By ANN HINCH
Assistant Editor

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Anyone in charge of bookkeeping for a farm knows precisely how much of their budget goes for pesticides, herbicides, insecticides – basically, any chemical designed to kill almost anything that would make a crop their dinner before the grower can harvest it.

The cost of successfully cultivating a plant isn’t getting any cheaper, and neither is the ability to protect it from bugs and other natural enemies, according to a new study from Scottish agribusiness consulting firm Phillips McDougall. In fact, within the last decade, research and development (R&D) costs have shot up 39 percent for 14 surveyed agribusinesses.

Commissioned by CropLife America (CLA) and the European Crop Protection Assoc. and released last Thursday, the report tracks the cost of several private companies’ R&D for crop protection products.
This average cost of development of a single product that actually reaches the market, as of 2008, was $256 million – up from $184 million in 2000.

Many growers’ goal is to grow more and better with fewer inputs. This isn’t just a personal economic need, since as the global population continues to multiply, more food will be needed and neither the planet’s available farmland nor its water resources are likely to increase.

“Probably more than half of the people who have ever been alive on this planet are alive today,” said Jay Vroom, CLA CEO and president.

He noted right now the population stands at 6.6 billion – with approximately 1 billion people undernourished or hungry, according to United Nations estimates – and predictions have us likely to reach or exceed 9 billion by mid-century.

“The critical question for us is, how do we meet this demand with less land?” said Jack Boyne of Bayer CropScience, who also serves as the CLA Communications Committee chair.

For 50 years, Vroom explained the amount of arable land and water on the planet has remained roughly the same, but farmers have been able to produce more food with it, thanks to R&D efforts at crop protection.

Leon Corzine, a northern Illinois farmer and past president of the National Corn Growers Assoc., agreed crop losses are down. “We don’t have today the insect damage we used to have in this corn,” he said, noting this has also lessened mold damage and other spoilage that used to attack pest-weakened corn.

Last year, the USDA estimates U.S. farmers harvested 13.15 billion bushels of corn and 3.36 billion bushels of soybeans – a record for both. Back in 1959, corn production was 3.8 billion bushels on only 7.5 million fewer acres, and soybeans were almost 533 million bushels – but, to be fair, on far less land (22.6 million acres, as compared with 76.4 million in 2009).

According to the report, the average cost of research itself on a new product actually fell between 2000 and 2008, but the development process almost doubled in cost. Field trial costs jumped from $25 million to $54 million and the expense of the registration process more than doubled, to $25 million.

“As science advances, our costs go up,” Vroom said. Boyne added he thinks it’s important for the general public to know this so they understand the challenges of agriculture and the price tag involved.
Vroom added another factor in higher costs is decreased public funding for publicly-supported ag research. Too, better screening equipment allows research scientists to examine more possibilities in getting a product to market – which means the process takes longer than it once did.

In 1995 a product’s average time between discovery and being on the market was 8.3 years; now that period is closer to a full decade.

He noted these costs did not include political lobbying efforts. He also explained change in climate plays into research as a factor specific to a region, since there are always periodic changes that affect a farmer’s ability to do his work – but that the report did not address this issue because CLA didn’t want to invoke the politics tied up in “climate change.”

“If there are trends that really are longer term in nature … is another debate, not for us in the crop protection industry,” Vroom said.