Posts tagged Alluvium Consulting Pty Ltd

Investing in global agri-R&D also ‘benefits donor countries’

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 09.12.2022 (SciDev.Net): Investment in international agricultural research and development (R&D) not only increases the capacity of lower-income countries to tackle food insecurity and manage natural resources but also brings significant returns to donor countries like Australia, says a study commissioned by the Crawford Fund.

The study makes a case for increasing the proportion of the development assistance budget allocated to international agricultural R&D. “Collaborative research is a two-way learning. Both the recipient and donor countries benefit from the exchange of knowledge, insights, science and technical ideas,” says Neil Byron, lead author of the study launched on 1 December in Canberra.

Currently, only 2.5 per cent of Australia’s aid budget goes to agriculture R&D. “All the evidence suggests that we are seriously underinvesting. We can easily double or triple the [agriculture R&D] aid because the benefits — social, economic and environmental payoffs — are so much greater than the costs,” says Byron, director of Alluvium Consulting Pty Ltd. which prepared the report for the Crawford Fund.

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