Agricultural Structure Changes and Public Investment in Agricultural Research in China

Food consumption pattern changes have led significant change in the structure of agricultural production and therefore farmers' demand for agricultural technologies, which require the changes in the priorities of the public agricultural research investment. The objectives of this paper are to estimate agricultural structure changes and their demand for public investment in agricultural research. The results show that agricultural research has been much underinvested and the investment priorities have been also inconsistent with the changes in agricultural structure over time. The rapid expansion of livestock, fishery and horticulture has been accompanied with the declining share of their research expenditure in the total agricultural sector. Based on these findings, several policy implications are provided.