Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
T
RENDS IN
P
RIVATE
R&D
I
NVESTMENT
AND
I
NNOVATION IN
C
ROP
G
ENETIC
I
MPROVEMENT
Research Spending by Private Seed and Crop Biotechnology
Companies
Globally, real private sector research expenditures on crop seed
development and crop biotechnology have risen substantially since the mid-
1990s (table 2.3).
This increase can be decomposed in a number of ways. First, research
intensity for seed increased over much the 1990s. Since 2000, research inten-
sity has fallen in the seed industry, although it is still higher than that for
animal health, animal genetics, or agricultural chemicals, the other agricultural
input industries with high research intensities. But over most years since 2000,
the real value of the global seed market has increased (see table 2.1), and real
research expenditures have continued to grow. The slight decline in research
intensity in recent years has been the result of sales increasing even more
rapidly than research investments.
Structurally, these increases in research expenditures have been marked by
the remarkable rise in the share accounted for by integrated seed-chemical
companies, characterized by the Big 6.
19
The share of total private-sector crop
seed and biotechnology R&D spending by seed-chemical companies began to
grow with the first round of mergers and acquisitions in the mid-1990s, and it
surpassed the share of other large seed companies in 1999, the year that
DuPont acquired Pioneer.
In 2007, seed-chemical companies accounted for over 70 percent of total
global R&D spending by the seed-biotechnology industry. Other seed
companies made up an additional 24 percent, while small and midsized
biotechnology firms accounted for 4 percent of R&D spending by this
industry.
The average research intensity of the largest seed companies is also higher
than that of midsized and small seed companies, but small biotechnology
startups as a group account for the highest research intensity of all, at over 40
percent in 2006.
