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complementary In their effects on productivity. However, since 1950 the public 

 agricultural research system has been under investing in pretechnology sciences 

 relative to applied sciences. This became especially apparent during the 

 1980s when public agricultural research was slow to adopt general advances in 

 molecular biology and microbiology. 



The biology of plants are more dramatically affected by geoclimatic 

 conditions than are (nongrazing) animals, so new plant technologies are 

 generally more location-specific in their useful application than are new 

 livestock technologies. This has important implications for measuring the 

 relevant size of agricultural research. Host advances in livestock research 

 are applicable to a large share of livestock producers across the United 

 States. Stated another way, the benefits of advances in livestock research 

 in one state can and do spillover widely to many other states' producers. 

 (Sometimes local modification must be made before it will replace existing 

 technology.) The interstate spillovers complicate the organizational problems 

 for livestock research by USDA and SAES system more than for crop research, and 

 we suggest that the outcome was an overinvestment in livestock research. Also, 

 wfi have some evidence of a need for livestock pretechnology and applied science 

 research to be reorganized so that they become more complementary and less in 

 the way of duplicative. The primary way that this would come about is for 

 applied livestock research to build from advances in pretechnology sciences 

 and for pretechnology sciences to look to applied livestock research for some 

 of its research problems. 



Management of Agricultural Research and Priority Setting 



R&O for agriculture is a productive enterprise that uses as inputs 

 highly skilled labor or human capital, scientific laboratories, experimental 



