37 



of accountability. We have a lot of reporting in this system, and I 

 know you probably have seen a lot of those documents. So if you 

 measured accountability in terms of paper received 



Mr. Stenholm. I hope we don't do that. 



Ms. Offutt. I think it would be good to change the definition, 

 because you might get a different score. 



Mr. Stenholm. Thank you. 



Do any other members have questions? Mr. Kingston. Mr. Volk- 

 mer. 



Mr. Kingston. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 



I just want to kind of ask that question again, maybe modifying 

 it slightly. Are we getting our money's worth? If you were the one 

 writing the check, would you continue writing it at current levels? 

 What is your assessment of that? I mean, is it all spent very, very 

 well, or half of it is and some of it isn't? 



Ms. Offutt. In general, the returns to what is about $1.5 billion 

 of Federal money in ag research, the calculation of the returns to 

 that research are in excess of 20, 30 percent, some as high as 175 

 percent. The point is that as public investments go, agricultural re- 

 search is a very good deal. That's not to say that there aren't dol- 

 lars that we could reallocate that would even increase that invest- 

 ment, which is what we really ought to do. It's not sufficient to say 

 it's very high. If we could increase it, we should. 



So, yes, it's a good investment now, and I think the question is, 

 how much better could we make it? But most of the empirical work 

 that tries to measure this — admittedly, it's difficult — shows very 

 high rates of return to public investment in agricultural research. 



Mr. Kingston. Let me ask before Dr. Savage answers, if he 

 wants to, do you have specific recommendations on those areas that 

 we could get a higher yield, higher return on? And I apologize, you 

 may have already spent an hour talking about those. Do we have 

 something in the record that would be along those lines? 



Ms. Offutt. I can provide the board's recommendations about 

 how to allocate money across these six categories of national prior- 

 ities, yes. We can provide that. 



Mr. Kingston. Thank you. 



Mr. Savage. One of the reasons I gave a lower mark is because 

 what you do have — agriculture is really unique amongst Federal 

 research programs. One can make the claim, and researchers do, 

 that they need long-term stability in their funding for biomedical 

 research, for engineering research, for social science research, that 

 we need to have data bases over a long period of time, and that, 

 therefore, they should have formula-based funds for those. But ag- 

 riculture is relatively unique, and it means that if you don't have 

 competitive-based funding, then your ability to determine quality 

 and evaluate it on a regular and fair basis is lessened. 



So when you have a particular aspect of Federal programs, 

 meaning agriculture, where so much of it is earmarked, so much 

 of it is formula-driven, you're just not going to get the same nec- 

 essary evaluation as other areas of federally funded research. So 

 that's why I would give agriculture somewhat of a lower mark in 

 perhaps some other areas. But simply because you put money in, 

 you don't necessarily get an output. For example, one of the highest 

 federally funded programs is the Cancer Institute, but there are a 



