5% of the evaluations relate to the commodity-specific consequences of agricultural research, while 5.5% report on the returns to an “all agriculture” aggregate. The weight of commodity-specific evaluation evidence is not especially congruent with the composition of agricultural production throughout Africa, nor, to the best that can be determined, the commodity orientation of public African agricultural R&D.

South African agricultural R&D: Policies and public institutions, 1880–2007

Abstract In South Africa, government engagement in agricultural R&D and associated technical support services dates back to at least the 1880s. Over the subsequent century and more, the growth in public support for agricultural R&D, extension and technical services has waxed and waned and the policies and public institutions directed at them have changed markedly. In the early 20th century the focus was on tapping technologies and expertise from other countries. Subsequent changes in agricultural R&D mirrored broader agricultural and economy-wide policy thrusts. The period through to the Second World War saw an expansion of the area farmed, mostly involving white farmers. During the decades immediately following the war, public R&D mainly supported intensification and promoted technological change by large commercial operators. The early 1980s heralded large structural changes in agriculture and the economy generally and policies were enacted to redistribute land to black farmers, with associated shifts in the focus of public research and extension services. The emphasis given to regional versus more centralised cum national research and extension agencies has changed dramatically as well over the decades. As food security and associated agricultural productivity concerns resurface, the R&D policies and institutions supporting agriculture are likely to be revisited, hopefully with an eye to the long-run nature and ramifications for agricultural R&D.

The Aggregate economic benefits of the National Cultivar Trials for Maize in South Africa with specific reference to the Highveld region

ABSTRACT The South African maize sector has been revolutionised from a system of production with low use of modern technologies to a leading maize producer in the African continent. That transformation is in part attributable to South Africas investment in the national maize cultivar trials, which have facilitated the adoption and use of maize cultivars that are highly adapted to commercial farmer localities, causing considerable gains in yields. The economic value of the public investment in the trials remains unknown. This study uses experimental yields spanning 1977 - 2012 to attribute the influence of the national maize cultivar trials to maize yield improvement on farmer localities in the Highveld region of South Africa. Using attribution methods, the study estimates that 24.3 kg per hectare of extra maize yields accrued to commercial maize producers because of the national maize trials. The economic value of these investments was found to be R1.4billion (in 2012 currency values). The study estimates that South Africa received R37 of benefit for every rand invested by the Agricultural Research Council (ARC) in the trials.

Re-estimating South African agricultural output value, quantity and price aggregates, 1910-2010

ABSTRACT A number of past studies of South African agricultural production and productivity performance used a hybrid Törnqvist-Theil approach to forming output aggregates based on a series of Laspeyres-type aggregations of sub-sectoral outputs rather than using the underlying commodity-specific price and quantity data directly. As a result, the studies suffer index number bias and a number of shortcomings that are due to the underlying price and quantity data. These shortcomings include inconsistencies over time in the inclusion of production originating from homeland farmers as well as changing statistical methods and definitions used in forming the national estimates of agricultural production. By addressing these data and measurement issues, including the use of the Fisher Ideal indexing methods, we generate an output quantity index that differs substantially from those presented in past studies. For example, the hybrid Törnqvist-Theil approach suggests that South African agricultural output grew by an average of 2.96 per cent per year over the century spanning 1910–2010, whereas a Fisher Ideal aggregation of the same underlying price and quantity data suggests a growth rate of 3.33 per cent per year.

Estimating and attributing benefits from wheat varietal innovations in South African agriculture

ABSTRACT It is well accepted that biological innovations, particularly varietal improvements, have greatly contributed to agricultural yield and output growth in the past. At the same time, public funding for breeding programmes such as at the Agricultural Research Council in South Africa has dwindled. In an effort to confirm the importance of continued funding of varietal improvement programmes, this paper estimates the benefits from wheat varietal innovations and attributes them to the different institutional sources (public, private and others) that have contributed to varietal changes in South Africa. The empirical analyses used data on market shares of wheat varieties planted by farmers and annual quantities of wheat produced across different wheat-production areas in South Africa (summer dryland, dryland winter, and irrigation). A vintage regression model was estimated to calculate the proportional yield gain from wheat varietal improvements. The results indicated that the rate of gain in yield as a result of releases of new wheat varieties (variety research) was 0.8 per cent per year (equivalent to 19.84 kg/ha/year) for dryland summer varieties, and 0.5 per cent for both irrigation (equivalent to 32.20 kg/ha/year) and dryland winter varieties (equivalent to 16.65 kg/ha/year). The attribution of benefits among different institutional sources confirms that not accounting for attribution of benefits by source and time period results is overestimation of benefits to any specific research programme. Attribution of benefits by institutional source showed that Sensako dominated, while the share of the ARC-SGI substantially declined, after deregulation of the wheat sub-sector. The results highlight the impact of the decline in public funding for wheat variety improvement research after deregulation and provide a strong argument for continued public funding for variety improvement in South Africa.

Does research and development (R&D) investment lead to economic growth? Evidence from the South African peach and nectarine industry

Agricultural research programmes in Africa have experienced waning state financial allocations. Efforts to change these funding trends have been fettered by the limited evidence of research investment benefits and the long lags associated with these returns. In a bid to provide such information, this article seeks to calculate the benefits of investments in the Agricultural Research Council’s peach and nectarine research programme – one of Africa’s successful and oldest research programmes. It uses the supply response function to model South Africa’s peach and nectarine industry and estimates the effect of deciduous fruit prices, production costs, research investment and weather on production. A lag distribution of research and development (R&D) investment is estimated using the polynomial distribution function and the derived elasticities are used to calculate the marginal internal rate of return. The study’s results reveal that investment in the peach and nectarine programme is associated with a marginal internal rate of return of 55.9%. This means that every R100 invested yields a R55.9 increase in value in the peach and nectarine industry. In light of these findings, it is concluded that R&D investment is worthwhile and recommends that the funding allocated to this programme be increased.

Towards a New Capital Formation Series for Machinery in South African Agriculture

ABSTRACT Data limitations lead to the use of assumptions that compromise studies on the measurement of capital in the national accounts and its impact on productivity analysis in South Africa. In the estimation of physical capital such as machinery and implements, a possible approach is to use the ratio of the value of tractor sales to overall expenditure to impute overall machinery sales. The use of a constant ratio over an extended period results in increasingly incorrect estimates and fails to reveal the changing nature of mechanisation. In this article, the problems with such an approach are highlighted through an analysis of the historic share of tractor sales to overall machinery sales in South Africa. This article establishes that the current methods have led to underestimation in the overall value of machinery and implements sales in South Africa by approximately a billion rand per annum for recent years. An alternative method is suggested and the implications of a new capital formation series are discussed.