At a time when efficiency cuts are in the news, how much funding does agricultural R&D need? In 2024 Ariel Ortiz-Bobea and colleagues analysed the effects funding and climate change have on US agricultural productivity. Their results, published in 2025, show that far from cutting R&D, there’s an urgent need to increase funding, else US agriculture faces declining productivity in coming decades, threatening food security and environmental goals.
The research team examined data on Total Factor Productivity (TFP), which measures how efficiently farms convert all inputs into outputs, providing a comprehensive measure of agricultural performance. They found there’s a big drop-off in productivity with higher temperatures, with exposure above 25°C causing particular damage to farm output.
Ortiz-Bobea and colleagues modelled a range of climate scenarios and predict a fall in TFP between 7.8% to 13.1%, with a 3°C warming projected to decrease Total Factor Productivity by more than 10%. But we cannot just research our way out of that when it happens. Ortiz-Bobea & colleagues also find there’s a lag between investing in research and getting the results, with impacts peaking around 30 years after investment.
This suggests the USA is facing problems, with research in recent years having either stagnated or even been cut. The authors suggest public agricultural research spending must grow by 5% to 8% annually or increase by $2.2-3.8 billion per year above current levels, to tackle climate change. This is a scale comparable to post-World War investments, being $10 per American per year, or half an Elon in total.
The researchers worked out what Americans were getting for the tax dollars by collecting comprehensive data on US agricultural productivity from USDA-ERS statistics along with historical research funding information. They then checked the weather, so they could use statistical techniques to pull apart the effects of weather and funding. There’s no records of future weather yet, so they also ran simulations using climate models to project future impacts on agriculture under different warming scenarios through 2100.
From overseas, it’s surprising how much of US research is built on a foundation of agriculture. “Land-grant” universities were founded to provide education in agriculture, engineering and other technical subjects. There are currently over a hundred of these institutions in the USA. The success of American agriculture today rests on the work of people at these colleges in the twentieth century. A continued decline, as seen in recent years, along with the challenge of a warming planet does suggests the USA could be on track for a considerably less secure future.
Ortiz-Bobea, A., Chambers, R. G., He, Y., & Lobell, D. B. (2025). Large increases in public R&D investment are needed to avoid declines of US agricultural productivity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(11), e2411010122. https://doi.org/pbq2
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