16 Agriculiiiral Research and Productivity 



Africa are treated as African scientists. All data are for public sec- 

 tor or private producer organization activities. Private firm invest- 

 ment in research and developjment is not included. 



Several shortcomings and discrepancies should be pointed out. 

 It is inevitable that problems of inconsistency exist in the defini- 

 tions used by the different sources from which data were col- 

 lected. In Europe and North America, a scientist will usually have 

 graduate training at the Ph.D. level. In the developing countries 

 this might not be the case, particularly in Latin America, where 

 the basic academic degree of a researcher (ingenero agronomo) is 

 more a professional than a research degree. There is probably an 

 even lower level of consistency in the definition of extension 

 workers; in some countries they are all college graduates, while in 

 others many of them have high-school education or less. Budget 

 data are also not always compatible. 



Despite these limiting qualifications, it is our judgment that the 

 errors are not so gross as to substantially alter the picture pre- 

 sented in the regional summary tables of the presented section. 



The world total expenditure on research in 1965 was $1.1 

 billion annually (table 2.1), with close to 60,000 scientists engaged 

 in research activity. There were more than 160,000 extension 

 officers with budgets reaching $700 thousand. As these figures in- 

 dicate, the agricultural knowledge-producing and dissemination 

 industry is of substantial size (and growing), but the economic 

 resources engaged in these activities are much smaller than those 

 devoted to many other public sectors. Table 2.1 also indicates 

 great differences between the developed and the developing 

 countries (regions 6-10 excluding Japan) of the world. In 1965 the 

 developing countries spent 1 1 percent of the world research bud- 

 get, 20 percent of the extension budget, and had 1 7 percent of the 

 research and 47 percent of the world extension personnel. 



To enable further comparisons by region, additional calcula- 

 tions are presented in table 2.2. Columns 1 and 2 show the ratios 

 of expenditures on research and extension to the value of agricul- 

 tural production. The two major less developed regions, Latin 

 America and South Asia, are ranked lowest by this measure of 

 research expenditure. In contrast, the highest income regions. 

 North America, Northern Europe, and Oceania, rank highest. 



