Research Investments and Market Structure in the Food Processing, Agricultural Input, and Biofuel Industries Worldwide

Abstract

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) prohibits discrimination in all its programs and activities on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability, and, where applicable, sex, marital status, familial status, parental status, religion, sexual orientation, genetic information, political beliefs, reprisal, or because all or a part of an individual's income is derived from any public assistance program. (Not all prohibited bases apply to all programs.) Persons with disabilities who require alternative means for communication of program information (Braille, large print, audiotape, etc.

Green Revolution: Impacts, limits, and the path ahead

“…Consequently, traditional staple crop systems are diversifying into high-value horticulture and livestock production (79). Private sector has also made significant investments in other commercial crops for fiber and biofuel (80). For example, private R&D and supply chains have been the primary driver behind the rapid rise of Bt cotton production across Asia and Latin America (81).…”

Emerging and Established Technologies to Increase Nitrogen Use Efficiency of Cereals

“…Throughout the world, additional funding for fertilizer research is needed to increase site-specific NUE across large, key agricultural regions of the world. Additional training and education is needed to develop future expertise across nations to implement NUE research findings on farms [37]. The development of fertilizers has been driven by identifying cheap sources of plant nutrients.…”

“…Urea (CO(NH 2 ) 2 ) is the most widely used N source worldwide [37]. Favorable characteristics of manufacturing, costs, handling, storage, and transport make urea a very competitive N source.…”

GM Crops, Organic Agriculture and Breeding for Sustainability

“…[56]. In such a scenario of stagnating or declining crop yields, or of insufficient yield increases, depending on the estimates cited above, and of accelerated rates of climate change with the likelihood of not being able to remain below the 2 °C target of temperature increase [80], a new paradigm focused on agro-ecological modes of production, such as organic agriculture, on well-being, resilience and sustainability must be designed to replace the productivist paradigm and, thus, better support the full realization of the right to adequate food [72]: one of the recommendations of the report of the special rapporteur on the right to food [72] is -Fund breeding projects on a large diversity of crops, including orphan crops, as well as on varieties for complex agro-environments, such as dry regions, and encourage participatory plant breeding‖. Evolutionary-participatory plant breeding, being a relatively inexpensive and highly dynamic strategy to adapt crops to a number of combinations of both abiotic and biotic stresses and to organic agriculture, is the most suitable method to generate, directly in farmers' hands, the varieties that will feed the current and the future populations.…”

“…Evolutionary plant breeding has the potential of making farmers independent of the seed market, which is now, globally, in the hands of large corporations (the world's top three corporations control 53% of the world's commercial seed market; the top 10 control 76% [72]), while small farmers overwhelmingly rely on seeds that they save from their own crops and which they donate, exchange or sell [73].…”